For one terrifying second, his face appeared in front of mine, close enough to be clear in the cloudy water. His eyes were narrowed, his brows drawn low. His navy-tinted hair floated around his face, shifting with the underwater current. And for a moment, I thought he would just…go.
Then his hand shot toward me through the water.
Some irrational instinct made me close my eyes in defense of a blow, even though the water denied him any real momentum. An instant later, the torch was tugged from my grip.
My mouth opened in a rage-filled shout that water rushed in to douse, and I found myself coughing, choking on water as the lightI’dcrafted, through a formulaI’ddeveloped, swam away. Leaving me alone, disoriented, and still choking in water too dark and murky to clearly see through.
Near panic, I gritted my teeth and forced water out of my mouth with my tongue, then I sucked at my air bladder, careful to keep the marble tile beneath me and the light of my own torch ahead. With my lungs again refreshed, I followed that light, flinching every time I passed an open cell door, both fearing and hoping for the sight of a fellow competitor.
If there were none left, then I was last. I’d failed.
But if I was ahead of anyone, that person was unlikely to survive.
The light moved swiftly, and twice it doubled back, but I was unable to keep up. Once, as my largest air bladder began to lose its shape from being emptied, I put on a burst of speed and crashed directly into a translucent wall. Pryce had managed to put several panels between us, and…
Something swam in front of the light. Another competitor.
I felt my way along, slower now that I couldn’t follow the torch, and I turned when I got to the end of the corridor. Another shadow—or the same one?—swam in front of the now-distant light of my torch, and suddenly, the light lurched upward.
My gaze rose, following it, and I realized that Pryce had found the center of the arena. He’d gotten out, thanks tomywork!
As I pressed forward again, my free hand trailing along the wall, the murky shadow that had been following Pryce pushed upward toward the surface, only to suddenly reverse course and plunge toward the floor. The shadow looked too big. It…
The shadow splintered into two silhouettes, a tempest of flailing arms and legs, and I realized that something had just fallen into the watery arena, colliding with the competitor who’d been about to emerge.
Then, as I watched, still making my way slowly toward the center of the maze, frustrated when my path led me ninety degrees in the wrong direction, a third form plunged into the water, feet first and deliberate, and this form was carrying my torch!
Even in the murky water, even blurry across the distance, I would have known that form anywhere.
Wilder.
He’d taken my torch from Pryce—he’d thrown Pryce back into the arena—andhe was coming for me.
My heart leapt into my throat, and I kicked harder, despite the exhaustion in my legs and the ache in my empty lungs. I lifted the air bladder to my lips and tried to inhale, but it was empty. A fit seized my stressed lungs, and I coughed into the bag, sucking my own used air in and out rapidly until it eased. Then I let go of the deflated air bladder and quickly seized the smaller, still-full one. As I struggled to untie it, the empty bladder floated in front of me, still tethered to the first, the viable air coating giving off a faint green glow.
Finally I got the second bladder open and took a deep breath from it, then I kicked off against the nearest wall and felt my way forward again. Heading for the light.
But the light hadn’t found me. I could tell from the crazed way Wilder was waving it back and forth as the two shadows at his back swam up toward the surface, fighting each other sluggishly and silently for the right to climb out first.
I wanted to shout for Wilder. I wanted to wave my arms to catch his attention, but that would have been a waste of time, effort, and breath, so I kept swimming, working my way around corners and past intersections, gleeful every time I turned toward the center, devastated every time a path took me the other way.
But finally, just as I sucked the last of the air from my second bladder, I emerged from a transparent pathway into the broad center of the maze. Wilder was just emerging from a corridor he’d taken in error, and he saw me. He lurched across the open area, pulling in powerful strokes against the water as I kicked toward him, exhausted and slow. He got to me before I reached the center, and his free arm wrapped firmly around my waist. He hauled me forward, my lips sealed against a breath I desperately needed.
We made it to the opening just as another form reached it, his movements sounding muted and sloshy to my submerged ears. Wilder pushed the poor man aside and shoved me upward, toward the surface. Toward a crown of light and the silhouette of a familiar head peeking over the opening in the glass ceiling. Toward a hand reaching for me.
I reached up, and Yoslyn grabbed my wrist.
My head broke the surface, and I sucked in a great breath, bringing in a spray of tiny droplets with it.
“Amber!” she shouted, and vaguely I was aware of a form behind her, pushing past her.
Desmond grabbed my arms and pulled me effortlessly from the hole in the glass, water streaming from my drenched form. I collapsed on his lap, soaked and shivering as he ripped off his cape and wrapped it around me.
“You’re okay,” he whispered. “You did it. Yousurvived.”
I dragged in breath after breath, and as the world came back into focus, as forms regained color and clarity, I realized that half of the audience was staring at us. At Desmond, who held me tucked neatly into his formidable embrace, and Yoslyn, who stood staring down at us, still dripping from her own ordeal and draped in a drying cloth.
The other half of the spectators were staring from their seats at the hole in the glass.
