The candle flickered, and I tried not to shiver as I gazed at what’d been carved into the wall: the Empyrean symbols for the Watchers.
All burned with color, as if they’d been painted on with bioluminescence. All except one.
I went to move closer, but the bottom dropped off. With zero energy or desire to tread the murky water, I stayed where I was.
A green circle with a four-pointed star in the center. That was Gaia, Angel of Earth.
Two yellow spirals with three four-pointed stars. Fei, the Angel of Air.
Four stars curling around a red flame. Akosua, the Angel of Fire.
And a teardrop with two four-pointed stars, but it was unlit.
Because the Angel of Water was gone.
A heavy boom echoed through the chamber, a wave against rock.
Shit. The tide. The Pearl.
Scanning the symbols one last time, I waded back to the edge of the pool, vowing to come back with a wetsuit and a surfboard soon.
When I stepped out of the water, the night air hit me in one frigid punch. I wrapped my arm around my stomach, trying to lock in the heat. It was useless.
Shivering, I headed back to the cave’s entrance, my feet shuffling over gravel and sand. I placed the candle on the altar and whisked past the jutting shale and continued on towards the front.
The dips and hollows that held nothing more than puddles when I first came in were now full to the brim, seawater trickling over the edges. I stood in the outer chamber, the tide lapping at my ankles.
Think, think, think, River. My mom must have known this artifact was here. Where would she hide it? Would she be okay with me giving it to the Night Stalkers? I shook that worry away—it wasn’t like I had much choice. And she wasn’t coming back to claim it.
Water trickled in, faster and farther, sloshing in my high-tops.
In my last vision, the Pearl lay half-submerged in a grotto. Between then and now, the water level had risen by, I don’t know, a few feet? And there’d been hints of darkness, but not enough to swallow the little bits of candle and moonlight.
Which put it somewhere close to…
Spinning on my heels, I trekked towards an outcrop halfway between the entrance and the altar. It had to be in one of these pools, flanking the sides of the cave.
I hurried to the one on the right, nothing intuitive guiding my decision. But the liquid looked slightly less foamy, which was a plus. Wincing, I stepped in, the freezing ocean water numbing my skin. I dipped down to my waist, my arm skimming the rock, blindly reaching in crevices.
The next set hammered the beach, whitecaps rushing towards me, knocking me back.
This wasn’t going to work. It was too aimless. I closed my eyes, inhaling a steady stream of air. I opened my palms and held them at my sides, my fingers bobbing on the water’s surface.
“Come on. Help me!” A whisper, a plea, an unfinished prayer, spoken not only with words, but with my heart, with every fiber of my being. Was anyone listening? The universe, the angels, the essence in this cave. My mom. I felt a vein in my temple pop.
PLEASE. HELP. ME.
Wind rustled through the cavern, whipping at my sodden hair, swishing the tide. Shadows whirled before my lids, crackling candlelight. My hands met cool air.
I stumbled back a step as my eyes shot open, my spine digging into the pool’s rocky edge.
Water, there should have been water, I should have been up to my waist in water. But the element was gone, as if… as if it had been sucked back out to sea.
Jaw tight, I turned around.
Every grotto had emptied. Someone, something had answered my call. I flexed my fingers, Source tingling from the tendons up and over my body in one shimmering wave.
Wobbling out of the hole that was once a full pool, I strode to the other side of the chamber. The pull on my instincts turned heady and visceral—magnetic.
