His arms were extended, his face showing only a hint of strain as he held an entire Great Lake’s worth of water away from me. We were encased in a small sphere as he’d promised, giving me the air to breathe and the space to move that I would need to separate this curse from its power source.
I could see the water fighting and surging to return to its natural state, railing against the barrier Silas had constructed with his magic. The heavy waters strove to fill this empty pocket at its depths. Silas was the only thing holding it back. It suddenly made a lot of sense why I needed to hurry.
I took the dagger, moved to the center of the sphere, and knelt. I quickly uncovered something in the sand and began to dig around it, brushing away rock and seaweed and sand. Finally, I exposed the top half of something that resembled a crystal ball.
It looked like electricity bounced through the precious glass sphere—captured magic, desperate to get out. The spells zipped erratically like tiny, frenetic electric eels.
I picked up the dagger, looked to Silas, and then I drove the blade down against the top of the glass. The tip of the blade glanced off and embedded itself into nearby sand without making a dent. A zap of magic shot from the sphere, as if it could tell it was being attacked. The blast sent me flying into Silas.
The full weight of my person crashed into him, and in Silas’s shock, his hands slipped. He lost his perfectly braced pose, and the spell holding the lake water at bay was broken.
Water crashed over us in a fury, pulling us under, swirling me upside down, inside out—blacknessswallowing us from every direction. I inhaled a mouthful of water.
I swiped for my dagger, missed. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were filling with salt water. I was drowning, this was it—I hadn’t managed to break even one crystal.
Then strong arms wrapped around my chest. A tremble, a tug, and then I was on my knees. In the rowboat, vomiting up water. My whole body shook. My vision was blurry, and I saw stars.
“Silas!” I cried, and he was there next to me, holding the hair out of my face while I wheezed in air.
“It’s okay, Alessia. It’s okay.” Silas clutched a fistful of my hair while his words whispered against my neck. “We’ll try again.”
“I lost the dagger,” I told him.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did,” I said. “I couldn’t grab it in time.”
Even as I finished my sentence, my voice trailed off. There, on the bottom of the rowboat, glittered three cerulean gems embedded in a familiar handle.My dagger had been returned to me.
I stood, dripping wet. I pulled my hair back from my head, tied it in a tight bun. Every part of me was drenched. I turned to Silas.
“Again,” I told him.
Silas took my hand, looked with approval down at me, and then Phased us back under without another word.He launched another sphere of air to protect me while I worked.
I knelt, held the dagger in my hands, and waited. For what, I wasn’t sure. Inspiration? The solution? I tried to believe, but I wasn’t sure what to believe in. I believed that I belonged here, but that wasn’t enough.
This time, I took the tip of the blade, set it on top of the magic ball. I sawed, slowly, thinking maybe it was more of a finesse situation than a brute-force one.
The blast built up slowly this time. As if the magic had taken every slice of the blade against it personally. Once the crystal had suffered enough, the protective spells shot me backwards, knocking me into blackness.
Silas was ready this time. He grabbed me and Phased me to the surface, where I once again heaved up the water I’d ingested—less this time, since I’d known to keep my mouth shut. My dagger waited for me at the bottom of the rowboat.
“Again,” I told Silas, the second I pulled myself shakily to my feet.
Another Phase, another blast.
Another Phase, another blast.
“Catch your breath,” Silas said after my fourth try. “It won’t work if you’re exhausted.”
I shook my head. “Again.”
Again.
Again.
Again.
