Nothing but silence, and a faint, faltering beam of soft, white light in the distance.
Kai allowed himself a breath and a glance at Imogen. She met his gaze, still fighting to keep her eyes in focus even as the same trepidation tugged her slim brows together.
“That was—” Kai began, but cut himself off at her nod.
“Too easy,” she agreed.
And yet, she took a swift step between the walls of freshly frozen waters, pausing only when Kai caught at her arm.
“Wait,” he said. “We don’t know if it’s safe.”
“And how are we to find out?”
When he could offer no response, she eased from his grip and swayed out of reach, turning once it became clear that Kai would not stop her. He glanced back over his shoulder for someone who might; silhouettes crowded the dark little chamber beyond the cavern’s entrance, but the Wielders made no move to follow their Commander nor even call her back. The gards seemed even less inclined, hovering somewhere in the back of the chamber, poised to sprint back through the tunnels and emerge above ground at the first sign of failure.Cowards.Cursing inwardly, Kai shifted the cold burn of the pendant against his chest and strode into the Mother’s cavern. In the shifting white light, he caught glimpses of rock wall, thick with ancient algae and distorted by the ripple of the ice on either side of him. Stray droplets of water hung suspended in the air, the shimmer of them like dust motes caught in a stream of sunlight. Kai glanced up and found stalactites wreathed in the same algae as the trapped walls, water sluicing from them, far too reminiscent of blood dripping from the teeth of a stone beast. And here theywere, walking willingly into its open jaw, Imogen weaving a drunken path and bouncing off the walls of the parted waters.
He caught her up in a few long strides.
“You should take the pendant back—”
“No,” she said firmly, though her voice tripped over her tongue. “If my ice falters, you’re the only thing standing between us and a watery death. B’sides. I can fight it.”
“How?”
She shrugged as she walked, shoulders barely jerking. “Not as bad for me. The others slip in and out. Time skips around for them. I’m just a little disoriented.”
Kai cast a glance back over his shoulder, torn. He had felt that too; that time was fluid, and his mind was dissipating into its tide, a swirl of ink in the water. If that’s what the others were going through, it was no wonder they hadn’t had the will to follow Imogen’s final stumble into the cavern. Would they wait there, then, sliding in and out of reality? Was thatsafe?
“S’alright,” said Imogen, reading his hesitance even through her struggle. “The gards aren’t affected. Just creeped out.”
She laughed, the sound low and dragging.Adhlas. She was slurring like a lush, and every time she spoke, the effort seemed to draw her entire focus, her steps swaying dangerously with each word. She staggered into him, and he steadied her with a hand beneath her elbow.
“You can’t take much more, Lady Imogen.”
“You don’t know what I can take,” she shot back, though she leaned into his supporting hand. “Let’s do this and have it over with. I just want it to beover.Don’t you?”
Kai had no good answer; dread and relief moved through him in equal measure. Seeing that Pearl retrieved and placed in Avette’s marble hands was the culmination of a centuries-old nightmare. It was an outcome so dire that even in his darkest years, trapped within this ice, it had never crossed his mind. Yet here they were.All power resting in her icy palm, just as Eda had predicted. The thought was too much to bear; that the prophecy had been realised. That they had failed to stop it despite Eda losing her life, despite Kai abandoning his Court, despite them all following him across the world and wilting beneath the tunnels for weeks, only to fall at this last hurdle. A part of him, that part most influenced by the pendant burning beneath his gills, simply did not accept it. He could not have this power rushing through his blood, the Mother’s influence whispering all around him, and find himself defeated. They were so close. He could take the Pearl for himself if they found it. What was stopping him?
But beneath the raging lull of the pendant remained his true self, and Kai knew him better than ever now.
If there was one uncomfortable truth he had uncovered, it was that Os had been right about him all along. Hewascasting everything aside. He would, for Adeline, without hesitation and no matter how many others it might doom.
He would do nothing to risk her safety.
And he did not have it in himself to deny it.
“I want it to be over,” he told Imogen.
She gave a grim and stuttering nod, and with her arm in his, they forged ahead toward the distant beam of light. The walls whispered, indiscernible but growing insistent. Kai’s pendant pulsed like a second heart against his ribs, eager andencouraging. But Lady Imogen was struggling; her eyes growing heavy, her slight frame sagging into him.
Knowing she would not hear of turning back, Kai grasped for a distraction.
“There’s an old story about the Mother’s Cavern,” he said. “Do you know it?”
Her lashes fluttered with effort, but she managed to look at him, her attention fixed.
“Whole reason we’re here,” she mumbled drowsily. “S’where She hid her Pearl.”
“It is,” said Kai. “But in Merrow legend, the cavern is the mouth of an ancient monster.”
