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“Where would you go?” he prompted. “If you could go anywhere?”
She frowned. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very good at soothing. He urged her to embark on a pointless, painful exercise! Imagining the future didn’t change the present. Or maybe it did. If she could still imagine, she hadn’t given up. This chamber wasn’t absolutely sealed, absolutely lightless, waters rising by the minute.
“Edinburgh,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see it. A big city with spires and smokestacks and circulating libraries.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “London.”
“I could show you Edinburgh and London, first from the air. Embracing you the while.”
She snorted. “You think I would climb into a balloon with you? After what happened?”
He paused. “Yes.”
Now she laughed at his self-satisfied tone. “You’re abominably arrogant. Or else you think I’m unusually foolish.”
“Neither. You would, though. You’d climb into the balloon without a second’s hesitation.”
“Aye,” she sighed. “I would. I’ve always wanted to float among the clouds.”
“You shall.” He tipped her off his chest.
“What are you doing?”
He’d already risen to his knees. “Wizardry.”
The boat rocked and rotated.
“This chamber might be bigger than we think.” He grunted. “If I can tug us by these wretched stalactites . . . perhaps there’s another passage. Ouch.”
“Watch your head.” She leaned over the side of the boat, running her hands over the wall, over cold, wet, hopeless stone.
They inched along. And then, inevitably, the prow struck stone.
The chamber wasn’t so very big after all.
“Poxy bollocks!” James swore, and then she felt him sag, defeated.
She trembled, not with cold. The panic jumped about inside her, threatening to emerge as a shriek. But she didn’t shriek. Nor did she cease her restless movement, fingers exploring every cranny of the cursed wall. And suddenly, the wall wasn’t there. Where it should meet the ceiling, nothing. Her hands waved in the emptiness. The rock had fractured somehow, or eroded. Or perhaps she’d discovered an opening between separate boulders, and this islet was nothing more than a random heap of precariously balanced stones.
A gap such as this—it might allow for the ingress and egress of small creatures, bats and spiders. But a human? Surely, a human couldn’t worm her way out.
She pushed her arms deeper into the void. It was bigger than she’d expected, big enough to accommodate a whole colony of bats, to accommodate her.
“James.” His name tore from her parched throat.
He was at her side in an instant. His arm nudged hers as he explored the hollow.
“It keeps going,” he said, voice harsh with exultation. “You can fit.”
“Can you?”
He’d already seized her hips and boosted her forward.
“Dammit.” Her spine scraped the rock above and her kneecaps scraped the rock below. She fit, on her hands and knees, barely.
“It might end in ten yards,” she said.
“Find out.”
“I think it’s too small for you.” She squirmed backwards, prepared to drop back down into the boat, but he blocked her way.
