He grabbed my hand. “There’re stairs.”
I could just see the first step, and some faint light rising from below. Once more, that wail climbed up the dark treads, so we started down.
Down and down, until I knew we were deep within the earth. I thought of King Nemea’s ritual room, carved into the belly of his mountain, and a new sense of foreboding racked me.
Silence fell suddenly, replaced by a wet sloshing sound. A thick gurgle.
We descended faster, until they turned sharply and were lit by a few dying torches in their holders. Through the little arched door at the base of the stairs stood Halla, kneeling beside a small round pool. She had loosened the bodice of her rumpled wedding gown, and a thin line of blood ran down the middle of her bare, scarred torso.
Clasped in her hands was what looked to be a pale rope, but as I stared, I realized it was fleshy and irregular and firm. With baredteeth and shaking arms she heaved it up, until a dark, slimy head, its hair brutally shorn, broke the surface of the water.
I recognized the big, terror-wide eyes.
Agatha.
Her mouth was fully unhinged, and when her throat cleared with a wet choke, that horrific scream started anew.
19
Imogen
Halla’s strength gave, sending Agatha below the pool’s surface once more. Halla fell back with a shriek, arms whirling.
On the stairs just behind us, I heard Lachlan running, his armor clanging. The chamber was a gloomy blur as I rushed in, mindless to all else save Agatha. Somehow, Lachlan reached the pool before I did. He’d already removed his breastplate and was shucking off the rest of his armor at alarming speed, readying to dive in.
I pulled him back by the shoulder. “Get back.” I wouldn’t let his panic make him witless. “I’ll go.”
With his dagger raised, Theodore pressed Halla into the farthest corner of the chamber. She’d managed to pull up her gown, smearing the bright blood across her sternum in the process.
I swore to eviscerate her slowly when all this was through, then I threw off my boots and dove in. It was when the warm, oily water engulfed me completely that realization dawned. The torchlight flickering through the greenish-tinged pool. The dismaying feeling of limbs bumping against mine.
I’d been here before.
Though the flames lit the pool’s surface, I saw nothing but a dense knot of those white fleshy ropes. They stuck to my sodden trousers and tangled with my arms. I blinked against the water’s sting, grimaced against its fetid taste. I searched frantically, diving lower, but my terror only spiked when I realized just how deep the pool was.
I used the slick white ropes as my guide, drawing myself deeper. They looked like winter branches with a fat and sturdy base and finer splays at their ends. They moved with fluid grace, waving to and fro. I squeezed one and found it spongy—like gristle. Like a vein.
I sank lower, lower, until finally, at the very center of what looked like a knotted white net, I saw Agatha, barely illuminated by the chamber’s light. I could make out her arms and legs, curled up into her like a new babe. Her scalp was red with cuts and scrapes where it had been violently shorn. The tips of those ghostly veins were stuck into her skin, over her entire body. I swam nearer, trying to figure out how best to extract her from the mass, when I saw her torso.
There was a dark reddish line running down the middle of it.
A consuming rage overtook me. I began hacking and slicing through the tough veins with my talons, until a black ooze leaked into the already murky water. My assault seemed to awaken them. They tangled with my hair, around my arms and legs, reaching and clinging. Though I struggled to see, I still ripped at them, determined to free Agatha—until something rammed me from below.
Pain burned deep in my calf. I tried to jerk free, tried to see through the mass of white knots and flurry of bubbles, but an aching weight remained. I reached down and realized it was a hand. Agatha’s. She’d dug in her talons and was trying to pull her small body up mine. Senseless with horror, I ripped away whatever veinsstill clung to her, but she moved like a terrified animal, on frantic reflex alone. She sank her talons into my arm and raked them down.
The water garbled my scream. We were eye to eye now. I fought her thrashing and managed to grab her face in my hands and force her to still. Her entire body jerked when she truly saw me. Her heart-shaped face slacked, mouth hanging open in shock.
In that suspended moment, I took her in with clearer eyes. She wore one of the ritual robes that Halla had worn on that Varian beach, the day I’d taken the severing draught. A deep-red sash ran down the front of the pale pink garment, mimicking the gash from Eusia’s gutting. Each of her wrists was tied with a length of rope, but the bit that had tethered them together had already been cut.
A moment later, Agatha began kicking and thrashing, fighting to get to the surface, just as those veins began stretching toward the both of us again. I swiped at them, but they were living things, reaching and reattaching at will.
No. No, no, no.One settled against my neck, its sting deep and burning. Agatha began to sink, her energy waning, but a tempestuous fire was building in me. It boiled through my center, oozed through my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight, and when the next vein hit my skin and began to burrow, that dark power in my stomach ruptured. It flooded the space between my muscles and organs, and when I commanded the pool tostill,every seeking vein went slack.
I forced us up.
When we finally broke the surface, the same awful cry as before rose from Agatha’s chest.
“You’re all right.” I held her tighter. “I’ve got you.”
