Page 25 of Come Tumbling Down

He was so focused on keeping his balance that he didn’t hear the board crack beneath his feet until it fell away and he was dangling over empty air, his grasp on the ropes the only thing keeping him from falling. He screamed, high and bright and clean, all of his terror and all of his resignation expressed in a single sound.

“Kade!” Christopher turned and bolted back to his position, dropping to his knees on the rickety wood and grabbing for his arms. “Take my hands! Don’t let go!”

The two commands seemed contradictory: to take his hands, Kade would have to let go, have to risk that split second when he wasn’t holding on to anything. Still, he started to loosen his grip, willing to gamble everything on how quickly they both could move, and was on the verge of reaching for him when the board Christopher was kneeling on snapped in two. Sumi grabbed the back of his shirt, dragging him to safety before anything worse could happen, and Kade was left dangling alone, surrounded by nothing but empty space.

“Kade!” shouted Christopher.

“It’s all right,” said Sumi, helping Christopher to his feet. She kept her eyes on Kade. “He’s a hero too, remember? We’re all heroes here. Sometimes a hero has to fall.”

The words were needles, red-hot and sharp as anything. Kade closed his eyes. If he held on, the others would keep trying to save him—even Jack, who looked lost and scared, as if this change to her plan were already too much to stand. She was more fragile than anyone remembered her being, faced with the loss of home and mentor and even her own skin. She was falling apart, and Kade was just … falling.

If he stayed where he was, the others would kill themselves trying to do the impossible, and in the end, he’d fall anyway. That wasn’t what a hero would do. That had never been what a hero would do.

He was never going to make it back to the school, never going to take over for Aunt Eleanor. He felt bad about that. By letting go, he would become one more person who let her down. But he didn’t have a choice. Not anymore.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Cora’s waiting for me.”

Then he let go.

He fell like a star, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t be tempted to look back up and see his friends growing smaller and smaller on the bridge, which was still intact enough to get them where they needed to go. He was the only sacrifice it had demanded, and he didn’t want to take their faces to his grave.

He fell, and the arms of the water were there to open wide and drag him down, without a sound, into the depths of the sea.

12 ALL THE DROWNED CHILDREN

CHRISTOPHER’S SCREAM WAS barely more than a howl. He moved toward the hole in the bridge and Jack was suddenly there, grabbing his arm. He turned to stare at her. She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “You will not.”

“Kade—”

“Kade is with Cora in the hands of the Drowned Gods now. Live or die, he does it at their whim, and your intervention will not change their decision. We need to move before this damned bridge dumps the rest of us in after them. Or do you think you’re a better swimmer than the Goblin Prince and the former mermaid?”

“Not former,” said Sumi. “Cora wears her scales on the inside now, that’s all. Once you’ve been a mermaid, you’ll always be a mermaid. You can’t help it.”

If Jack had been the first to turn away, things might have gone very differently. Jack could be cold; Jack could be heartless; Jack would always, always prioritize Jack above almost anyone else. That didn’t make her a bad person, necessarily—practicality and pragmatism had their places, and as long as people never forgot that Jack would choose what was expedient over what was compassionate, she could be perfectly lovely company. But if she had been the first to give up, Christopher might have insisted on staying and trying to figure out a way to get Kade back, even as the bridge fell to pieces around him.

Instead, it was Sumi who bounced onto the balls of her feet, announced, “We have so much to do, and so little time to do it in,” and turned to run, fleet as anything, to the far end of the bridge, where it joined back up with solid ground.

“She’s right,” said Jack, surprisingly gentle, and followed after Sumi at a more sedate pace.

Christopher stayed where he was for another count of ten, silently willing a head to break the surface of the water.

It didn’t happen.

Christopher glared at the water. He glared at the broken bridge. And when he finally followed the others, he was weeping, making no effort to stop or to wipe the tears from his cheeks.

The cavern formed a tall dome, with the bridge marking its widest point; once across, the ceiling dropped and the walls narrowed, forming a single corridor no more than fifteen feet from the bridge’s end. Jack and Sumi were waiting at the mouth of the corridor. Jack looked at Christopher, expression grave.

“From here, say nothing unless you’re directly questioned, and even then, if you can avoid giving answer, do,” she said, voice low. “The high priest can be … tedious at times, and will look for a way to win without actually joining the game. Do you understand?”

“I don’t like this,” said Christopher.

“Nor should you: it’s dreadful.” Jack’s eyes were dry. That made sense: death was as commonplace to her as breathing. Still, it was easy in that moment to hate her, just a little. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t come back to the school, if she had just stayed in the Moors where she claimed she belonged …

But that wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.

“I didn’t come looking for someone to die for me,” said Jack, voice low and far too calm. It wasn’t serenity: it was rigid control holding her words in place, like shackles around every syllable. “I wanted help. I had nowhere else to turn. This was not my intention, and I will be sorry for it later, I will mourn our friends for all the nights of my life. First we have to secure those nights. If we fail, they died for nothing.”