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I lean forward, my eye twitching. This isn’t enough information. “What’s gone?” I say. “Ryker, tell us what’s going on!”
“The palace…the throne room,” he says. “It’s just–the water’s rising, I have to go.”
And the connection terminates.
I look from Nereus to Taln, then back at Gliss. They’re all sitting in stunned silence, all of us breathing heavily. “If it’s flooded–if it’s gone,” Nereus says quietly, “she…she can’t breathe.”
He sucks in a heavy breath, his eyes going wide and starting to water. I grasp him by the hand for just a moment before putting my hands on the control panel to interface with the ship.
“Don’t panic,” I say. “We’re going down there to get her.”
“We’re going…” Nereus gasps. “We’re going into the Abyss? We don’t even know what’s down there.”
“Well,” I say. “We’re about to find out.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
FIONA
The darkness closes in around us.
I try to keep Orion afloat, but he’s so heavy. Still breathing, butso…heavy…
And I’m tired. I’m so tired that I feel like I could just go to sleep right here and now, snooze on the ocean floor until I’ve had enough rest that I can get back out. The shadowy water is black as night, lulling me into something like complacency as fireflies burst to life all around us.
I’m back in Atlanta, sitting on my rooftop and asking for someone to come and find me. To come and take me away.
The night envelops me, and I almost feel like I can smell gardenias floating on the night air as I take Orion into my embrace. He’s still breathing–but his breaths come slower and slower, our heartbeats falling into time. Would it be so bad, really, to go out like this? In the arms of my lover, somewhere beautiful and cloaked in shadows and light?
We drift together, spiraling. Debris rains down around us.
Down, down, down…
I’ve drifted off by the time my feet touch sand, the water so cold around me that I can barely move. I barely understand how I’m still breathing–and how I’ve managed to stay locked to Orion the whole time, the hunter curled up next to me. We’re sleeping on the ocean floor, a glowing light in the distance, accompanied by blessed heat.
The ocean floor.
Panic grips me when I realize exactly where we are: at the bottom of the Atarys Abyss, a place where, according to the books, massive creatures lurk. No one has been down here in centuries, since the first Merati supposedly sprang from a chasm in the planet.
I can’t swim to the surface. I can’t even see the surface. Chances are I would just get lost.
But at least I can breathe.
The pressure is doing something weird to my head—something that makes me feel floaty and weird. I have just enough presence of mind to reach for Orion and check his pulse, finding it beating steady underneath those silken scales. He’s badly wounded, his leg dragging behind him, but we’re both alive and breathing.
I pull him toward the light. Toward warmth. Hopefully to salvation.
I’m shocked to find my blade is still at my hip, and I grasp the handle and feel Yrsa’s face digging into my palm. Lamia thought I had some kind of great power–maybe she was right. I’m just a human with barely twenty years behind me, and I’ve already seen so much.
I’m walking at the bottom of an alien ocean, for God’s–or goddess’–sake.
I manage to haul Orion along the sandy ocean floor, cresting a hill. The light glimmers just on the other side, nearly blinding me as I look down into a pool of something I can’t understand. A woman stares back at me, her image distorted. She has dark hair and wears shimmering blue armor, her face bruised but never,everbroken, turquoise eyes blazing.
For a moment, I think it’s Yrsa. Maybe it’s the pressure, or the cold, or the near death experience, or…well, any of the fucking crazy things I’ve been through in the past year. But I’m convinced there’s a goddess at the bottom of the ocean, staring up at me from inside a pool of silver.
She smiles, extending her hand.
I tilt my body forward and Orion and I fall toward her.
