But nothing moves. The more the water rises, the heavier the weight against my wrists. The surface licks at my chin, and Kol calls out my name. “Mya!”
I glance up and I see his face has gone the gray of ash left in the hearth long after the flame has burned away. His eyes are red and sunken, his cheeks gaunt. I’ve never seen so much fear on his face. Fear for me, because even though he is caught just as firmly as I am, his head is much higher above the surface.
For now, at least. Who knows how long it will take for the water to be over my head and threatening his?
“Can you get your legs under you?”
“I’m trying,” I say, but the words are drowned out by the gurgling of the water and the breath that wheezes out of me. “I can’t get a foothold.” I gulp in a few more quick breaths and my head swims like I’m on a rocking boat out on the sea.
I need to stay calm. I need to think.
My right hand is pinned beneath my left, and I can straighten and stretch the fingers of that hand. I do, and beneath the rock, space opens up at the ends of my fingertips. They wiggle, pressed on by swirling water, but nothing else. Despite the voice in my head screaming at me to pull my wrists up, I fight against my instincts and push them deeper into the rocks.
And something gives. My right arm slides forward, and I splash through the surface, landing on my elbow. My face plunges under the water.
Don’t panic, I tell myself. Remember who you are. You are Olen’s daughter. You are Chev’s sister. The Olen High Elder. You are in control.
And my heart, pounding like a burial drum, calms just a bit. I slide my arm forward again, sliding even farther into the rising flood. My shoulders submerge, and I think I hear Kol’s voice shout my name again, but I can’t be sure.
My eyes open into murky blackness, but through the blackness I see Kol’s legs. I see his hands. He reaches beyond the rocks that hold his ankles firm, stretching his open hands toward me, trying to pull me up.
His fingers graze my left forearm. He comes closer, stirring the water, and his fingers wrap around my sleeve. He grabs hold and he pulls.
My right wrist twists between the rocks, and something gives. A stone shifts; another slides down to take its place.
And a small space opens. My wrists gain some freedom of motion and I know this is it. The best chance I’ll get. Maybe the only chance I’ll get.
I pull and Kol pulls, and I twist and he twists, and my wrists slide out from the rocks. I fly up and out of the water and gasp. My chest burns, even as it aches with cold. But I am free.
Kol lets out a sound, something like a cry of pain, but when I turn my gaze to his face, he’s smiling. The sound comes again. This time it’s clearly a cry of joy, so sharp and strong I feel it push against me; I feel it pierce my skin. It cuts through my red and bleeding arms, flowing into my veins.
His smile softens. He leans back against the wall of rock behind him, half sitting, half lying, and he smiles at me the way he did the day we became betrothed—the day he placed the honey in my hands. The look in his eyes is like pure sunlight, though at this point there is no sunlight left in our little room. The gap above our heads no longer lets in a piece of the sky, a vent to the air. Water fills the gap now, pouring in at every angle, from every side. It spills along the walls and splashes onto Kol’s head as he leans against rock.
The top of his head is not far from the gap where the water pours in. Maybe just the width of two hands separates him from the way out.
Yet how can that matter? It might as well be the width of a thousand hands; Kol is pinned so firmly to the floor. The only way to get him out is to free him, the way we freed me.
I return his smile. I want to say something—I can think of so many things I want to say—but I won’t say them now. Save them for later, I tell myself. There will be plenty of time after today.
But then Kol starts to speak. He leans forward, and I think he is saying that I should climb—try to make it up through the gap before . . .
But the rest is lost to me. His voice is drowned out by the hum of water as I dive back under to the place where his legs are pinned below.
I trace his left leg to the floor. His foot is wedged in a gap between two large shoulders of rock. My hands run over the surface of each one—they are broad and wide, like the backs of two short-faced bears lying side by side. This is a different kind of trap—different from the smaller rocks that held my wrists in place. Moving the boulders that pin his legs to the floor will take all the strength I have.
Even that may not be enough.
Liquid cold tears at my skin like the claws of a saber-toothed cat. It holds me in its grasp. It peels away my warmth like a sharpened blade slicing meat from bone. The bare skin of my hands and face, the covered skin of my arms and chest—every piece of me aches, every piece of me burns with cold.
Every pulse is like a scream, every heartbeat an order to swim up to the surface and breathe. But I won’t yield. As the water runs in, time runs out. And Kol is no closer to escape than he was when I dove down.
My hands thread between the rocks, wedge around his legs, seeking any knob or notch to grab hold of. Nothing. Smooth stone wraps all the way around, as far as I can reach. I work my fingers around his ankles, down to the soles of his boots. Pushing . . . pulling . . . I manage the smallest of movements. His left leg slides up the width of one of my clawing fingers. His right leg slides out from under his left about twice as far. A victory so small, so insignificant, but it’s enough for me to allow myself a moment at the surface to breathe.
The moment I break through to the air I hear Kol’s voice shouting at me. I think I may have heard it under the surface as well, but the desperate screams of my body and mind overwhelmed it. Now it can’t be ignored. His words ring against the rippling surface that climbs ever higher. They shiver against the close walls. The room shudders with his words—foolish, and too late, and save yourself.
I cough, spitting water and silt from my lips. I don’t dare answer his shouted demands. I don’t dare take time to argue. Instead I try to give him the kind of smile he gave me, and I soak in the image of his face one more time.
Then I swim back down, fast.
My hands go right to his legs, squeezing around them and easing into the gap between the rocks. I lean hard, wedging my arm as far into the dark space as I can. I claw at the stone, fighting to stay down, leveraging all my strength, holding myself underwater as I fight to lift this impossibly heavy boulder up and away.
And the effort is answered by the tiniest shifting of weight.