My eyelids become heavy, and I imagine the rock below me is cradling my body and rocking it. I give in to my weighted eyelids and let them slip shut. The instant they close, I realize something is making a sound. I think of the clock in my bedchamber, which is always ticking, but I hear it only if I consciously listen for it. Somewhere in the cave there is a click, click, clicking. I keep my eyes closed and focus on it. The dark space around me slowly comes to life with noise, a myriad of clickings, some loud, some so quiet I almost wonder if I hear them at all.
I climb to my feet and brush the grit from my skin, and start hobbling toward the sound. With the light coming from the well, I can see the cave better than I’ve ever seen it before. The walls sparkle and glitter like the night sky. The floor is strewn with thousands of blackened bones and rusted bits of armor and weapons. Above and to my right, the ceiling has two white lumps sticking out of it. Directly below are two matching white lumps, like teeth that have been rounded with time, jutting up from the cave floor. I limp over to the closest lump. It is as tall as my waist, and milky smooth. I put my hand on it and pull back. The stone is covered with a slippery liquid. I peer up at the twin ceiling lump. A single drop of water falls from it and clicks onto the lump beside me, bursting into a thousand minuscule droplets.
If the clicking I am hearing is water dripping, and I can see only two lumps, that would mean only two clicks. But there are lots and lots of clicks echoing through the darkness, maybe even hundreds. Turning toward the sound, I step up to the cave wall. As far as I can see, it is a sheet of sleek black stone covered with sparkles. I run my fingers over the rough surface, and after I have gone three steps, my hand disappears. It looks like the rock has bitten it off at the wrist. I gasp and yank it toward my body, and it comes out of the wall completely normal.
For a long moment, I stare at the rock, and then, summoning all of my courage, I lift both of my hands and ease them forward. When they are even with the glimmering stone, I push them a little further and feel…nothing but air. I take a tiny step forward and my arms disappear into the rock all the way to my elbows. Another step and my nose is a hair away from the wall, and my arms are gone. I squeeze my eyes shut and take one more giant step, and the clicking becomes so loud that I almost scream from the shock.
Slowly, I open my eyes. I am standing in a room more beautiful than the cliffside palace I grew up in. Massive white columns are braced between the stone floor and ceiling. They look like giant, delicate icicles, and they seem to absorb the pearly light from the dragon scale and reflect it back twice as bright. Hundreds of smaller, half-formed columns hang from the ceiling, dripping water down onto their other halves, as if the two stones are alive and reaching out for each other. In the center of the room is a lake with white columns shooting up from its center.
I clap my hands and squeal. I, Princess Sorrowlynn, have walked through a dark cave, passed through a stone wall that isn’t really there, and found the water needed to save my life and the horse lord’s, and I have done it all on my own. Tears sting my eyes as I stand a little higher, and then I stumble to the water’s edge and thrust my burning feet into it.
The water is as cold as fresh-melted snow, and seems to wrap around my wounded skin. The burning is sucked away, and my entire body sags with relief. I plop down onto my bottom and scoot into the lake until the water is up to my neck, then lean my head back. The icy water suctions around my braided hair and onto my scalp, and my skin absorbs the chill. It penetrates my body and starts to make my bones ache. I stand, and a slew of water pours from me, making giant ripples that spread from my shins all the way to the edge of the light as I back out of the water.
Bending, I cup my hands and scoop water to my parched lips, swallowing it down with loud, needy gulps. When I have filled my belly to bursting, and am shivering with cold, I go back the way I have come.
The rock wall I entered through does not look like a rock wall from this side. It is a massive, jagged rent in the stone leading from the lake room to the passage. I can see the bright, burning well of light, and beyond it, Golmarr.
I hurry back into the passage and kneel beside him. He doesn’t appear to be breathing. Pressing my hand to his cheek, I lean my face so close to his that our noses bump. “Golmarr,” I whisper. “I found water.” He doesn’t move a muscle. “Golmarr.” I shake his shoulder. “Golmarr.” I pat his cheek. “Golmarr!” I yell, and slap him hard across the face. His head rolls to the side and stops, and tears fill my eyes. “Golmarr?” I plead, and my voice catches on a sob. “Please wake up.” I put both my hands on his face and turn it toward mine again. A drop of water trickles out of my soaked hair, down my forehead, along the bridge of my nose, and plops right onto his lips. He sucks his bottom lip in, and I laugh with relief, pressing my cheek to his. His skin is like fire against mine. Reluctant to give up his body heat, I stand over him and wring my skirt out onto his face.
The skin between his eyebrows creases and he flinches as the water rains down on him. His dark lashes flutter, and then he blinks his hazel eyes and peers at me, and they are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen, even if they are a bit bleary.