The four of us hurtle down the passageway, the walls buckling around us. Even the air seems to be vibrating, split by the sound of all those bones cracking and folding and collapsing into splinters and sand. The tunnel is growing so thick with dust it’s getting hard to breathe. At the bend, the wired Capuchin leers at us as we pass. Soon you shall be flashes before the sign hits the ground and snaps in half.
At the base of the tunnel, Helena pulls ahead of us, flinging herself up the stairs and out of sight. By the time we emerge into the chapel, she’s already splashing down the dock, where our gondola was tied off. Another boat is moored beside it.
Helena shoves the gondola off from the dock, burying her pole in the water and riding the current away. As we follow her, there’s a crack like thunder behind us, and a piece of the chapel wall collapses. The dusty wind of it strikes our backs, and we all stagger. The floodwater pitches into waves.
The vibrations of the stones tumbling into the Lagoon are raising ripples around our legs, the deck tipping badly enough that I tip with it, sideways into Percy so that the water soaks me up to my waist. He somehow manages to stay on his feet. Perhaps, I realize, because it’s only me that’s tipping. I am amazed to discover my limbs have almost entirely ceased to function—the only reason I’m still upright seems to be that Percy’s holding me—and my head is feeling strange, like it’s filling up with thick water. My ears are ringing.
Percy hoists me into the boat after Felicity, then gives us a good shove-off from the dock before he leaps in after. The island rumbles again, and a shower of stones scratches at my face as another wall of the chapel goes into the Lagoon.
“Monty.” Percy grabs my shoulder, and I have a sense he’s said my name a few times without a response. He’s leaning over me, his face smeared with soot and dust, and a faint shine left by the alchemical heart. “Monty, talk to me. Say something.”
I raise one hand to the side of my face to find it hot and damp. “I think I’ve been shot.”
“You have not been shot.” Felicity pulls the oars into the boat long enough to peel my fingers away from my head. Her face goes pale, then she presses my hand back where it was. “Fine, you’ve been shot.”
Of course this would be the one time I’m right about my injuries.
“It isn’t bad,” she says, but she sounds as though she’s working so hard to be calm about it that I know she’s lying. That, and I can feel my heartbeat all the way through my skull, which is alarming. It’s like swallowing my pulse. “Keep your hand on it,” Felicity cries as my hand slips. “Tight, Monty. Press it tight.”
Percy grabs my hand and presses both our palms, overtop of each other, to the side of my head. Blood is bubbling up against my palm and running in thin rivulets between my fingers and down my arm. It’s pathetic how dizzy the sight of my own blood makes me. Or perhaps that’s got to do with the fact that it seems to be abandoning me en masse. I’m starting to breathe faster without meaning to. The air is feeling very thin.
Then Felicity shouts, “There they are!”
And through the gray mist, the Eleftheria looms like the silhouette of a cathedral against the sunrise, two catboats chasing lamely behind.
Felicity drops the oars and steers us up against the prow until two ropes unfurl from the deck. She takes one and Percy the other, his hands slick with blood as he ties us off. The ropes turn scarlet between his palms.
“Heave!” comes a shout from above, and the boat jerks upward until we are spat out onto the deck, which is looking more underwater than the chapel.
I’m trying to stay awake, but my head keeps sinking, like I’m dozing. Someone’s pressing something against the side of my face and, holy Mary, it’s really hurting.
The sailors are all clustered around us. Every boot on the planking rattles me to my teeth.
“Christ—”
“—a lot of blood.”
“—on his side.”
“Is he breathing? I don’t think he’s—”
“Let Miss Montague through!” Scipio’s voice roars over them.
“Monty.” Percy is shaking me. It sounds like he’s speaking from the bottom of a well. He’s right beside me, holding me steady on my side. “Monty, look at me. Try to stay awake. Keep your eyes open—come on, darling, look at me. Please.”
He’s got blood all over his shirt, the wet material clinging to his chest. “You’re hurt,” I murmur, raising a hand to pluck at it.
“No, I’m not.”
Oh, so that’s my blood. Fantastic. A pathetic whimper escapes me.
“It’s all right,” he says softly, his other hand twining with mine. “Breathe. You’re going to be fine. Please, breathe.”
And then the next thing I know, I’m flat on my back on the bunk in Scipio’s cabin, the lantern overhead swinging as the ship cants. Percy is on the floor beside me with his legs drawn to his chest, asleep with his forehead against his knees and his hand in mine. The angle of it twists my wrist up, but I don’t move.
My vision is cloudy, and one of my ears is still filled with that metallic ringing. The entirety of my face is throbbing, and when I shift, pain rips through my head and cracks behind my eyes like the gunshot all over again. I cry out without meaning to, and Percy bolts upright. “Monty.”
“Hallo, darling.” My voice is rusty, and the skin along the right side of my face pulls when I speak.
“You’re awake.” He hoists himself into a crouch beside me and touches his thumb to my chin. His voice is muffled, like I’m hearing him with a pillow over my head. If I wasn’t looking straight at him, watching his lips form the words, I couldn’t be certain where they were coming from.
“You look worried,” I murmur.
“Yes, well, that’s your fault, you know.” I laugh weakly, but it turns into rather more of a wince. “I think I was shot.”
“You very nearly were.”
“Very nearly? That’s less harrowing than I hoped.”
I raise my hand—which is heavier than it should be—and touch my head. There’s a tight wrap of bandages all the way around it, and the spot over my ear is damp. “Does it look bad?”
“It . . . doesn’t look very good,” he says carefully. “It’s burned and swollen, but that’ll fade. Though the ear is a bit . . .” He tugs on his own lobe.
“A bit what?”
“Gone. It’s a bit . . . gone.”
“You mean I’ve only got—”
“Don’t touch it.” Percy catches my hand before I can rip the bandages off.
“I’ve only one ear left?”
“Most of it got blown off and the rest was sort of . . . mangled. Felicity took it off cleanly. You’re lucky the powder didn’t wreck your eyes as well.”
“Where is Felicity?”
“She’s fine.”
“No, where is she? I’ll rip her ear off and see how she likes it.”
“I should tell her you’re awake. She’s been going mad over you. Didn’t know Felicity liked you so much until you nearly kicked it.”
“Nothing brings a pair closer than a near-death experience, I suppose.”
Percy rubs his temples. I can tell he’s trying to play this off as casual, though I must have been right bad off if it’s sitting this heavy on him. “When Scipio told us Bourbon had you, and then you were shot—”
“Very nearly shot.”
“Zounds, Monty, what if the last thing we ever did was fight?”