Page 56 of The Dead Saint

Without the sweet water, would she make it to the surface? Did she have enough strength in her legs? Enough oxygen in her screaming lungs? She wanted fresh air and sunshine, to leave the water behind and never return. She wanted the shore. She wanted Adrian.

The darkness seemed endless. Sorcha would never make it out—never leave. The sun would never rise again, the stars all winked out of the sky. It crushed her, compacting her bones and wearing her down until nothing but fear remained. A small inner voice began to whisper, drowning out the one below it, further down. This one was a shade of her own, controlling, tempting, offering.

This could be all over. You could stop here—in this place—now. You can make this choice for yourself, the only one you can. What would it matter? Die now or later? Die on your own terms or at another’s choosing? That’s what you believe is going to happen, don’t you? That’s what you’ve admitted to yourself up there in the sun.

Stop now.

Sorcha followed the wall, fighting against the voice, screaming to silence what was becoming a forest fire in her mind. She kept fighting forward, knowing that at any moment, she would no longer have the strength.

Spots appeared before her eyes, vision blurring. But through the blur, a glow appeared. Her eyes were playing tricks on her, the dark spots in her vision fading, the light expanding in the water to engulf her. With a shock, she realized an eel was ahead, the one that had swam past her earlier.

The creature moved languidly, not noticing or caring she was behind it, gliding through the water. And its tail was within grasping range. She didn’t think twice. Refused to second-guess herself. Closing the distance between them, she grasped the eel by the tail with both hands, locking her grip and gritting her teeth.

The eel jerked and twisted in surprise. It flicked its tail, trying to dislodge the annoyance, but she held on tight. She could not let go now. She would never reach the surface if she did. The eel wriggled forward, building up speed, dragging her behind it. It bounced off the walls, Sorcha hitting one and then another, bruises building and beginning to ache.

There was no way to know which direction the eel was moving. She had no idea if it would take her farther into the maze or out. She hoped it would be out, out into the high-domed room, out beyond the doors where she could fight her way to the surface. But the walls all looked the same, the intersections unfamiliar.

She had not prayed to the Saint since her city had been razed to the ground. She had not prayed to him since she’d seen her family kill themselves—slit wrists and throats, blood pooling beneath their cooling bodies. She had watched them one by one, blood flowing over the altar, soaking into the hem of her dress. No prayers, no pleas, her heart silent even as she’d placed her hands on the relics in the Traveling City.

Now, she prayed. She begged that the Saint would carry her through this. She prayed the eel would take her in the direction she needed to go, through the darkness and into the light, into the room with the wriggling, writhing knot of eels, until she could go up and up and pull air into her lungs.

Please, she asked, repeating it. Please.

There was nothing else she could add—nothing more important. It was nothing like the formal chants, nothing like the words she’d memorized from the scriptures. Not organized or filled with piety and reverence. The word was raw, torn from the ache expanding at the center of her being, coming from the hollowness of her bones.

Please, please, please.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the way the single word flowed through her mind and body. One word would have to be enough. When she opened her eyes, the eel was dragging her into the huge domed room, swimming through the open double doors of the building and out onto the boulevard covered in waving water plants.

Pain throbbed in her throat and lungs, every muscle aching. The eel twisted, spun in a circle, thrashing until Sorcha released it. She hung for a moment in the water plants, suspended within the drowned city, aching and dying by the second.

Then she remembered to kick toward the surface.

Chapter Sixteen

The water around her was dim, and when she broke through the lake’s surface, thunder crashed through the sky, vibrating in her eardrums and lodging in her teeth. Lightning raced after it, rain pelting down, hitting her face. It blurred her vision and drove her back down. She coughed and gasped, thrashing, drawing on whatever strength was left to turn and find the shore.

Sorcha tried to gauge where she’d surfaced, finally figuring out the lakeshore was behind her. It was a few hundred yards away, and there, waiting on the rocks, was Adrian. His posture changed when he spotted her, but she couldn’t see his face clearly. Briefly, she wondered if there would be relief there. Lacus said Adrian had called for her like a lover. But what did monsters know of love?

As she swam, the wind picked up to whistle in her ears, howling and cold, pushing waves toward the shore. She struggled and fought to keep moving, the fatigue in her muscles intensifying. If she stopped, she’d never make it.

The storm churned overhead, dark clouds gathering and settling low over the water as more rain fell. Thunder rumbled, shivering through the water.

Reaching the shore was the only thing that mattered. The rest she could worry about after solid ground was beneath her feet. A shout caught her attention—her name or a word, she couldn’t be sure—and Adrian waded out into the water to meet her. Something that might have been anxiousness colored his features, and her heart leaped, pushing her forward.

“Sorcha,” Adrian spoke gently. “You’re safe.”

Adrian pulled her out of the water, arms so tight around her it hurt—his hands large and warm on her body. Sorcha clung to him, pressing her face into his neck and concentrating on how solid he was. Safe. He felt safe after everything that had happened beneath the surface of the lake. For a heart-stopping second, his mouth brushed her cheek as if he might press a kiss to her wet skin, but he didn’t. Without saying anything else, he carried her through the shallows and up the rocky shore. The rain ceased as soon as they left the water, but the thunder continued to rumble, rocking across the sky.

Sorcha pulled out of Adrian’s grasp as they reached the grass, landing on her hands and knees. She coughed up more water, trying to catch her breath and working to ignore the way every muscle in her body screamed with exhaustion, the way it pounded behind her eyes as a headache slammed into her.

The feeling of failure broke over her, a drowning force as powerful as the pull of the water. She’d been unable to reach the relic, and there was no way they could continue without it. She’d have to go back and convince Lacus to change his mind. But he’d already refused to help, so how would he react if she returned?

Wrapping her arms around herself, shivering with fatigue, Sorcha closed her eyes. Scents of late fall filled her lungs—pine trees and dead leaves—winter creeping farther south and closer every day. Her skin prickled with it, gooseflesh rising along her arms and legs, jaw clenched in an effort to keep her teeth from chattering. She’d almost drowned down there in the dark, lost in a sunken city with no way out, and then dragged to freedom by an eel. The terror of it sang through her body, a high, bright chord that thrummed in her muscles.

I could have died down there. I almost did.

She’d been so close, her desire to find the relic and resurrect the Saint at war with the building fear of what that meant. The Empire of the White Snake wanted him, the priests and priestesses were waiting somewhere in death to be recalled, and Sorcha had yet to truly accept what any of that meant.

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