Page 143 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

“Who cares?” Alphonse demanded, glaring at me. “What do you mean, this place goes when she goes? Like the palace?”

“I think . . . the world?”

He stared at me.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask a lot of questions! But it sounded like this whole world dies with her. Like she’s vital for its survival, and it can’t continue without her.”

“Then what the hell are we doing here?” he yelled. “Let’s go!”

“We have to get Enid! Did anyone see her?”

“We’re not going back,” Bodil said, catching up to us. Unlike me, she seemed to be moving fine, and while her voice had a strange, underwater quality, it was perfectly understandable.

“We don’t have to,” Alphonse said. “Those things’ll be on our ass in a second as soon as that plug runs out! We need to go!”

“I did a water ward,” Bodil explained to the rest of us, which I guessed was what that last push had been. “But it won’t hold for long. Or at all if we rupture it from this side.”

“But Enid,” I said, looking around, hoping to spot that flame-red hair in the gloom. But there was nothing, not even any fish. The water was as empty as it was cold and deep, just an endless dark nothingness.

“I didn’t see her and I looked,” Alphonse told me. “I climbed that damned throne trying to spot her, but there was nothing. One of those things probably dragged her off.”

I stared at him, and he looked steadily back. As a vampire, Alphonse had lost many people through the centuries, including the one who meant the most to him. He’d had to learn how to let people go, but I hadn’t. I hadn’t!

“We have to go back!” I told him.

“No.” That was Bodil. “Nor can we stay here arguing about it.”

“You can’t—”

“I can.” It was implacable. “The ring’s power is guttering; it won’t last much longer. Decide if you want to save the world—both of them—or a single girl.”

“The world,” Pritkin said. “She just needs a moment. The disorientation hit her hard.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have one,” Bodil said, catching me around the waist.

And the next thing I knew, we had left the others behind in a rush that would have made a speedboat proud.

“You—let me go!” I said, trying to fight her. But I could still barely move, and it did no more good than it had with Æsubrand. The fey looked tall and willowy, like a good gust of air would blow them over, but it was a lie. They had the strength of high-tensile steel.

And this one was using it.

“No.”

“That’s my ring!”

“Yes, and I will thank you for it when we have time. Right this moment, we must swim—for our lives.”

And I guessed the others agreed because they caught up to us over the next few moments, with Alphonse carrying a still loopy-looking Æsubrand on his back, Pritkin cutting through the water like a blond porpoise, and Bodil swimming as quickly as if she had an outboard motor attached, even when dragging me. And leaving a brave woman behind to face death alone in what was probably the most horrible manner possible.

Thank you for letting me fight.

I felt sick.

Bodil glanced at me, and something shifted in her expression—from an iron-jawed will to. . . I wasn’t sure, but she looked different suddenly. “You’re not like your mother,” she said.

“No. My mother would have found a way to save her.”

An elegant black eyebrow raised. “Your mother wouldn’t have tried,” she said and then twisted her neck around.

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