Page 146 of The Mask Falling

“Putain d’imbécile. Espèce d’enfoiré—” I thrashed against him. “They neededus. You thought we were here to rescue our friends and no one else? What kind of cold-hearted bastard are you, Léandre?”

“I made the call. I told you. Here,” he said through his teeth, spit flecking my face, “I am king.”

White-hot fury burned through my mind, erasing all caution, all restraint. I belted my spirit right across his dreamscape, sending him reeling away from me with a roar of surprised anger.

My vision crackled. He lashed out and clipped my cheek with his knuckledusters—by accident or on purpose, I had no idea, but I shoved him in return and lunged for the ladder again. When he ripped me back down, we both hit the ground in a turmoil of fists and teeth and boots. I rolled over and bashed a knee between his legs, but he kept hold of me, trying to drag me away from the ladder, the voyants, the promise I had made them.

He slammed me back into the wall. Hands around my wrists. My back arched and my chest bucked, and then I was a trapped animal, a savage bear, and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, had to tear myself free. My skull thudded into his, hard enough to rattle my teeth and make him bellow in pain. Blood poured down his chin. As we grappled wildly for the upper hand, I heard it. Felt it.

Movement. In the air, in the ground. Somewhere in the dark, a breaking-away. A change. A crumbling. A wrongness. Léandre stiffened, his nostrils flaring.

First came the roar. In the distance, then not in the distance. And then came the water.

Awaveof water.

All at once, it was everywhere. Erupting through cracks in the right wall of the tunnel. Pouring from above us. The sound and taste of it moved my legs before my mind had fully grasped the danger. As fear electrified my bones, my nerves, it also shut my throat.

Flood.

Adrenaline booted me in the gut. In unison with Léandre, I ran.

Water soaked my hair and clothes as we pelted down the Passage des Voleurs. It was behind us, around us, blinding me. Through the fog of sheer terror that blurred my thoughts, I remembered what Renelde had said. That the water in these tunnels must come from an underground spring or lake. (A lake. It had to be. Anentirelakewas coming in.) Reaching the top of Apollyon was our only chance. I screamed a warning down the golden cord:Flood. The tunnel is flooding. Run!

In return, a chilling tremor.

Ahead of us, Ankou had thrown La Tarasque over his shoulder and reached the top of the steep incline that led back to Apollyon. I thought of the plaque Léandre had carved, the words that would soon be underwater, along with the entire Passage des Voleurs.

Léandre reached the slope and scrambled up it, his hands and boots slithering. We were going to drown here. All of us. Bloated and dead. The knowledge paralyzed me.

Léandre looked back, face dripping. He was almost at the top. I was at the bottom, frozen stiff. “Paige,” he shouted, and started to slide back down. I could only stare up at him. “Marcherêve, give me your hand—”

Too late. A devastating wave smashed me off my feet, sweeping me into the abyss.

****

When I was a child, my grandparents took me once a year to Lough Béal Sead, a jewel in a necklace of blue lakes in the Galtees. We would hike to it from the little village of Ros an Droichid. The first time, I was four years old, and my grandfather carried me most of the way.

We had gone late in the autumn, before the frost could really set in. The gorge was often cloaked in cloud, the lake so cold it burned, but for Mamó, swimming in it it was a ritual. Each time she emerged ruddy-cheeked and weak, and she had to huddle in front of the fire for days before her bones warmed up again, but it fortified her in a way I knew I might never understand.

That first year, I had watched with unease as she struck out into the fog. My grandfather was left to keep an eye on me, but there had been a difficult calving the day before, and he dozed off. Curious and worried, I had walked to the edge of the mist-covered lake and waited for Mamó to return. And when there was no sign of her, I decided to find her myself.

I jumped.

All I had was a proto-aura then. No power yet to let my spirit wander. But the water awakened an instinct that had slumbered within me, waiting for the right time to emerge. I remember being fascinated by the pale twists of my hair, the way they fanned out in front of me. How I became weightless. How, even as I sank, I was unanchored from the earth.

And how that feeling was addictive.

How it freed me.

I had been smiling when Daideó pulled me out, white as ice and shivering. I hadn’t realized at all—not once—that in the water, I was dying.

****

I was alone. And blind.

A trickling nearby. The waterboard. My eyes flew open. I needed to get away from it—thatsound, the smell, it soaked me in gooseflesh—but I was afraid to move, afraid to know how badly I was hurt.

My mouth was dry as ashes. I tried moving my fingers and toes. They worked.

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