Vale closed her eyes. “Yes,” she affirmed. “Yes, down there, deep beneath the earth, is where the heart lies. Stemming from the mountains, as all sources of magic do.”
Then down there was where we had to go.
I searched the walls, but they were smooth. No signs of hand-or-footholds, no ladders or hints of climbing gear. Like one needed damn wings to fly down to the floor and retrieve whatever waited below.
But Ophelia needed that emblem, and if going down there could help her, I’d do it.
As I was looking over the edge of the platform, a groan echoed through the chamber and the floor lurched beneath me.
“What’s that?” I asked.
An earth-shattering creak split the air, the water below shivering.
Then, much like the one that had cracked within my heart at my sister’s melancholy, the dam trapping the flood of magic-spun water burst.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Malakai
Water cracked from every angle.Like somewhere, something had triggered a release of not only that dam, but from the walls above, too. Behind us, waves swept through the corridor, shooting over the ledge and swiping my feet right out from under me.
Mila’s shriek rang out as my stomach tumbled. I took a breath, and we plummeted into the rising spirit river. When my head plunged beneath the surface, all roars of rushing waves and shouts of the others faded.
The weight of my leathers and weapons dragged me down, and pressure pounded on my ears. The water was as cold as the frozen lakes of Mindshaper Territory, spearing right down to my bones.
It was all murky, gray-green down here. Not like a sandy wave crashing on the coasts, but like…
My lungs iced over. I didn’t want to think about the haze in the Hall of Wandering Souls. Couldn’t consider what lived in the source of magic responsible for guiding spirits to their afterlife.
Definitely not while I was submerged within it.
The water churned faster,faster. It flipped me head over heels. I whirled around, trying to find which way was up.
And poking through the noise-dulling pressure on my ears, for a brief moment, music trickled along the current. A much less vicious melody than the burst dam, andmuchmore alluring. Suspended beneath the water, my head and lungs at the point of pain, that drifting song tried to turn me into a cypher in the breeze. It called me to follow the swirling tide wherever it might lead.
In my chest, right above my heart, a bead of an ache shot through, and out of the corner of my eye, a flash of pale hair drifted along the current. I whipped toward it.
And my stomach sank to the depths of the pit.
A plume of crimson clouded the water, and Mila limply floated through the gloom.
The air swept from my lungs—a damn foolish mistake with such precious supply down here—and I blocked out the tempting song, the luring waves.
Shewas my only focus.
Swimming toward her, I gently looped an arm around Mila’s waist and kicked toward the surface, high above and growing higher. Spouts of water poured from the sides, raising the tide all the way to the platform we’d been standing on.
Mystlights pierced the murky water, those mottled orbs growing larger until I was bursting through the surface. My lungs were tight, body aching. I gulped down air like a greedy fucker as I hauled Mila out of the water first. Lyria was there already, carefully gripping her beneath the shoulders and rolling her onto her back so I could pull myself out after her.
“What happened?” Lyria coughed, dripping head to toe. The dam had slowed, no longer an endless flood. “Mila?” she asked, gently turning Mila’s head toward her.
And behind Mila’s ear, a gleaming red gash looked back at me, shining gruesomely in the mystlight. Her silky platinum hair soaked up that blood like a parched plant desperate for life.
“Fuck.” With tired limbs, I dragged myself toward her and ripped off the layers of my leathers to get to my soft undershirt beneath; I hastily tore that off, too, and pressing it to the wound with tender care. It wasn’t as sopping wet as the rest of me, but it was better than nothing. “She must have hit her head when we went under.”
“On the marble?” Lyria gasped. When I nodded, her eyes flooded with worry.
“Hold this,” I told the commander.
