Chapter 19 #2
Across the channel, Aoife crouched on a broken ledge, lean and still as a poised cat, eyes bright in the dim light. Beside her, Caelion rose to his feet, one hand resting near the hilt at his hip, the other shading against the glare that shimmered off the water.
“Why does Uisce want you?” Eamon’s grip was firm as he shook her once—not violently, but enough to force her focus back to him.
The air shifted the moment he touched her.
Charged. The stone beneath her boots began to thrum with a faint, restless vibration, as though something buried deep in the earth had stirred in answer to him.
Their eyes locked.
Wet blond hair clung to his brow and temples, darkened by water. Heat radiated from him despite the cold, turning the droplets at his collar to steam. The mark at his throat burned pale gold, crackling softly—light trapped beneath skin. Elara felt it along her nerves before she understood. Power.
Vast. Impatient. World-bending.
Some buried instinct in her stirred with reverence, then curled tight with fear.
When he spoke, his fangs flashed.
“Answer me.”
She tore her arm from his grip, a shiver running through her. “Nothing,” she said at once. Too quickly.
Eamon’s gaze dropped to her throat, where her pulse leapt wildly beneath the skin. For a moment, he said nothing. Then his eyes lifted again to meet hers. His words from days ago crept back through her mind. I can feel the truth of it in your pulse. Of every word you’ve spoken.
A chill crept up Elara’s spine.
Could he sense her lie?
Reynnar surfaced with a sudden rush, solid and unmistakable at her back.
The presence of him braced something wilted in Elara’s spine, though she didn’t move closer.
She only glanced over her shoulder. His mark glowed faintly, a soft ember that pulsed with each heave of his chest. Beside the blazing gold at Eamon’s throat, it seemed almost dim—like a star fading in the light of the sun.
“What happened?” he asked. But his attention was not truly on her. His eyes were on Eamon.
“Ask her.”
Reynnar looked at Elara for a beat, then turned back to him. “She doesn’t wish to discuss it. Are we finished here?”
Eamon did not move. His eyes remained on her, unblinking. There was no anger in the look, no outward challenge. Only that same unsettling stillness she had come to associate with him—the feeling of being studied by someone who missed very little.
“Aye,” he said, stepping past her. “We’re done.”
The irregular knocking grew louder as they climbed the ledge and continued on—closer to the wheel. The passage arced left, then right, then shouldered down into a pocket where the ceiling sweated and stalactites had begun to bud like teeth, until finally, they came upon the sluice.
The wheel was larger than Elara had expected—a great circle of slow-rotting oak set upright against the stone wall, its rim banded in tarnished metal that smelled faintly of wet coins.
Thick wooden teeth meshed with an iron gear housing at its base, the whole mechanism anchored to a vertical rod that disappeared into a narrow slot cut through the channel’s far wall.
Pressure hammered against it from upstream, sending a constant tremor through the rod and into the wheel, until the whole structure quivered like a muscle held under too much strain.
A wedge had been driven deep between the gears, locking the wheel in place.
Eamon crouched beside the mechanism, water spraying across his boots as he examined the jammed teeth. “I put it there,” he said. “Last time I came through.”
Reynnar shot him a look. “You jammed the gate shut?”
“To keep it from moving under the pressure,” Eamon replied evenly. He braced a hand against the wheel and gave the wedge a testing nudge with his thumb. It did not budge. “Without it, the current would work the gears loose. The gate might shift on its own.”
Water forced its way through the narrow gap beneath the half-lowered gate, flattening into a furious sheet that hissed and hammered the stone for yards downstream.
Eamon glanced toward the wall beside the mechanism. A small pile of rough-cut wooden blocks rested there, darkened by years of spray. He reached down and lifted one, weighing it in his hand. “We’ll pull this one out,” he said. “Then we set a fresh brace when we’re through.”
Caelion stepped closer, studying the gears as the water roared beneath the gate.
Elara crouched beside him, the current battering her shins.
She tested the block with two fingers. “The wedge has swollen sideways as well as upward,” she said, glancing at Caelion.
“If we pry it straight out, it’ll splinter and drive itself deeper.
” Her gaze returned to the wheel, following the point where the gears pressed hardest against the wood.
“We need to draw it down first. Relieve the pressure. Then we tilt it free.”
“Well then,” Aoife dug into her pack and pulled free a coil of rope, “best get to it.”
She set the line and the wooden chock where Eamon directed. Reynnar took the rope and braced himself against the stone, hauling it tight and holding the strain steady. Across from him, Eamon planted both palms against the great wheel, ready to take the pressure the moment the block came free.
Elara crouched low in the spray. She slid her hands beneath the swollen wood and bit back a wince—the fibers were slick, almost fleshy beneath her fingers. A shiver crawled up her arms.
“Now.”
The rope took strain; the chock bit; the wedge resisted; the wheel complained in a single low bark.
Water hammered her thigh. The wedge slid—half a thumb’s width.
Her breath felt loud. “Again,” she ordered, and they did—Reynnar’s shoulders bunching, Caelion easing the angle with his knee—and the wedge lurched free another width, then another, until at last it dropped with an obscene little sigh and the wheel shivered as if relieved.
The wheel lurched before catching again, and water surged through, bursting upward in cold spray that stung her face and salted her mouth.
Then the pressure gave.
The flow steadied. The wheel settled into a slow, obedient turn.
Beyond the gate, the tunnel opened and sloped gently upward. A faint scent drifted down through it—clean and unmistakably human.
Wood steeped in hot water.
Crushed orange peel.
The baths.