Chapter Fifteen
“Ina!” Derran’s whisper cracked with alarm.
Karai made a sound under his breath that might have been her name and might have been a curse. Then both of them plunged after her.
The drop was not as long as it first seemed. Or perhaps panic shortened it. Ina spread her wings and caught the air before the fall became a true descent into some inescapable pond. She hovered, then beat upward once to steady herself.
The cavern below opened around them as they came down into it, far wider than the tunnel had suggested.
Her light reached farther here. It spread out over the blackness beneath them and showed the vast sheet of water below. Not still water either. The surface moved in long, low folds, slow as breathing.
Derran came level with her on one side, Karai on the other.
Then the water changed.
It began to rise, swelling upward in great bubbling masses, piling against itself. The surface broke and churned. In the same instant, with a grinding sound overhead, the opening they had fallen through slammed shut.
They were trapped.
The water below thrust higher still, and out of it came an enormous stone head.
It rose until it towered above them, carved from gray rock and wet with black sheen from the water.
Its face was old and severe and not fashioned to look wholly fairy or wholly anything else.
Cavern water streamed from the ridges of its brow and chin.
When it spoke, the voice seemed to sound not only in the air but inside their skulls.
“Answer me these questions three, or be drowned here in the sea.”
Ina stared.
Beside her, Derran muttered, “I hate this already.”
The water kept climbing. The stone head did not wait for agreement. “What may hold both water and air, and an empty hand alike?”
Derran whispered slowly, “A cup?”
Karai gave the smallest shake of his head. Then, louder, in a clear voice meant for the thing in front of them, he said, “Another hand.”
The stone head gave no sign whether the answer pleased it. The water still rose.
“What beats without bleeding?”
Not a heart, thought Ina, with a grim little flash of irony.
This time Derran answered instantly. “Wings.”
Still the stone head did not react. The water came up around its own neck now, and the three of them had to drift higher toward the ceiling to keep ahead of it.
The last question came while the water lapped close beneath their boots. “What may hurt as well as heal, and lingers even in emptiness?”
Derran was silent.
Karai was silent too.
Ina’s eyes darted between them.
The water reached their feet. Then their ankles. The ceiling above left them little room to climb farther. They hovered in a cramped huddle near the top of the chamber while below them the stone head sank almost entirely from sight until only its eyes remained above the waterline.
The water touched Ina’s knees.
She looked at Derran. At Karai. At the dark water rising over all three of them.
Then, the answer striking her so suddenly she nearly smacked herself for not knowing it instantly, she said, “Love.”
The water stopped.
No more rising. No more bubbling. No more black waves lapping at their waists.
In the same breath it began to drain away, dropping with astonishing speed back into the depth from which it had come. The stone head emerged again, its expression no more or less readable than before.
“Answered now the questions three,” it said, “you may ask your question of me.”
They breathed a unified sigh of relief and did not answer at once. Instead they flew down a little, gathered close, and whispered.
“What do we ask?” Derran said.
“The necklace,” said Ina.
“The center diamond,” Derran nodded. “That’s what really matters.”
“We ask where it is,” Ina agreed. “Plainly.”
Karai nodded too and turned toward the head. “Where is the diamond with Lugomir’s heart inside?”
The stone head was silent.
Too silent.
Long enough that Ina glanced sharply at the others. Derran’s face had gone tight. Karai’s hand had drifted, almost without his knowing it, toward the mouth of his velvet bag.
At last the stone head spoke.
“A broken stone on ocean floor.
A beauty rests upon the shore.
Cruelty then and vengeance now.
And a master to which she bows.”
The words hung in the cavern.
The head sank beneath the water and was gone.
The ceiling above them crashed back open so suddenly that loose grit rained down around their wings.
And Karai let out a string of curses like they’d never heard before, the mildness in him extinguished. He bolted upward before they could blink.
Derran and Ina followed, both too startled to do anything but keep pace.
They burst back into the tunnel and raced toward the entrance without stopping.
The snakes below had scarcely begun to stir again when Karai, still flying at full speed, ripped three of the fire charges from his bag and hurled them downward into the pit.
The explosions came almost on top of one another.
Fire and stone fragments blew up well beneath the bridge ruins before the snake heads could rise.
The shrieking that answered them was enough to clear the way.
They shot across the entrance chamber and out through the mountain door with no need for further battle.
Thin mountain air hit Ina’s face like cold water.
Karai did not slow. He flew straight out from the ledge and away down the mountainside with such speed that for a few heartbeats Ina thought he had lost his senses altogether.
“Karai!” she shouted.
He did not look back.
Derran swore once, then dove after him and hit him from the side, hard enough to send them tumbling toward the ground until he forced them both back up.
Karai fought him for a brief instant, furious and wild in a way Ina had never seen. Then, as abruptly as it had broken, his control returned. Not peace. Only control.
He took a heavy breath and stopped struggling.
Derran still held his arm. “What is going on?”
Karai’s breathing was uneven, though his voice was not when it came. “She’s free.”
Ina felt the cold slice into her bones. “Who?”
“The fairy,” he replied heavily. “The one with the mirage magic.”
He looked from one of them to the other, and in his face there was something raw under the composure.
“She was trapped in stone in the ocean. The monolith told us. ‘A broken stone on ocean floor, a beauty rests upon the shore.’ Cruelty, vengeance, all of it. It’s her. It means her.”
Derran’s grip loosened.
Ina’s voice came faintly, “You’re sure?”
“Yes. But I want to see it for myself anyway.”
He did not need to say more. The certainty in him had none of his usual measured quality. It was the kind made from memory and dread and knowledge he had hoped never to need again.
Karai pulled free, not roughly now, only with urgency. Then he turned and flew.
Toward the west.
Toward the ocean.
Derran and Ina followed silently. Neither of them asked him to explain further while the mountains rushed beneath them and the day opened ahead, hard and bright and too quickly moving toward whatever waited on the shore
.
---
Karai did not slow when the mountains gave way to salt wind.
He flew straight out over the ocean with the same hard purpose that had carried him from the cavern.
The shoreline dropped behind them. Rock and grass gave way to open water, gray-blue under the day’s light, the surface broken only by long rolling swells and the white slash of distant foam where reefs waited below.
Ina kept pace beside Derran, and neither of them tried again to stop Karai, even when he nearly lost them in a low cloud. Whatever held him now was stronger than argument.
They had gone only a few minutes over the water when he angled suddenly away, found some point below that only he seemed able to recognize, and dove. He vanished into the ocean, dark water closing over him without ceremony.
Ina and Derran pulled up and hovered above the spot.
For a time there was nothing to see but the churn of the surface and the shadows shifting under it where light failed. Ina watched so intently that her eyes began to ache. Beside her, Derran said nothing at all.
At last Karai broke the surface.
He came up sharply, drawing breath, hair slicked to his face and shoulders, water running from his wings in hard bright lines. He did not look at them. He only took another deep breath and dove again.
Ina’s stomach tightened.
The second wait felt longer than the first. She counted without meaning to. Lost count. Began again. The sea below looked blank in the way large things do when hiding smaller ones.
Then Karai rose again, but this time he did not remain in the water. He flew upward and came to them, breathing hard, water still streaming from him.
“It’s not there anymore,” he said between breaths. His voice was quiet. Too quiet. All the more for what sat under it.
“What’s not?” Ina asked, though she knew already.
“The stone prison.” He pushed wet hair back from his face with one hand. “I checked twice. It’s... gone.”
The three of them hung there above the sea, the wind catching at their clothes and wings.
Ina stared at him. “What do we do?”
Karai shook his head once. It was not helplessness exactly, but it came close enough to frighten her. “It’s been two hundred years. What she wanted then… well, if the stone head is right, it’s not all she wants now. I don’t even know where to begin.”
Derran took hold of the moment before it could deepen into that kind of uncertainty. “We go back,” he said. “As fast as we can. To our courts. We warn them that something is moving in the kingdom and that every eye is to stay open.”
Karai nodded. The dismay in him steadied into purpose. “Yes.”
Ina nodded too. “You two go to your courts. I’ll go to the canopy and marsh courts and warn them.” She looked at Karai. “What’s her name?”
He waved off the question. “She had many names. Astra, Callay, Meridon. And many shapes too. She could have any name and any shape now. The important thing is watching for what seems out of place. Like a missing diamond necklace.”
Ina sighed. “Helpful.”
Karai looked at her. “Will you tell Lugo about the necklace? And the note?”
She shook her head. “Not until I can speak with Jassie. Maybe she’ll remember something else odd.” She paused a moment. “Did anyone tell you what attacked us? On the way to the canopy court?”
Derran and Karai exchanged a glance. Derran answered, “Not with any clarity. You and Jassie were both asleep, and Shayna was too distracted by the state of her princess for conversation.”
“Mirage beasts, I think. They had no real shape, just wings and teeth and claws all jumbled together.”
“She was already free then,” Karai breathed, the dismay creeping back into his voice.
“And she knew where to attack,” Derran said, realizing the deeper meaning at once.
Ina nodded. “If she knew that, then she must’ve been watching Jassie somehow. Lugo too. Taking the shape of someone in the marsh court.”
“Then it’s too dangerous for you there,” Derran cut in. “I’ll go.”
“No.” Ina raised a hand to stop his protests.
“It means we can’t speak freely in front of anyone there, not even Lugo. What if he’s already dead and the mirage fairy is taking his form?”
She shook her head once, hoping she hadn’t spoken some truth into existence.
“I have to speak with Jassie alone.” She looked between them.
“It has to be me. One of you asking for an audience with her alone, without Lugo, will be… noticeable. Too noticeable, to whoever is watching.”
Neither prince argued with that. Whether they agreed on proper court etiquette or merely saw there was no time to dispute her plan, she could not tell.
For a brief moment none of them moved.
Then Ina went to Karai first and put her arms around him. He was still damp from the sea, still cold through his armor, but he held her tightly enough to show how badly he needed the contact.
“This is not your fault,” she whispered. “Do not blame yourself.”
He nodded against her hair. She felt the motion more than saw it. Comfort reached him, but only partly. Doubt remained, as stubborn as grief.
When she stepped back, she turned to Derran and held him too.
He drew her in, his embrace warmer and more controlled, though she could feel the strain in him as well.
Not panic. Not even fear in the simplest sense.
The strain of a prince already making lists in his head of what must be done next and what might happen if it were not done quickly enough.
When they let each other go, Derran and Karai exchanged one short nod. There was apology in it. New respect, too. And some other unspoken promise.
Then they broke apart. Within moments all three of them were flying in different directions beneath the same hard sky, carrying the weight of warnings and secrets that could not be kept much longer.