25. Arthur
ARTHUR
The floor gave way without ceremony.
One moment we were standing there, triumphant, breathless, and alive with the rush of having survived something ancient and merciless. The next, the stone beneath my feet vanished and the world dropped out from under us.
We fell.
There was no light. No warning. Just the sensation of weightlessness tearing my stomach upward as the air rushed past. Someone screamed. It might have been Hadrian. It might have been Artemis. It might have been me.
I reached blindly and found her hand.
I pulled her to me hard enough that she collided with my chest, my arms locking around her instinctively, my wings screaming to unfurl even though there was nowhere for them to go.
“Arthur,” her thought flared, bright and terrified.
“I’ve got you,” I sent back, forcing calm I did not feel. The darkness pressed in on all sides, thick and endless, the fall stretching far longer than physics said it should.
My heart pounded so violently it hurt.
“If this is it,” I told her, the truth breaking loose before I could stop it, “you should know that I love you.”
The words felt like a confession and a surrender all at once. No strategy. No restraint. Just honesty hurled into the dark.
Her arms tightened around me.
“Arthur, where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay.” The words rang through me with absolute clarity, fierce and unafraid. “Your people will be my people. Your life, my life.”
Even through her mind, her voice broke. “I don’t know what this means yet. But whatever this is… it matters to me.”
The impact came immediately after, violent and shocking.
Cold water swallowed us whole.
The fall ended in a crushing splash that knocked the breath from my lungs. We plunged deep, momentum dragging us down into blackness so complete it erased direction. Water burned my nose and throat as I fought to orient us, one arm locked around Artemis, the other clawing upward on instinct alone.
I kicked hard, pulling us toward where I thought the surface should be. My chest screamed for oxygen. Panic clawed at the edges of my control, sharp and animal.
Then we broke through.
Gasping, I hauled Artemis up with me as we burst into open air beneath a cavern ceiling that loomed impossibly high above. Water rippled outward from us in wide, echoing rings.
I swam to the nearest stretch of stone and half-lifted, half-dragged Artemis out of the water before pulling myself up beside her. She collapsed against the rock, soaked and shaking, hair plastered to her face.
“You’re alive,” I said, the words coming out rough.
She huffed weakly. “I noticed.”
Relief hit me so hard my knees nearly gave out.
The cavern revealed itself slowly as my vision adjusted. A vast chamber carved smooth by time and water, the pool at its center fed by multiple channels pouring in from the walls. The sound of running water echoed constantly, growing louder by the second.
Too loud.
I followed the flow with my eyes and felt my stomach drop.
The water level was rising.
“Arthur,” Artemis said, already pushing herself upright despite her trembling hands. “That’s not good.”
“No,” I agreed.
The exits were high. Too high to reach as the water climbed. The stone around the pool was slick and offered no purchase.
Hadrian stood across from us, soaked and furious. He had no one left to command, no one left to sacrifice but himself. And us.
We were trapped. The chamber wasn’t trying to crush us. It wasn’t trying to stab us or burn us.
It was going to drown us.
I turned to Artemis, a fear I hadn’t felt before threading through my ribs. She was staring past the water, past the rising line creeping up the walls.
At the carvings.
They ringed the ceiling of the chamber in orderly bands, symbols etched into stone in neat, repeating columns.
I saw the moment it clicked.
Her whole posture shifted. The fear didn’t leave her, but it reorganized itself around focus so sharp it was almost luminous.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh no. I know this.”
“What,” I asked, moving closer as the water lapped at my boots.
Her eyes darted across the walls, tracking patterns faster than I could follow. “It’s a system,” she said, voice quickening. “A glossary. Cross-referenced. Not alphabetical, but conceptual. Broad categories narrowing into specifics.”
My heart thudded. “Artemis.”
She turned to me, soaked and shaking, but utterly brilliant. “It’s like the Dewey decimal system,” she said, almost laughing despite everything. “Not the same structure, but the same logic. Knowledge organized to be found under pressure.”
Of course it was.
Across the cavern, Hadrian had collapsed against the wall. He sat hunched in the rising water, arms locked around his knees, shaking hard enough that his teeth clicked. The great “alpha” who had brought us here looked very small now. Very human.
I didn’t spare him another glance.
The water surged higher, cold and relentless.
I took her hands, grounding us both. “Tell me what to do.”
As the cavern filled and the ancient system waited to be understood, all I could think was that I trusted her more completely than I had ever trusted anyone in my life.
If anyone could read Atlantis while it tried to kill us, it was her.
The water was already at my chest.
Cold pressed in from every side, stealing heat, stealing time. Each rise felt faster than the last, like the chamber itself had decided it was done waiting for us to understand it.
Artemis was still moving.
That alone kept me upright.
The symbols ringed the ceiling in a wide, unbroken band, painted in faded mineral tones that glimmered when the water sloshed high enough to catch the light. They repeated in a sequence that was almost musical. Patterns nested inside patterns.
She was treading water beside the central hub now, fingers skimming the spokes that radiated outward like the bones of a wheel. One was painted gold, the rest were obsidian black, slick and dull. The water was rising rapidly.
Her lips moved as she worked, counting under her breath. I recognized the cadence. The way her mind latched on when something finally made sense.
My lungs burned.
Her gaze flicked to the ceiling, then to Hadrian.
He floated near the wall, barely moving, eyes unfocused. The water had lifted him off the stone ledge and he didn’t seem to notice. Shock had finally claimed him. The great architect of this disaster, reduced to a breathing obstacle.
She swam toward him without hesitation.
“Hadrian,” she said, gripping his shoulders. He didn’t respond.
The water surged higher, slapping against my chin, growing incredibly close to the ceiling.
“Hadrian,” she snapped again, shaking him hard enough to send ripples across the pool. “What is the Atlantean symbol for air?”
Nothing.
I kicked toward them, panic tightening my ribs. “We are running out of time.”
She slapped his cheek.
Hard.
He startled, coughing, eyes snapping back into focus. Rage flickered there, then fear, then confusion.
“Air,” she said again, relentless. “Point to it.”
His hand lifted, trembling, and jabbed upward toward the ceiling. One glyph stood out now that I was looking for it. Curved lines intersected like flowing currents, lighter than the others, and repeated at exact intervals.
She didn’t thank him.
She released him and turned immediately, swimming for the hub at the center of the chamber. I went with her, my hand closing around her wrist, anchoring us together as the water surged and bucked.
The golden spoke gleamed dully beneath the surface.
She reached it first, fingers locking around the metal. The water was above her neck now.
“Arthur,” she said, calm in a way that made my chest ache. “We have to do this underwater.”
I nodded, then we both dived under water.
The world narrowed to pressure and dim light and the sound of my own pulse roaring in my ears. I wrapped my hands over hers on the spoke. The metal was slick and unyielding. It resisted us like it had resisted centuries of erosion.
We pushed.
My lungs burned almost immediately. My vision edged with black. Above us, the ceiling felt impossibly close, the last pocket of air already gone.
She adjusted the angle by a fraction, precise even now, even here. Her eyes met mine, steady, apologetic, and fierce.
“There,” she mouthed. “Now.”
We heaved together.
The spoke shifted, then clicked.
We had no air left.
I pulled her into my arms as the last of my breath fled, pressing my forehead to hers. Her hands fisted in my shirt. We held each other, suspended in the water, waiting to see whether we had guessed correctly—or whether Atlantis would finish what it started.
I couldn’t tell if tears were leaking out of me or if it was just the water my face was submerged in, but everything inside me was breaking loose at once.
My lungs screamed.
Then the chamber answered. A deep, resonant groan rolled through the stone, vibrating through my bones like the world itself had finally taken a breath. The pressure changed instantly as the water surged away from us with violent force.
Light split the darkness.
A seam tore open in the wall opposite the hub, and the water rushed toward it, dragging us along. I kicked hard, keeping my grip on her, and we burst through the opening together just as the current released us.
We spilled onto solid ground in a tangle of limbs, gasping as water roared past us before vanishing into unseen channels. The floor steamed faintly as the chamber drained.
Lungs burning, heart hammering, I rolled onto my side. Artemis’s eyes met mine, wide and shining, and she laughed breathlessly.
Without thinking, I pulled her against me, holding her like the stone might still try to take her back.
We had been seconds from drowning.
Instead, we were here. Together. We were alive.
“You did it,” I croaked.
She blinked at me, eyes bright with adrenaline and something deeper. “We did.”
I had been prepared to drown. Instead, I had followed her and lived.
And in that moment, soaked and shaking and utterly undone, I knew with terrifying clarity that there was no version of the future where I walked away from her.
I had just enough time to register that we were still breathing before I heard a wet, hacking cough.
It cut through the ringing in my ears like a blade.
I lifted my head, muscles screaming, water still dripping from my hair, and saw Hadrian pushing himself upright at the edge of the chamber. He was a wreck, soaked robes clinging to him, hair plastered back, hands shaking as he braced himself against the stone.
I had momentarily forgotten about him.
Artemis shifted beside me, still half-curled against my chest, and I tightened my arm around her automatically. My body moved before my mind did. Protect. Shield. Place myself between her and whatever came next.
Hadrian didn’t look at us.
He looked past us, toward the center of the chamber, then began to speak.
The language was wrong. Old, yes, but more than that. It scraped against the inside of my skull like something alive. Each syllable dragged the air tighter, heavier, until my scales prickled beneath my skin and the stone beneath us began to hum.
“No,” I said hoarsely, trying to force myself upright. “Hadrian. Stop.”
He didn’t hear me.
Or he did and didn’t care.
The water that had drained moments before began to creep back toward the center, flowing uphill, pulled by something unseen. The torches along the walls guttered and dimmed. Shadows stretched in impossible directions.
Chains burst up from the stone floor with a shriek of tortured metal, blackened and ancient, glowing faintly with runes I recognized from the journal. Binding glyphs. Old ones. Desperate ones.
And between them—
The entity did not rise so much as force itself into existence, like reality had been peeled back and it was clawing through the wound.
Jaws unfolded first. Too many jaws. Layered and snapping, each ring lined with teeth that glistened like wet obsidian.
Its body was vast but ill-defined, a mass of shadow, muscle, and writhing appendages that never quite settled into one shape.
Eyes opened across it in a slow, awful bloom.
Every one of them fixed on Hadrian.
It was chained. Thank the gods.
The chains bit deep into whatever passed for flesh. They strained and groaned as the thing surged forward, radiating hunger so sharp it made my vision blur.
Malevolence rolled off it in waves.
Hadrian smiled.
“My bloodline,” he said, voice trembling with awe and desperation. “Restore what was taken from us. Give me what was promised—”
I launched myself across the chamber and hit him full force, driving him away from the summoning circle and into the far wall. Stone cracked under the impact. He gasped, shock flashing across his face as he scrambled to defend himself.
“You don’t get to do this,” I snarled, shifting mid-stride, claws tearing free, wings flaring wide in the confined space.
He recovered quickly. My thoughts were spiraling. So this… this monster is what he wanted to bind our clan’s magic to? This was how he sought to restore our power?
Hadrian’s additional combat experience showed itself in every movement. He blocked, countered, twisted away from my strikes with brutal efficiency. We collided again and again, talons and fists and wings slamming into stone, the chamber shaking with each blow.
Behind us, the entity roared, and the sound rattled through my bones.
Hadrian drove his claws into my ribs, and I staggered, white-hot pain flaring through me. He followed immediately, slamming me to the ground and pinning me under his weight.
Something inside me snapped.
I surged upward, throwing him off, claws raking across his chest as I rose to my full height. Fire burned low in my throat, restrained only by the fact that Artemis was still in the room behind me.
I would not risk her.
We crashed together again, trading blows that would have shattered lesser beings. He was winning. I could feel it. Each movement cost me more than it cost him. Each mistake weighed heavier.
But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. My people needed this to end. Artemis needed this to end.
I dug deeper than my training went. Deeper than my pride went. I dug into the place where duty and love braided together until there was no separating them.
I wasn’t doing this for power. I was doing this so no one else ever had to stand where I was standing.
Hadrian lunged.
I met him head-on.
We collided in a brutal clash that sent us skidding across the stone, the chains behind us screaming as the entity strained against them.
I rose first.
Blood dripped from my jaw. My muscles shook. My vision swam.
But I was still standing.