Chapter 43 Elena
ELENA
There are no records of what resides in the pit. There are no photos, no scans, no logical explanations for the things we have seen. But it is there. Whatever it is, it waits in hunger.
—from The Legends and Myths of Sayon
The roar of the men had not yet faded when the lights shuddered and the sea moaned. Elena froze. The low moan quickly churned into the growl of a storm. A gale whipped across the deck, and Elena barely had time to grab for a railing when the ship suddenly heaved to the side.
Soldiers slipped, yelling. Rain slashed them with vicious white teeth, and the waves ripped forward, snapping at the railings.
“To your stations, now!” Daz shouted.
Shapes, shooting in the dark. It took her a moment to realize it was the Yumi, their hair piercing into the deck and gaining purchase. Out of the corner of her eye, Elena saw the dark mass of their second ship. Agni. They needed to summon their Agni and guide the ships—
“Incoming!” someone yelled.
She turned to see a black wave unhinge its mighty jaw before it swallowed the deck. The ship dropped like a stone. She was flung into the air, the sea and the sky spinning into one black blur—and then she slammed down.
White-hot pain razored through her shoulder. Elena groaned, trying to stand.
“Get up!” Jaya cried.
She grasped Elena’s arm, pulling her to her feet.
Something hard pressed into her palm. Elena saw the glint of the metal lotus as Jaya passed it into her hand, shouting something about using the sand as a shield, when the ship heaved and Elena was thrown to the side. She twisted, clutching the lotus.
“Jaya!”
But the ship bucked wildly, and she was flung against the railing. Elena scrambled for a hold, calling out for Jaya, for Daz, when a wave pushed her overboard and she spun, flailing, the sea swelling forward to swallow her whole.
She screamed.
A hand suddenly grabbed her by the elbow, and Elena gasped, pain ripping down her side. Below, the waves frothed at her dangling feet. Samson leaned over the railing, his knuckles white around her arm, and she was struck by the delayed thought that Samson—cunning, selfish, monstrous—had saved her.
“Hold on!”
She grabbed his arm with her other hand, and Samson pulled her up and over until they both toppled back onto the deck.
She landed on top of him, shuddering. They lay still for a moment, breathing hard, the rain pelting their skin.
She was overcome by a breathless sensation, the sudden exhausted euphoria of finding oneself impossibly alive when they should be dead.
It was only later that she noticed the warmth of his skin.
The thunderous rattle of his heart, beating against her chest. Samson looked up into her eyes with an odd, wondrous look, and he seemed about to say something, when her stomach twisted.
“I think—” she began.
She hurled herself over, vomiting violently.
“It’s okay, you’re okay.” Samson rubbed her back, his voice gentle, soothing. “You’re okay.”
Elena wiped her lips with trembling fingers. Distantly, she could hear shouts. She tried to rise but her knees wobbled, and she crashed back down, hissing in pain.
“Easy, easy,” Samson said. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, his body warm and comforting, his voice a low pull. “I got you.”
Blearily, Elena looked up at him. His wet hair stuck to his face and his lips were thin and pale, but his eyes were vivid and bright, his voice strong as he held her, and for a moment, Elena forgot her pain, her fear, clutching him as he whispered in her ear and rubbed her back until the shuddering passed and she felt like she could rise again.
“Can you stand?”
She nodded, and Samson helped her up. Wind whipped their faces as the storm grew in its rage. Elena could barely see the bow up ahead.
“We need to get up there and summon our Agni,” he said.
The ship tilted, and they instinctively grabbed the railing. Samson locked his arm over hers, and they held on for dear life as the waves tossed them as if they were a toy in the hands of a child.
“We can’t make it!” she shouted.
“We can! Just hold on to me!” He wrapped himself around so that her back pressed into his torso, his hands braced on both sides of her body, shielding her. His warm breath tickled her ear. “Move with me, rani.”
Despite herself, Elena fought back another kind of shudder. Together, they followed the railing until they made it to the bow of the ship.
Sea-foam sprayed onto her face, stinging her cheeks. Below, she could see the sea chomping at the hull of the ship, trying to break it in two. Fear seized her. She imagined the ship snapping, saw herself plunging into the dark depths, water crushing her lungs, beating out her breath—
“Focus!” Samson shook her shoulder. “Focus on your Agni!”
She felt for her fire, envisioned heat lighting up her veins, her skin, until a flame flared to life around her wrist. Its sudden brightness beat back the dark.
Like a beacon, it burned the night with a vicious defiance.
But rain slithered down her neck. The waves shot up, brushing the back of her hands, and she hissed at its cold bite.
“Focus!”
“I—I can’t!” she cried. She tried to splay her trembling fingers into the form of the Lotus, but she could not hold it.
Her flame gasped, dissipating into steam.
“The dance, I—I need space. I—” The ship heaved, and Elena clung to the railing, barely keeping her balance.
She could not dance on such a raging sea.
“We’ll hit a break soon!”
Samson stepped back and unspooled his urumi. Blue flames ripped down the blades as he whipped it into an arc, moving faster and faster—and then he staggered in pain. He was too weak. His flames too small, too dull. His fire juddered against the cold, stinging rain.
The ship began to nose-dive.
“Elena,” he cried, his voice a plea, “now!”
She pushed herself back from the railing, sliding, fighting for purchase, before she finally slammed her weight into her heels and brought up her arms and shoved her fist forward, her Agni ripping up her stomach to her chest and down her arm, roaring to life with red, vicious tongues.
Their flames hissed in unison.
Samson spun around, and they stood back-to-back, braced, when the ship careened down, and the sea surged up.
Water flooded the deck. But Samson whipped his flames forward, and she followed in step, and their inferno ballooned into a ball that burned back the sea.
Inch by inch, the waves receded. For a wild, breathless beat, Elena thought they had done it.
But then an eerie sound called through the pit, building in volume, until it seemed like the very night reverberated with its mournful cry.
It came from the depths of the sea, in the darkness that had no name.
And as Elena stared past the protective glow of their flames, she saw a shape expanding in the distance, beyond their reach.
She froze as Samson let out a curse. She could smell his fear, the sudden staleness of it. The way his Agni quivered like a bow strung by an invisible hand.
“Wh-what is that?” she asked.
He did not respond. The shape grew taller, larger. Her heart seized as it filled the horizon, growing impossibly vast, bleeding into the edges of the darkness she could not see through.
“Sam!”
His voice was quiet. “Do you trust me?”
The ship groaned, the deck beneath her vibrating as the waves rumbled with the call of the sea.
It sounded wrong. Unnatural. Deep in her bones, Elena knew a sound like this could not exist, that the pit was merely a deep chasm made of earth and stone and water, not filled with wrathful creatures, but she could not ignore what she heard.
Her knees buckled—and Samson caught her.
In the glow of the flames, he held her close, his voice fervent, desperate.
“Do you trust me?”
No.
She did not trust a monster like him. She could not trust a monster like him.
But he had grabbed her hand when he could have easily let her slip into the sea.
He was the only thing standing before her and the vivid dark with his lonely, dying fire.
And Elena realized there were two ways this nightmare could end: one, where they drowned in darkness; or two, where they survived, hearts in their throats, forsaken but alive.
“Samson,” she said, and if her voice trembled, she was sure it was because of her fear, not because of the way he looked at her now, full of a quiet hope she did not deserve, “I do.”
He took her hand, his touch achingly gentle, his eyes ardently bright, as his flames twined around hers and she felt a white-hot cold begin at the seat of her spine.
Then as his flames grew, as pain built through her body and Elena felt her veins burn with a heat she could not contain, he held her fixed, his voice low, lush. “Then lend your Agni to me.”