Chapter 19
Nineteen
WEAKNESS
The fall seemed to last forever.
Iron screamed around us as a fractured platform gave way beneath our feet, bolts shearing loose and chains snapping overhead in a rain of sparks. I hit metal grating shoulder-first, pain bursting through my side, before momentum rolled me across the slick floor and into a wall of riveted steel.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
Somewhere nearby, something heavy landed with a violent clang amidst a loud splash.
Water.
Freezing water was falling all around us.
Shivering, I forced my eyes open. We had fallen into a vast chamber deep within the mountain, cylindrical and cavernous, its walls lined with enormous gears, chained pulleys, and rusting maintenance walkways that spiraled upward into darkness.
Narrow catwalks crossed overhead, some broken, some hanging crooked.
Pipes thicker than tree trunks ran through the walls; several of them ruptured.
From those ruptures, water thundered down.
Torrents spilled from above, crashing across the floor and pooling around me.
I pushed myself upright with a gasp. “Where are we?”
The king rose beside me, one hand braced against a support beam, blood still darkening his sleeve where the arrow had struck him.
“It looks like we’re in an old maintenance lift chamber, likely part of the iron ascents.
” He gave my shivering body a critical once-over, his eyes widening for a flash at spotting the still-bleeding cut on my neck. “Are you alright?”
I had worse problems than a minor cut. I could barely feel my fingers and toes. My throat was sore from sucking in cold air. I still nodded, casting a glance around.
Sophie and Gregory were nowhere around.
“Where are—”
The king cut me off. “Focus, Allie. We have minutes.” He glanced at the water spreading around our boots.
The chamber lurched with a groan as another pipe burst overhead. A fresh torrent slammed into the floor, sending an icy spray across us.
Far above, through layers of catwalks and water vapor, movement crossed over an opening.
I looked up. “Hey!” I shouted, nearly stumbling forward. “Down here!”
Faces appeared at a grated overlook—Gregory first, breathless and grim, Sophie beside him, pale with alarm.
“Allie!” She dropped to her knees at the edge.
I let out a breath of relief. They were fine. “We fell through!” I waved my hand. “There has to be a way up—a rope, a ladder, anything.”
Gregory peered into the chamber, assessing collapsed walkways, broken chains, and the floodwater rising around us.
“There is an emergency ascent line.” Sophie pointed to a wheel mechanism. “We can lower it.”
He caught her wrist before she could move. “It’s broken.”
Sophie’s breath rushed out. “What?”
“The structure is unstable.” Gregory’s voice carried flat through the chamber. “If we engage the line, the whole shaft could collapse.”
The sober expression on Gregory’s face had dread gnawing at my insides.
Sophie turned to him. “There must be another way.”
“There isn’t time. I must get you to safety.
” Gregory’s gaze was pinned on his sister.
“The king has powerful magic. I am sure he can get them out of this. If not, we’ll get back to the castle and call for help.
” He cracked his neck, the strain visible.
His earnest gaze met mine. “I promise, Allie. I’ll be back with help for you.
” His gaze slid toward the king for a moment, as though to emphasize that the help was specifically not for him.
My shudder was involuntary.
I couldn’t even blame Gregory. I was with the most powerful sorcerer tyrant king of Wünder. And clearly, Sophie was Gregory’s highest priority.
I tried not to, but somehow I could also sense a wavering in his conviction. It was very faint, but there. Like a wall coming up. A prickly wave of doubt. That hint of suspicion at the notion of my being ‘other’—from a different world.
His mind wrestled with the notion. Freshly uncertain whether or not the trust he’d decided I had earned was misplaced.
Before I could glean any more insights from his aura, he turned away from view, dragging Sophie along, her forceful protests growing faint as their footsteps receded.
Water surged to my knees.
Shoot.
I met the king’s gaze.
“What?” His eyebrow rose.
I raised my shoulders. “No snarky comment? I thought you would have jumped at the chance to remark that Prince Charming didn’t turn out so charming after all.”
His deep blue eyes were fully sober. “Allie. My powers are sapped. I used too much of it. And whatever that godforsaken machine was, it doesn’t affect me well.” He cast a glance upward as if to spot the sky. “The mystic tide is still hours away.”
His ominous words settled hollow in my stomach.
He was right. We were trapped in this underground steel compartment. We were going to drown—that was, if we didn’t freeze to death first.
His jaw clenched. “How much time do you think we have before this fills up with water?”
Looking around, I tried to do the math in my head against the rate of the water rising. I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Not hours, that’s for damn sure.”
The chamber groaned again. Above us, beams shifted. Below, the water climbed up to my thighs. The king waded across the rushing water, catching hold of a hanging chain. Another shudder rocked the chamber.
He swore softly. His eyes darted around for a moment. He turned to the wall where a massive pressure wheel sat half-submerged behind a mesh of pipes. He braced both hands on the wheel and shoved.
Nothing.
The muscles in his jaw clenched. Fresh blood ran from his wounded arm into the freezing water.
He shoved again, harder this time. The wheel shrieked a fraction of an inch. He shot me a wide-eyed look.
He didn’t have to say anything more. I splashed across the water toward him, and together we strained against the rusted mechanism while the chamber filled around us.
It moved.
A little.
The lights overhead flickered.
The gears lining the walls turned.
Slowly.
The water hit my waist.
“Get up there.” He waved me away toward a jutting gear assembly that rose several feet above the flood. “I’ll finish this myself.”
“No chance in hell.” Grunting, I braced my grip on the wheel to push harder.
Then my hands flickered.
For one sickening second, I saw the water through my fingers.
He noticed instantly. “Allie.”
A dizzy wave swept through me, my vision dimming at the edges. Everything dulled into a distant, muffled haze, as though the world was submerged deep beneath the ice water. My strength bled from my body, dragging me toward heavy darkness—
“Allie!” Terror sharpened his voice.
Sudden clarity snapped through me, and I jolted back to awareness in his arms. My consciousness, even my physical form itself, was still slipping in and out of reality, caused by the lingering effects of the maelstrom.
Feeling faint, I was pressed against his chest, his one arm braced beneath my knees, the other securely around my back.
The rising water was already lapping at my body.
His blue eyes were wide as he searched my face in full alarm. His composure had fractured enough that I didn’t even need my empathic senses to tell. His heartbeat hammered too fast, his breathing roughened and uneven beneath the rigid control he was desperately trying to maintain.
“Allie. Allie, don’t. You have to hold on, do you hear me?
Stay with me. Stay, stay, stay,” He pressed his forehead against mine.
“Please. Tell me what I have to do. I-I don’t know how to help you.
” Squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, he rumbled out a frustrated groan.
“Goddammit, tell me how I can help you.”
The water climbed higher until there was no ground left beneath us, only freezing black depths swallowing the chamber inch by inch as we floated amid the grinding machinery.
The cold seeped deeper and deeper into my body until I could no longer feel my fingers or the ache in my feet. Shivering, my eyes shuttered closed again.
“Hold on, Allie.” The king’s grip tightened around me hard enough to hurt, though even he was shaking, his jaw clenched against the cold as he kept us both afloat.
“You have to hold on. You can’t die like this.
I swear to god—I forbid it. Do you hear me?
Not especially when I’m right here, and I still can’t save you. Not when I can’t do anything.”
Those desperate blue eyes kept darting around us for a way out. Our breaths came in ragged bursts that fogged the tiny pocket of air still left above the rising water.
Another surge poured through the ruptured pipes overhead. Water thundered into the chamber from every direction now, climbing mercilessly, and I realized with sudden, terrible clarity that there was nowhere left for the air to go.
“Rabb…” I met his gaze.
His heart still pounding in his chest, the king’s eyes were fixed on me through the dimness—not panicked anymore, but helpless exhaustion, guilt, and remorse.
The water rose to our shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Allie. I’m so sorry.”
The water closed over our chins, our mouths, and then the final pocket of air vanished beneath the freezing flood—just as everything around us exploded in a bluish-white flash.
Confused, I blinked through the freezing water stinging my eyes.
When I looked over at the king submerged beside me, his eyes were also wide.
But the grip of frostbite had risen to my neck. My chest burned, my body desperate beyond thought. I couldn’t hold my breath for much longer.
Right as I was about to inhale the furious frozen water, the cavern emptied, torrents of water spiraling violently downward with a thunderous groan as the flood drained away beneath us.
Barely aware of the king’s tight grip still secure around my body, my woozy vision blurred amidst the strange, glaring white of our surroundings.
“Well, hell’s bells, Allie. There you are,” was all I heard before I succumbed to fatigue and passed out.