Solara Moonwhisper's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

Solara stepped deeper into the flooded stair. The black sunflower drifted beside her, its blue heart lighting the water. Her betrothed came close behind, the red phoenix riding low over his shoulder. The stair fell away below them into cold dark. No dry step remained. To reach the waking heart, they had to cross the flood itself. "It's too deep," he said. "We can't hold our breath that far." Solara touched the water with one hand. It was black and freezing. Above them, the purple phoenix beat its wings against the tunnel roof, unwilling to follow into the flood. Fire and water did not mix. The guardians would have to wait behind. "Then we don't hold our breath," she said. He looked at her. His green eyes caught the blue light. She saw the moment he understood. He was born to the water. His hands could pull a current the way hers pulled the flowers up through stone. She had learned her own secret young, at five years old, in a river that should have drowned her. She had breathed it instead. "You never told your crew," he said. A small smile. "You never told anyone." "I'm telling you now." She took his hand. "We go under. We swim." They went in together. The cold closed over her head. Her lungs pulled and the water came, and it did not kill her. It filled her and she breathed it, calm as air. Beside her, her betrothed opened his eyes wide in the blue glow. He raised his free hand and the current gathered to him. It stopped clawing at them. It carried them. The black sunflower led the way, its light a small blue star sinking through the dark. Solara kicked hard. Her new strength drove her through the water faster than the cold could slow her. Below, the stair kept falling. She saw the mouth of a lower hall, black and open, the next level down. Something moved far below. Not the pale creature. Something huge, slow, turning in its sleep. The pressure she knew so well pushed behind her teeth, stronger here than it had ever been above ground. The city hummed through the water into her bones. It was close now. She pointed. Her betrothed pulled the current and they shot toward the lower hall. The floor rose to meet them. Then the water thinned, and their heads broke the surface into cold air. They climbed onto wet stone and lay there, breathing real air again. Then she reached for him, and they held on to each other, soaked and shaking with the cold and not with fear. "We crossed it," he said. Solara sat up. The black sunflower glowed at the water's edge. Ahead lay a dark hall, and past it the stair to the last level. But the huge sleeping thing was awake now. The hum told her. She had reached its level. And it had felt her come.