Page 22 of Skyshade
“I fell in love, Grim,” she said, her voice rising, echoing through the tunnels. “I fell in love with someone else, while I was married.And I had no idea.” He winced. Her words hurt him. Good, she thought. She wanted him to hurt. She wanted him to understand.
“Do you have any idea what it feels like to betray someone you love? Without even trying to?”
“Yes,” he said through his teeth. He meant her.
She stepped forward. “You don’t know what love is.”
“I don’t?” he said, bridging the space between them. “I waged a war for you. I bound my life to you.”
“I didn’t ask you to!” she screamed. She shook her head. It ached. Her eyes stung.
So much death. So much loss. She knew she should be grateful that he had brought her back to life, but part of her wished he had just let her die. The world would have been better for it. So many people wouldn’t be in such imminent danger. When she said it aloud, Grim growled with anger.
“Don’t ever say that. Don’t ever think that. You have saved far more people than you have killed. You have power that threatens the gods.” He frowned down at her bracelets. “Even if you insist on keeping it contained, you have it. I might have saved you because I love you, but you are meant to live. You are meant to use this power.”
She didn’t know how he could speak so reverently about power that had caused so much destruction. She wished she’d never had it at all. She wished she hadn’t ever explored the world with her portaling device.
“I wish you’d never loved me.” It was true. It would have made everything so much easier. It would have saved so many lives. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes in frustration. Anger built behind her ribs. She dropped her hands and looked him right in the eye. Her voice was sharp. Barely recognizable. “I wish I hadn’t given myself to you, like a fool. I wish I hadn’t let you betray me, and lie to me, and manipulate me, and I hate you.” Her chest was heaving. “I hate you, I hate you, and I would throw this damned necklace into the sea if I could!”
Grim reared back, as if she had slapped him. His eyes glistened with hurt. She had never seen him look so wounded, even when he’d had a dozen arrows through his chest.
She instantly regretted her words. But why? She had meant them, hadn’t she?
He took a step away from her. She took a step away from him, in turn—and nearly slipped.
Water. Just a puddle of it, spreading slowly. Eating away the rock beneath it, creating a mirror. She blinked at her own reflection, hazy in the faint crystal light.
Then, it came rushing like a river.
She looked up at him. Their gazes locked.
“Run,” she said, and they did. The water was gushing now. Rising to her ankles, then her calves. It kept growing until it knocked her off her feet, and then she was paddling, gasping for air. Soon it would fill the tunnel. They would drown.
Her limbs ached as she swam as fast as she could, fighting to stay above the water. She managed a gulp of air before being pulled under by the force of the current. When she surfaced again, there were only a few inches remaining between the top of her head and the rocks above.
The tunnel was endless. It was no use fighting it.
She stopped swimming. Grim did too. She lifted her head as high as it would go, greedily swallowing air.
Grim faced her.
In his eyes, she saw unfiltered fear. The same fear she had seen moments before she had died.
They found each other’s hands through the water.
“I—I’m sorry, I—”
“I know, Hearteater,” he said. He pulled her close, and their foreheads touched. This couldn’t be it. This wasn’t her fate.
She thought of all the people who would die because she was reckless enough to insist on going on the climb. The children. The innocents. The same as before, when—
The floor. It had curved downward. It had confused her, but now she realized it might be their salvation.
The tunnel had split throughout their journey, left and right. What if it also split top to bottom? They had been fighting against the current, trying to remain above the water, when perhaps they should have been letting it take them. With the last gulp of air, she said, “The tunnel is going down, the water pressure is increasing. Sink to the bottom. Follow the floor. Stop fighting it.”
Grim met her eyes; his were filled with trust she didn’t deserve. He nodded.
It was a risk, but the water was at the ceiling now anyway. Isla stopped swimming. Stopped struggling. So did Grim. She blew out the air in her lungs in one long stream and sank to the bottom. The current was even stronger down there.
