Forty-Two

FORTY-TWO

Fable’s Skerry was like a giant sleeping in the dark.

The outline of the rock islet was barely visible against the night sky as we dropped anchor.

I could feel it, standing at the bow of the ship with the sea wind whipping around me. Fable’s Skerry didn’t have reefs to dredge, but the midnight was here. It had to be.

Maybe it was an accident that Isolde had found it in the first place. Or maybe she’d followed the gemstone’s song like a moth to flame.

I wondered how long it had taken her to realize what she’d done. What the stone was worth. How long it had taken her to decide to betray her own mother.

Saint gave me the necklace because it was a key. If I had midnight, if I knew what it felt like, then I could find it. I knew the song of the gem like I knew the rhythm of my own heartbeat. I could probably find it with my eyes closed.

West pushed my belt into my hands before he fitted his around him. I worked the buckle with quick fingers, not even bothering to check my tools. Every inch of my skin was jumping, the tingle of gooseflesh creeping up my arms.

Willa leaned over the side, looking down into the dark water. “You really think it’s down there?”

“I know it is.” I smiled.

West climbed up onto the railing, and I followed. I didn’t wait. As soon as I was standing beside him, we both jumped. The black swallowed us whole and West’s warm hand found me in the water as I kicked back up to the surface. The Marigold towered over us, the skerry at our backs.

I measured the height of it in the distance. “There.” I pointed to the higher rise of rock. “There’s a cavern near the tip of the ridge.”

West eyed it, unsure. He was probably thinking the same thing I was. That if we dove the cavern, there was no way to know where it opened or even if it opened. But Isolde had done it, so there had to be a way.

“Line!” West called up to the Marigold, and a coil of rope landed in the water a second later.

West fit it over one shoulder so it reached across his chest and back. When he started to work his lungs, I followed, pulling full breaths in and out.

In and out. In and out.

The tightness in my chest loosened with each one until my lungs felt flexible enough to hold the air I needed. I sealed my lips and nodded to West before I plunged beneath the water and kicked. The rope made him sink faster, and I swam after him, keeping my pace slow so that I didn’t tire too quickly.

Moonlight cascaded in beams through the water, lighting West in flashes below me as we descended. The cavern opened up before us, a huge black hole in the face of the rock. The sound of the gems radiated through the water so loud that I could feel it in my teeth. All this time, it was here. A stone’s throw from Bastian.

West took the rope from around him and handed me the end. I fit it behind a boulder, wrenching it back and forth until it was wedged so tight a firm tug couldn’t budge it. West tied the length of it around his waist, knotting it before giving me the end, and I did the same.

I squeezed his wrist when I was ready and kicked off toward the wide mouth of the cavern. As soon as we slipped inside, the darkness turned the water into ink. So black that I couldn’t even see my hands as I swam with them out before me.

The farther we went, the colder the water became. I let a few bubbles of air escape my nose and kept kicking, squinting my eyes to see, but there was no trace of light ahead.

Something sharp caught my forehead and I reached up, realizing I had hit the top of the rock. The passage was narrowing. I let go of a little more air to let myself sink and pushed away from it just as the soft burn lit in my chest. I swallowed instinctively, but the motion only fooled me into thinking I was breathing for a second and the ache reignited. When I looked back, I couldn’t see West, but his weight still pulled behind me on the rope.

I felt along the cold stone wall, listening carefully for the deep thrumming that radiated through the water. It was getting stronger. Clearer.

The acidic feeling erupting inside of me was a warning that time was almost up. My heart pushed against my ribs, begging for air, and the slight numbness woke in my fingertips.

I could feel West stop behind me as I thought. If we went any farther, we wouldn’t make it back to the surface in time to get air. But if we weren’t far from the opening … I squinted, studying the darkness. And then I saw it. The faintest glow.

I pushed off the wall and swam. Green light swelled in the black, and as we got closer, it came down in a slice, like a wall of crystal in the water. I was dragging myself along the wall now, searching for holds to pull myself forward to reach it. When my hands caught the edge, I hauled myself forward and broke the surface with a gasp that brought both air and water into my lungs.

I coughed, clinging to the ledge as West came up behind me. The sound of his ragged breath filled the empty silence. I could hardly see. Only the reflection on his blond hair was visible, and I reached out, feeling for him until his hands found me.

“All right?” he panted.

I answered between breaths. “All right.”

Above us, a thin vein of moonlight was drawn in a narrow opening at the top of the cave. The space was only twelve feet wide at most, and the walls tapered as they rose to what looked like a tiny sliver thirty or forty feet above us.

I swung one leg up out of the water onto the smooth stone. My heart was a sprinting, angry thud in my chest, my throat burning all the way down to my stomach. West came up beside me, lifting himself from the water. As my eyes adjusted, the shape of him formed in the dark.

“You’re bleeding.” West’s hand reached up, and he touched my forehead gently, tilting my chin so that the light fell on my face.

I felt the slick skin where it was throbbing. When I looked at my fingers, they were covered in blood. “It’s nothing.”

The call of seabirds sounded above us, and I looked up to the slice of sky, where their shadows flitted over the opening in the earth.

I got to my feet. The cave was silent except for the sound of water dripping from my fingertips and hitting the stone and I froze when a glint of something blinked in the darkness. I waited, staring into the emptiness until I saw it again. A flash. Like the sweep of a lighthouse. I took a step toward it, reaching out before me.

My hands drifted through the diffused moonlight until I found the wall and I felt up its face until my fingertips caught the sharp, glassy points of something hidden in the shadows.

The vibration of the gemstone coursed through me.

Midnight.

West looked up, turning in a circle, where the facets of the stone winked in the shifting light above us. It was everywhere.

“This is where she found it,” I whispered, pulling the chisel from my belt.

I felt the rock before I fit the edge beneath a crease and took a hold of the mallet. It came away in a clean piece with three strikes, falling heavily into my hand. I held it in the beam of moonlight between us.

The violet inclusions danced beneath the surface, and I froze when their reflections lit the cave walls like a sky of purple stars.

The feel of my mother was close. Lurking all around us. And maybe she was. She could have dropped the stone into the sea, but she didn’t. She’d kept it even though she never came back to the skerry. And I couldn’t help but think that she’d kept it, maybe for me. That maybe she’d given me my name so that one day, I’d find it.

West took the stone from my hand, turning it so it glittered. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“No one has,” I whispered.

He looked up at me then, a question in his eyes. “What do you want to do?”

Midnight was like the dawn of a new world. It would change everything. I didn’t know if the Narrows was ready for that. I didn’t know if I was ready for that. A rueful smile broke on my lips as he set the stone back into my hand. “What if we do nothing?”

“What?”

Midnight had called my mother to it. At the right time, it had called me too. “What if we leave it here? Like she did.”

“Forever?” Beads of light moved over West’s face.

I looked around us, to the sparkling walls of the cave. “Until we need it.” And we would.

He thought about it, holding the wet hair back from his face with one hand. “We have the Lark.”

“We have the Lark,” I repeated, smiling wider. It was more than we needed to start our trade route. More than we needed to fill the hull of the Marigold with inventory, and establish a post.

West took a step toward me, and when I tipped my head back, he kissed me softly. “Back to the Narrows?”

The taste of salt lit on my tongue as I repeated the words against his lips. “Back to the Narrows.”