by Cherry Adair
“Brace yourself as best you can,” Duncan yelled over the cacophony, a moment before the ledge gave way under her right foot. Teetering, heart in her throat, Serena fought for balance. She held her breath, not daring to move so much as a muscle. When she was almost positive she wouldn’t fall, she very, very carefully pulled her leg back to safety.
Forget finding the scroll. She wanted out of here. Duncan deserved to be Head of Council, he really did. Just like the first challenge, he was handling the situation calmly and proactively. He didn’t have the handicaps of abject fear and inability to control the special powers he’d been allocated. He definitely was better suited for the job. She’d be very happy to go back to her work at the Foundation, and leave him to it.
Lark had told them that one of them might die, but Serena hadn’t really believed it. Was Trey dead? God. She hoped not. She had many reasons not to want him to be dead, not the least of which was wanting to ask him why he’d Charmed her.
Rocks splashed into the water twenty-five feet below. The walls shook more violently, the sound deafening. Her stomach clenched. Who was going to be dislodged next?
“Serena?”
“I’m okay,” she managed to call back. “This is part of the Test. Nothing to do with me.” She hoped. If this was her uncontrollable telekinetic meltdown, she’d end up killing them all. Duncan was a strong swimmer, but that wouldn’t matter if he was impaled on one of the stalagmites, she thought with a shudder of horror. And she couldn’t swim at all. Something she really had to rectify if she ever got out of here alive. It was time to overcome the debilitating fear once and for all.
“It’s not you, sweetheart,” Duncan sounded his usual cool, rational self. “Just stay as calm as you can. I know, not easy under the circumstances, but hang in there. Don’t get shaken off.”
“Gee, ya think?” Cautiously Serena started moving again. “I’m hanging on by my fingertips like a terrified bat. What do you think happened to Trey?” This wasn’t the time to discuss Trey with Duncan, but Serena made a mental note to do so later. If they had a later.
“He’s down there in the water.”
“Is he…?”
“No. I heard him kicking and paddling after he hit the surface. We aren’t allowed to help each other, so focus on yourself.”
Concentrating on herself was all well and good, Serena thought, scared out of her mind. Duncan might have heard Trey thrashing about down there, but all she could hear was the hard pounding of her terrified heart. If she was going to die here, she’d vote for a rock to the head, rather than fall from this damned shelf she was trying to balance on, eventually ending up swallowed by the black, choppy water. The ledge seemed to be shrinking at an alarming rate, and the more scared she became and the stronger her emotions, the better chance she had of losing control of her telekinesis. If that happened, the avalanche was going to get a whole lot worse.
And just as she’d been responsible for killing her parents, she was going to be responsible for killing Duncan as well.
Stop it. Just damn well stop being a defeatist! I can do this. I can. Calm down. Just calm down. Think clouds. Think calm. Grass—
Thunder boomed, like a harbinger of bad tidings. “Shit, shit, shit!” Windswept rain pelted her, the sudden downpour a result of the palpable dread gnawing at her from the inside out. “That was me.”
The rush of water down the wall made the already precarious ledge slick. The violent storm conjured by her fear was eroding the stone beneath her feet. Deep breaths were impossible given the volume of water pouring down on her. Thunder shook the walls. Lightning crackled. Golfball-sized hail pelted them, pinging off the walls, ricocheting off the rocks and splashing into the water like bullets.
“Think calm, God damn it!” Her self-made storm worsened, picking up strength by the second, which fed her fear, which in turn fed the raging storm. Her skin stung from the icy bullets of striking hail. “Duncan!” she screamed.
The force of hitting the cement-like stalagmite knocked the air from Duncan’s lungs, and he sank beneath the water like a fucking stone before he clawed his way back to the inky surface. The second he could draw a breath again, he yelled Serena’s name.
She wasn’t going to hear him over the ruckus of the rockslide, or the incessant noise of thunder and lightning produced by her fear. Still trying to suck in air, he scrabbled his way to the backside of the stone formation for protection from the shit splashing into the water all around him.
His only consolation was that as long as the unexpected hailstorm continued, Serena was still scared. And if she was still scared, she was alive.
Two hours later, Duncan wasn’t sure about anything. Much to his gut-wrenching fear, Serena’s storm had stopped some time ago. As had the rock-slides and earthquakes. The cave was eerily quiet except for the sound of his limbs cutting through water that was an unpleasant body temperature.
No matter which direction he swam, he couldn’t get out of the fucking maze of stalagmites to find an exit. He was a strong swimmer, but after hours of swimming against a tide that had no rhyme or reason, and water so deep that he had yet to find bottom, his limbs felt weighted, and his lungs and sore ribs ached.
When he’d struck the stalagmite on the way into the water he’d hit it back first and bruised a couple of ribs. He’d had worse. He’d participated in missions where he’d been shot, or stabbed, or beat to shit. Hell, sometimes all three. But there’d always been an end in sight.
Not so Test Two. He’d done every maneuver he knew, and some he’d invented to get the fuck out of the water so he could mount a more thorough search for Serena. Because unless he saw her lifeless body he was going to hold out hope that she was alive.
He’d yelled himself hoarse for her. Hell, he’d even shouted out for Trey. To no avail. Had Serena survived the slide?
Christ. Wouldn’t he feel it if she were gone? He assured himself he would. He couldn’t imagine his world without her in it in some capacity. Any fucking capacity. “Serena, answer me God damn—” It started to hail. Thank God.
“Seeereeena?!”
Ohgodohgodohgod! Golfball-sized hail morphed into solid spheres the size of a grapefruit. Serena managed to hang on when the first two hit her like fists. The third one caught her sideways, knocking her off the ledge.
She sucked in a panicked gulp of air at the same instant her fingers caught, more by accident than design, on an outcrop of rock. Flinging up her other hand, she managed to grab onto a sliver of a ledge with a death grip. Struggling against the strain and pain of supporting her body weight with her hands, she dangled panting, sobbing, and praying.
The complete absence of light made this a thousand times worse, Serena thought as she hung there, too scared to move. How close was she to the water? Thirty feet? An inch?
The rock face felt cold and slimy against her body, but she pressed her cheek to the rough stone ledge in the darkness, too terrified to move. She could barely breathe, her heart was pounding so hard. “Duncan?”
The cave was eerily, preternaturally silent. She opened her eyes to total darkness. A darkness with an absence of sound, smell, or sensation. Her blood froze. “Duncan! Damn you. Answer me!”
There was no answer. This time she controlled the surge of emotion and threat of tears by biting her lip until she tasted blood. “Duncan? Duncan! What did I d—” The sliver of rock that was her only anchor gave way. Without anything to hang on to, her body was flung into the unimaginable. Space.
Weightless, she spiraled down. Head over heels, legs and arms cartwheeling uselessly, her upper body tangled in the long skeins of her wet hair.
She body-slammed the hard surface of the water. The painful belly flop cut off her scream by knocking the air out of her lungs like a hard fist to her chest.
Terrified, she sank under the oily black water like a rock.
Dark.
Cold.
But not silent. Every erratic, frantic beat of her heart sounded loudly against Seren
a’s eardrums. Something slithery curled around her upper arm. Her eyes flew open. Oh, God. Oh, God. She jerked backward. Slammed into something hard and unyielding. A stalagmite?
Her lungs burned. Screaming for air.
Dark.
Cold.
Up.
She had to go toward the surface. It didn’t take skill to rise to the surface, she reminded herself, fighting the overwhelming panic surging through her. Her body’s natural buoyancy would work for her, wouldn’t it? Making a grab for the stalagmite, she encountered nothing but water.
No up. No down.
She put a hand against her mouth. Her fingers shook. I can do this.
No you can’t! The waves will come. The waves and the wind.
I’ll die.
I’ll die before I tell Duncan—
There aren’t any waves, she told herself fiercely, kicking her legs. This isn’t the open ocean. I’m thirty-three years old, not eight. Old enough to know that even if I can’t swim I can get to the surface, get to air. Float. Everybody can float.
If I don’t panic.
Do. Not. Panic.
Holding her hand a few inches away from her mouth Serena braced herself, then cautiously released a precious sip of air. Bubbles tickled her fingers. She was upside down. Relaxing went against every single flight-or-fight instinct in her, but she forced her muscles to go limp, and allowed her body to rise in the inky blackness.
A sudden cone of pale yellow light, faint, but unmistakable in the blackness made her blink and falter. What the—
The illumination showed the entrance to an underwater cavern, then as suddenly as it had appeared, it winked out, leaving the water blacker than it had been minutes before.
No. Nonononono. If that was a heads-up to where the scroll was hidden, deep underwater, inside some sort of cave, she shuddered, count her out. Not just no. But hell no.
Serena turned her back, and with agonizing slowness rose to the surface, then bobbed there like a cork, sucking in great drafts of wonderful, life-giving air, her heart beating like a sledgehammer against her ribs. The hail and rain had stopped. Thank God.
Blindly she reached out and her fingertips hooked on a ledge. She hung on more by sheer will than strength.
“Duncan?” Her voice echoed. “Trey?”
She knew Trey had fallen earlier. Had Duncan? Yelling his name produced zero results.
Serena hooked her elbows over the ledge and hung there, trying to get her heartbeat and breathing back to a close proximity of normal. Resting her head against her arms she shut her eyes, weary beyond belief.
What would happen if none of them retrieved the scroll? Would they be given another chance? Could they skip one Test and try the next? She doubted it. There were only the four Tests. Duncan, Trey, or herself had to win two of them. That was it.
Would the Council select three more candidates?
Whichever damned way she looked at it, she couldn’t allow different contestants to be chosen. There was a reason that she and Duncan were in this together. She might not want to think about it, she might not want to do anything about it, but Fate had intervened by putting her in direct competition with Duncan Edge for this position for a reason.
She was going to have to go back under the water to retrieve that damned scroll, whether she wanted to or not.
All her internal organs cramped at the thought. “I can’t do it,” she whispered against her folded arms. No matter how she tried to rationalize her terror of being in deep water, the bottom line was she could very well drown. Just because she’d escaped with her life once, didn’t mean she’d do so again.
It made no damned difference if the water in question was a storm-tossed ocean, or placid cave water. She didn’t like it.
“Buck up,” she told her whiny self grimly as she lifted her head. “I don’t have a choice. One.” She braced herself. “Two.”
“Three.” With a deep breath, she allowed her body to slip back under the water before she could talk herself out of it.
Just because she’d never been taught to swim didn’t mean she didn’t know the basics. Arms and legs needed to move. Simple enough. She might not be poetry in motion, but who gave a rat’s ass? She was moving. Hopefully directly to where the light had been shining.
Her lungs were already bursting. If only the water would dry up, and let her…Feet first, she drifted gently to the soggy, sandy bottom. Air flooded her lungs.
No way.
Way.
The water was gone.
Sucking in great drafts of air because she could, she muttered, “Flashlight,” and a large flashlight materialized in her outstretched hand. Clicking it on, she shone it up to illuminate the sheer rock walls, and impressive glistening spears of the stalagmites rising above the ground like giant ragged columns. Water dripped from every surface, including herself.
The damned water had been deep. Fifty feet at least from the waterline far above her head. She shuddered. Everything was wet, of course, and the briny, fishy, musty smell was pretty damn powerful, but the water was gone. How absurd that it hadn’t occurred to her sooner to simply wish it away. Fear had locked her mind.
The ground was saturated, spongy, but relatively easy to walk on. “Duncan? Trey?” she called, walking carefully, and moving the beam systematically against the shiny wet walls.
She followed the cone of light and, before she could chicken out, sucked in a breath and stepped into what had been an underwater cavern. More a long tunnel than a cave.
“Spelunking is not for me,” she muttered to block out the thump-thump-thump of each individual heartbeat echoing in her ears. “But swimming lessons are definitely in order. I’ll start in the baby pool and work my way u—Crap. Now what?”
The flashlight was gone. Her heartbeat slammed into her ribcage, and she braced her body for water to rush in and fill the tunnel where she stood.
Nothing happened. She opened one eye. “Maybe I’m dead.”
“No, actually, you’re very much alive.” Lark’s voice came out of the darkness. “But you really are going to have to work at controlling those telekinetic powers of yours as Head of Council, Serena.”
“I’m not Head of Council, and this is a little melodramatic, isn’t it?” Serena asked, her voice shaking. Chances were her heart wasn’t going to stop knocking any time soon. Head of Council was the last damn thing on her mind. “Is Duncan all right?”
A lamp clicked on. “Sorry. I like it dark when I meditate,” Lark said cheerfully, not answering the most important question of all. Dressed all in black, she was lounging on a daybed piled high with frou-frou, ruffled pink satin pillows. Serena blinked against the soft lighting. The room was all pinks and creams, ruffles and lace, and soft romantic lighting. Very girlie and elegant and totally unlike Lark, yet the Goth young woman looked perfectly at home amongst the beribboned pillows. It took a moment for Serena to notice that the walls were made of rock, and water seeped from crevices and cracks to pool in shimmering ribbons on the stone floor. She was still in the damn cave.
The scroll was on a silver platter placed on a round, lace-draped table in the center of the room.
Serena stepped onto a deep-piled floral area rug, more intent on getting through to Lark than picking up the damn scroll. “Get Duncan out of there, please, Lark.” They seemed a million miles away from here.
One of Lark’s perfectly sculpted, pierced brows arched. “Scroll first. That’s the rule. And could you dry off a bit? You’re dripping on my carpet.”
Serena changed herself into dry clothes, without much thought. “Screw the scroll—” The lights flickered. “End the Test—” The lights flickered again. “For God’s sake, Lark! Duncan might be hurt.”
“The Tests are supposed to be dangerous.” Lark leaned back against a mound of pillows, and looked at her, eyes dark. “The object of this very important exercise is to see how you handle pressure.”
“Clearly I didn’t handle it,” Serena snapped as she grabb
ed the tightly rolled scroll off the platter, because at this point she’d do damn near anything to see Duncan alive and well and standing right here with her. “I freaked out and may have gotten Duncan killed. So if the Test was to gauge my reaction to stress, I failed it miserably. End of story.”
“You meant Duncan or Trey killed,” Lark reminded her.
“Or Trey killed,” Serena amended. Lark had a propensity to skip around the bits of conversation that didn’t interest her.
Serena waved the scroll. “This is it?” she demanded, holding the blasted scroll aloft. “All I had to do was pick up the freaking thing from a silver platter? No water monsters? Fine. Got it. Can we get a move on now? Get him, er, them out of there. Now.”
Lark indicated a large ormolu clock that suddenly appeared over a fireplace that hadn’t been there a second ago. The hands on the clock froze. Fire leapt in the small marble hearth. She turned her head, her kohled eyes locked on Serena. “That’ll hold the status quo until we’re ready.” She swung her feet to the floor. “You combatted the water monster in your own way. You overcame your fear.”
“Was there another option?” Serena glanced at the clock, preoccupied with Duncan’s safety.
“You know you’ve been living on borrowed time, Serena. You’ve been playing with fire, literally.”
Serena clenched her jaw. “I just want Duncan safe.”
“And Trey?”
Serena tossed the other woman an impatient glare. “Of course. And Trey.”
“I don’t have to state the obvious, do I? You have no future with an Edge. No future with Duncan. You know that. Not unless you tell him the truth. And we both know what will happen if you do.”
Each word stabbed Serena through the heart. “Don’t worry, Duncan’s whole life is dictated by the Curse. Happily Ever After isn’t an option.”
“Especially now,” Lark said. “If you break your promise and tell Duncan the truth, you can’t be Head of Council. If you’re responsible for breaking the Curse, you can’t even be you. You’d be stripped of your powers. You’d be mortal.”
