Page 193 of Keldori By Daybreak

“It’s on the walls,” he murmured. “Skal.”

He was right. The water that clung to the cave walls here gave off a gentle glow. Another surge of water brought the tide up to my ankles and fear into my throat.

“All this sea water, it has to drain somewhere when the tide goes out, right? But we’re walking downwards. How does that work?”

“Maybe it drains back into Keldori,” Ciarán murmured. “Water slips from your world into ours in the cracks where Skal springs exist, but it’s got to make its way back somehow. Maybe that’s how Lyria found the doorway, by looking for the drain between worlds.”

“And she drowned eventually,” I reminded him.

“She had many successful trips as well.”

A sudden crash rocked the cave, and a sea star fell from the ceiling, shaken loose as the tunnel quaked.

The others turned and looked at me in search of the source of the earthquake, but I put my hands up.

“That wasn’t me,” I said, and Tiernan doubled back to look down the way we’d just come.

“It’s her.” Tiernan’s golden gaze darkened, and he ran to take the lead. “She’s going to bomb her way through the cave. The tide won’t stop her. We’ve got to go.”

We clung to Una three at a time to make it through the next pocket of water, but when we surfaced, there was no more dry rock to climb onto. It had risen to our waists, but swelled up to our chest when the water would surge.

I let it lift me and pull me forward when it did, but the ceiling was getting lower and the walls tighter.

“We have to dive again!” Iseult called from the front of the group as another swell knocked us into the barnacle-studded roof.

“Take the rope.” Ciarán passed its length down our line and Una squeezed to the front with the end of it in her maw.

She dove, dragging the rest of us with her before we had the chance to take a breath.

Ciarán’s arm wrapped around me, holding me tight as we plunged through the cave. Jonquil’s crab cage rattled next to me, and I shut my eyes to the salt water.

Another swell rolled through the cave, and I slammed against the wall. Shells and barnacles cut into my back, and I cried out, expelling a cloud of bubbles.

Sea water rushed to fill my mouth, nose, sinuses, lungs, and I opened my eyes to a blurry underwater cave streaming past.

I couldn’t breathe, but I couldn’t cough either, and water suffocated me from the inside.

I thrashed against Ciarán, and my grip on the rope slipped. I was saved only by Ciarán’s hold on me. He held fast even as I lashed out, desperate and drowning.

The cave disappeared, and we slipped over the edge of a drop into a wide basin.

I choked on water and air, struggling to find my footing in the pool, but the water was too deep. I slipped back beneath the surface, but Ciarán heaved me back up.

“Breathe, Wren!” He struck me on the back with the heel of his palm, and ocean water poured from my lungs and mouth.

“Thanks,” I choked and let him drag me and Jonquil’s cage through the water to a set of stone steps as I heaved for air.

He deposited me and the cat on the lowest step. Jonquil looked how I felt—soaked, shrunken, and hissing up a storm.

“That’s the doorway?” Orla’s wavering voice echoed through the chamber, and I pushed to my arms to get a better look.

The chamber was large enough to have held all of Keel Watch Harbor in its belly. Smooth rock rose overhead, coming to an apex hundreds of feet in the air to form a dome. Stars, moonlight, and the silhouette of tree canopies peeked through a hole in the ceiling, giving us a final, tiny glimpse of the Skalterran sky through the top of the Tortoise’s shell.

The steps where I lay led up an island of dark rock. At its lip above me, a bright glow cast the shapes of my friends in halo and shadow from below.

Another crash echoed through the chamber behind us, shaking dirt loose from the distant ceiling.

“You’re supposed to hold your breath underwater, Blue.” Ciarán’s words were sharp, but our tether betrayed his relief. He hoisted me to my feet as he grabbed Jonquil’s cage in his other hand.