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More shards sprang from their frames, each releasing its own stream. Trails of water flowed down the wall, soaking the carpet.
“Get up,” Varen ordered as he shot to his feet and, grabbing her, pulled her after him.
Ting. Another shard flicked into the hall, this one unleashing a forceful horizontal spurt. The leaks kept coming, with more frequency now, springing to life with hiss after hiss.
Then the whole wall bowed, emitting a low groan. The legions of reflected Varens and Isobels began to warp with it, ready to buckle under the pressure of the ocean that seemed to have followed them.
The demon, Isobel was sure, would not be far behind.
Tugging her after him, Varen started down the hall at a run, hurrying them toward a gilded archway that filtered into being as they neared the end of the hall. Had he made the escape route for them? Of course, he must have. But where was he taking them?
Isobel fumbled after him on rubber legs, her feet heavy as clubs.
“Wait,” she pleaded.
Pausing, Varen turned to her.
“What are you doing?” he asked as, with quivering hands, Isobel strung the hamsa’s chain around his neck, trying to keep her fingers steady enough to knot the chain, since the clasp had been broken.
“There isn’t ti—”
The walls at the opposite end of the hall blew out their mirrors with an earsplitting crash.
White rapids gushed into the hallway, turning it instantly into a canal.
The torrents raged toward them with a deafening roar, proving Varen’s curtailed warning true: There was no time, no place, to run.
Grasping Isobel close, Varen ducked her head into him.
He swung her away from the approaching floods, shielding her with his body just before the booming waters bowled into them both.
34
Darkness and Decay
WHOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHH.
Cringing, Isobel clung to Varen.
But the floods did not tear them apart as she’d expected.
Instead she and Varen remained standing, unaffected by the wall of water that became something else the moment it met with their joined figures.
Ash.
Cascading past them in a billowing cloud, the dust settled across the hall with a hiss.
A tinkling sound drew Isobel’s gaze upward.
Through the haze, she saw the ash-coated chandelier above them sway.
Then it fell, plummeting straight for them.
Isobel dropped her head. She held tightly to Varen, shutting her eyes in anticipation of the impact that—again—never came. She felt only the spray of dust and knew that he must be the reason why.
rp splash crashed in her ears as she felt her body depart suddenly from the crushing ocean, hurtling through a wall of water into . . . a room?
Inhaling with a rattling gasp, lungs filling to the brink, Isobel fell, tumbling hard with her savior onto carpet.
