Stars of Fortune (The Guardians Trilogy 1)

“I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t supposed to.”

“Annika.” Sasha crawled to the edge where Annika rested her arms. “You saved

my life.”

“I can see a long way in the water. Like you can see on land. So I could find you, but with legs I would be slower. And still, you had no breath when I brought you up. Bran gave you his.”

“You did this for me.” She laid her hand over Annika’s. “Does it mean you . . . you have to stay in the water now?”

“No. I can have the legs for the land for three turns of the moon. Three months,” she corrected. “I swore not to tell humans, even those who would seek the stars with me. But life is sacred, even more than an oath.”

“Anybody gives you grief, they have to go through us,” Sawyer told her. He brushed a tear off her cheek. “You’re a hero.”

“You’re not mad with me?”

“Are you kidding? You saved a life, and you gave up something important to you to do it. It was your secret. How does this . . .” He ran that same finger down the side of her torso over the hip of the tail. “Sorry,” he said quickly, and pulled his hand back.

“I don’t mind. I’m happy. Sasha is alive, and no one is angry.”

“Now that we’ve established that,” Doyle began, “maybe we should find out just why Sasha nearly drowned to get where we are.”

“Hard-Ass has a point,” Riley agreed. “It’s a hell of a place.” She pushed to her feet. “Deep inside the cliff, from my sense of direction. But accessible enough, with equipment,” she added with a pointed finger at Sasha, “that other divers should have found it. But it’s not on any of the dive maps.”

“The simple answer?” Steadier again as Sasha’s color had come back, Bran pushed to his feet. “It isn’t meant for others. It drew Sasha through what she has. Drew us all.”

“You think the star’s here?”

He nodded at Riley. “I think if it’s not, a path to it is. But this fits Sasha’s prophecy. We’re bloody well between the earth and the sea, aren’t we?”

“You got that.” Hands on hips, Riley scanned the cave. “Small pool, wide area. A lot of rock. The walls are almost smooth, and the ceiling . . .” She frowned as she looked up, studied. “It’s almost a perfect dome shape, and the stalactites, grouped together like that? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Dome, a grouping like a chandelier. A holy place.”

Sawyer finally pulled himself out of the pool to join them. “It shouldn’t have light like this, as deep as it is—and no sky to reflect it.” He glanced down at Annika. “Do you want to come up—sit on the edge?”

Her tail swished along the water in a sparkling arc, then cleaved under. She pushed herself up. “Stand,” she said, and brushed water from her thigh. “I like the legs.”

“Yeah, well, they’re winners.”

“We’re going to need to have a discussion about all that,” Riley decided, “but since we’re here, we’ll focus. If it’s here, and buried, we’re going to need tools. I can get those, but we don’t want to hack at everything. Best thing is to spread out, look for anything that seems out of place. I’ll start on the other side of the pool.”

“I don’t know what to look for.”

“You got us this far,” Bran reminded Sasha.

Something out of place, she thought. She didn’t know what was in place, as she didn’t spend a lot of time in strange underwater caves.

But something had brought her here—brought all of them here.

Why couldn’t she hear the music now, or feel that tug pulling her in the right direction? She searched with the others, running her hands over rocks, climbing over stepping ledges of them.

As Riley said, the walls were smooth, almost the texture of glass. And warm, she noted, where surely they should have been cool to the touch. The air should be cool, she realized—even cold—considering they were beneath the surface of the sea.

Where did the warmth and the light come from?

She looked up at the bowl of the ceiling, the rich colors of the rock, the odd grouping of the stalactites, gleaming with wet.

Even as she watched, a drop slid down the cone, fell to the rock-strewn floor of the cave.