Stars of Fortune (The Guardians Trilogy 1)

“The cave’s due east.” She pointed toward the cliff face. “Sawyer, why don’t you and Annika go in, then Sasha can follow with Bran. Doyle and I should be right behind you. Just take a couple minutes to get used to it,” she told Sasha, and strapped on a BCD.

Sawyer put on his mask, his mouthpiece, and sitting on the side, gave a thumbs-up before rolling backward into the water.

Sasha had time to think—Oh, my God—before Annika laughed, then mimicked Sawyer.

“You can go in feetfirst if you’d rather,” Bran began.

“Ladder on the port side,” Doyle said as he zipped his wetsuit.

“Why don’t I help you down that way?”

Help her, Sasha thought. Watch her, look out for her.

The hell with it.

She clomped over to the side in her fins, boosted herself up.

“Hold your mask in place with one hand. Just roll out.” Bran gave her leg an easy pat. “I’m two seconds after you.”

Before she could talk herself out of it, Sasha shut her eyes and let herself roll back.

It was a longer drop than she’d anticipated. When she hit the water, she let out a short scream, sucked in too much air. She started to kick back to the surface, but Bran was there, taking her hand.

He made a slow, downward movement with his free hand, clearly signaling her to slow down, relax. Though she wanted to go up, go up into light and air, he pointed down, and drew her with him.

Panic tickled at her throat, brought on an odd dizziness. She knew she was breathing too fast—exactly what Riley warned not to do—but couldn’t seem to control it.

Then she saw Annika through the impossibly clear water, doing fluid somersaults with the sunlight cutting through the surface to spotlight her.

Oh, to be that free, she thought, then realized she was—or could be. Nothing held her back but her own fears. Maybe she wasn’t ready for somersaults, but that didn’t mean she had to give up.

She struggled with her breathing—still too fast, but better—and gave Bran’s hand a light squeeze to let him know she was all right.

And finally let herself see the world around her.

The colors, so deep and rich in the coral, the waving plants, the boldly darting fish. So much more than what she’d experienced in the very rudimentary snorkeling she’d done when she’d talked herself into a winter vacation in Aruba some years before.

This time, she wasn’t just looking down at the world—like peering through a glass window. She was part of it.

With Bran she swam along the reef, gestured with wonder when she spotted a pumpkin-colored starfish clinging to a rock. She saw another, and a deep red sponge, and watched a lobster scramble across the sandy bottom as if late for an appointment.

When she saw the mouth of the cave, the panic wanted to rise again. Then Riley streaked by her, glanced back with a quick wave before spearing straight toward the dark, shallow mouth ahead.

Doyle speared through the water after her, might have cut straight into the cave but Riley blocked him.

Waiting for her, she realized, the four of them, with Annika swimming a circle around the other three. She kicked her feet, sent herself forward with Bran beside her.

The six went into the cave, two by two, where the light hung murky. Here, the world was a shadowy green and what lived in it came as shadowed blurs. The blurs became a long, sinuous eel, a pair of octopi with undulating tentacles. The wavering plants hid things, she imagined, that could sting and bite.

She heard the beat of her heart in her own head as she swam through the eerie green light of the tunnel.

It opened, reminding her of the land cave she thought of as Nerezza’s. She looked up, almost expecting to see bats swimming and swooping. Instead she saw light, trees, and stared in wonder at the open ceiling between worlds.

Another octopus, uninterested in them, flowed across the bottom of the cave while a school of silvery fish speared away as one as she reached out a hand to touch. She forgot fear as she explored the madly artistic shapes of coral, the living sponges, the oddly fluid movement of a starfish that left its perch when disturbed.

She thought of the painting she could do if she kept all this in her head long enough to sketch it. She forgot her fears, and for a time the true purpose, in the thrill of exploration.

It surprised her when Riley tapped her shoulder, pointed at her watch, then the tunnel. With a reluctance she hadn’t anticipated, she swam out again with the others.