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The spray of the sea hit Thea and she tasted salt on her lips, panic gripping her heart in an iron fist. How flooded was the cave already? How long had Kipp and Cal been subjected to its torture?

‘There!’ Hawthorne shouted above the howling wind.

Thea squinted through the downpour and the dark, only just able to make out a narrow fissure on the cliff's side.

‘We have to leave the horses,’ he called, swinging himself down from his stallion.

‘They’ll run!’

‘Here!’ His hands reached up, encircling her waist, helping her down as more lightning flashed around them, followed by the near-deafening crack of thunder. Once her feet were planted on the wet rock path, he took her reins.

He loosely tied the horses to an overhanging branch. ‘If they’re spooked, it’s best they break free rather than hurt themselves,’ he told her.

The beasts were frightened, but at Hawthorne’s touch, they seemed to understand it was safest to stay put.

Thea was already heading towards the cave. Water poured down either side, a river flowing into the darkness beyond.

‘Cal!’ she shouted. ‘Kipp?’

There was no answer.

Hawthorne was beside her in a second, striking a flint to a torch. Without another word, she took it from him and lunged for the entrance —

His hand wrapped around her arm, water sluicing down his face. ‘Are you mad?’ he yelled. ‘Are you so desperate to throw yourself in harm’s way?’ He pushed her aside and reclaimed the torch, entering the cave first.

Swearing, Thea followed closely behind, and let out a sharp breath when she found herself thigh-deep in an icy swell as they descended into the hollow.

Even in the cave’s shelter, the noise from the storm outside rattled her teeth, the thunder echoing off the wet walls.

‘Cal? Kipp?’ she shouted again, her voice hoarse.

All manner of filth floated around them, but Thea kept her focus forward, scanning the strange grotto for any sign of her friends. Hawthorne’s torch illuminated stalactites hanging like daggers from the ceiling and a series of what looked to be claw marks on the walls.

They rounded a bend, the water climbing up their bodies at an alarming rate. It now reached Thea’s waist —

A strangled gasp escaped her.

Ahead, two limp bodies swung suspended by their wrists over a hollow. Their heads hung to their chests.

Thea heard the scream, the sound echoing through the cavern, but she didn’t register that it had come for her own mouth as she rushed towards her friends, water swelling around her.

Where they were hung, the water was up to their shoulders, but their hair was drenched, which meant the flood had been hammering them for some time.

‘No, no, no,’ she murmured, now swimming out to them.

The surge beside her told her that Hawthorne was with her, the glow of the torch left somewhere behind, but she ploughed ahead, desperate to reach her friends.

She wasn’t the strongest swimmer and the weight of her clothes and the sword at her back dragged her down, but the terror that gripped Thea by the throat was unlike anything she had ever experienced and it fed strength to every part of her, fuelling her as she carved through the water.

With a sob, at last she closed her hand around Cal’s leg beneath the surface and Hawthorne reached Kipp beside her.

‘Cal,’ she spluttered. ‘Cal, look at me, please.’

His eyes remained closed.

Thea looked around desperately. Neither she nor Hawthorne could reach their binds from below, but there had to be a way —

‘There!’ she shouted.