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Arc treaded water. That’s the first of the cathedral’s spires.

Why does one building need five spires?

They swam on together, bubbles rising from their mouths and dancing away from the city to the sunny surface of the water.

The five most powerful Earth Queens in history added a spire, Arc said.

Vahly felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. She paused, floating, unmoored. They built that with their magic? Stones. She’d never be able to do magic like that. Not a chance.

Arc eyed her like she was a puzzle he was trying to solve.

She frowned and swam on, wishing she didn’t long for him to pipe up with another of his optimistic sentiments about Vahly being the one to bet on.

The first section of the massive cathedral rose from the sea floor. Like a spear thrust through the sand by an unknown god hiding inside the world’s core. Vahly’s reflection showed in its obsidian surface.

Earth magic pulsed through her blood and bones three times.

A hand knocking on a door. Rap. Rap. Rap.

This was exactly where her magic wanted her to be.

The building stood straight and true, like smooth tree trunks banded together by an invisible force.

The structure’s distant, tapering peak foamed the surface of the water, curling pearly clouds of ocean around its tip.

A school of bottle-nosed fish—Vahly thought perhaps they were called dolphins—glided past the upper reaches of this spire.

Their tails flashed the inconsistent sunlight against the cathedral’s glossy exterior.

Not bad, Vahly said.

Indeed. Arc placed a hand on the cathedral, his eyes narrowing on the stone. It’s obsidian.

Fast-cooled molten rock? That’s what I had guessed.

Yes. The Earth Queens raised the lava so quickly that it remained smooth as it formed under their command. The rock material is unable to form its usual crystalline structure because of the speed of the magic.

A sudden current rushed between them, pulling at clothing and hair.

Vahly looked over her shoulder, but the city slept as it had for generations despite the strange and powerful eddy.

The water yanked Arc’s shirt against his body, and his collarbone showed like a blade in a beam of sunlight.

He kicked his legs like he’d been born to swim, steady and sure.

Vahly felt like she was thrashing just to stay put.

You sure you don’t have a touch of sea folk in your blood? Vahly raised an eyebrow at him before swimming into the cathedral’s door.

She would’ve been sweating if she hadn’t been underwater.

That current was a keen reminder that sea folk could attack at any moment.

They had to stay alert. She had to keep from being too consumed by this cathedral and what it might mean for her future as Earth Queen.

If she was distracted and the sea folk arrived, she was as good as dead.

A ten-foot tall opening led to a cavernous room, whose gold-painted ceilings were nearly too far away to see.

Mosaics set with tiny tiles of vermilion, smoke, amber, and verdigris covered every inch of the walls.

Long benches lined the floor, some fallen and eaten by the salt water, others intact as if Vahly’s kynd had just stood up and walked out of the cathedral not two minutes ago.

Her stomach clenched with a longing that was an echo of the feeling she’d had at the bridge with the Spirit of the River.

This place must have flooded slowly for the benches to remain upright as they were.

So strange. She tried to imagine the day everyone had died, and how the Earth Queen of the time would’ve fought against the water.

There was no evidence of her battle around this spire.

Perhaps signs of a fight would show themselves at the other sections of the cathedral.

Of course, the previous Earth Queen had been very weak.

Vahly was almost certain she hadn’t added a spire, because the former King of the Elves, Mattin, had tricked both her and her predecessors with the diluted Blackwater.

The loss of direct interaction with Blackwater over the generations had resulted in that last Earth Queen being completely unable to defend her people from the sea folk.

Vahly said a silent prayer. Hopefully, her own powers would rise strong and capable. But her own magic had come from her ancestors. Mattin’s generations-long trickery would surely have an adverse effect on Vahly too.

She allowed herself to drift toward the front of this section of the cathedral.

If the other four areas were as awe-inspiring and detailed as this one, searching for what her magic wanted her to find would take an eon.

So far, her magic had only knocked hard that first time.

She assumed that meant she had not yet stumbled onto the truth it wished to reveal.

Of course, she could be completely wrong.

A hulking table lorded over the front of the room, fashioned from an oak’s trunk that the humans had cut across and left in a rough-hewn state. A multitude of lines showed the age of the cut tree at around four hundred and fifty years, by Vahly’s approximation.

Another rush of water made Vahly glance over her shoulder, her nerves jumping. But Arc treaded water at the door. He was on watch and didn’t look alarmed, so she continued searching through the altar’s treasures.

A bronze candelabrum lay on its side, so Vahly set it straight.

The candles were long gone, but the flame-snuffer endured, its patina green and the hinge stiff.

A tiny trunk reminded Vahly of Nix’s money box back at the cider house.

On this chest, circular lapis lazuli stones threaded in thick bands of pyrite decorated the top and sides.

A gem like a multi-faceted raindrop glittered near the latch.

The latch’s stone had obviously been cut to refract light and did its job well.

Vahly longed to keep it. The old Vahly would have used it to play Trap with the high rollers at the cider house, but today’s Vahly had no time for that kind of gambling.

Unfortunately, she was forced to gamble with her life, as well as everyone else’s.

Shaking her head, she placed the small trunk beside the candelabrum, then headed toward the back wall of the room.

An algae-cloaked mosaic covered the wall, and with one look, Vahly felt magic pounding through her heart.

She bent double, the tug of her power almost painful.

Vahly? Arc swam to the side of the door, glancing back and forth between her and the exit.

She straightened and paddled disjointedly behind the oaken altar table to get a better look. I’m all right , she said, even though she wasn’t so certain.

A swathe of lime-colored algae veiled the artwork, but she could tell darker and lighter tiles did indeed make up an image. An image her magic demanded she see in full.

I assume you have found something of note , Arc said.

Using her forearm, Vahly wiped the algae away. Frustrated that she couldn’t move more easily in the water, she swam backward as quickly as she could in order to view the mosaic in its entirety.

It was a gryphon.

Her heart leapt three times, and a frisson of power electrified her blood.

The Bihotzetik people had arranged countless garnet tiles to form a gryphon. The creature’s eagle wings stretched wide within a tangle of riotous forest growth—grape vines, oak leaves, and olive branches—and his lion paws clawed into a field of midnight earth and glittering stones.

The thrill of power steadied itself into a slow rhythm that buzzed through Vahly, head to toe.

This was definitely a part of what she needed to discover here in the sunken ruins of the former capital.

If you hadn’t already told me that the egg was that of a gryphon, I’d know now . She turned to see if Arc was looking at the mosaic.

Arc smiled at the artwork. Beautiful. So this trip into the sea is tied to what that unborn gryphon will mean for you.

For us.

Each of the mosaic’s four corners boasted a new scene. The top left showed a circle of jet black touched with diminutive tiles in the same glittering stones as the ones at the gryphon’s feet. The Blackwater.

Vahly swam up to look closer at the circle. It was lapis lazuli. It’s Mattin’s bowl. This is the Blackwater.

Arc slipped through the water to the scene on the top right edge. He ran a broad hand over a gathering of animals. This looks like a cliff owl and a bear. And here is a—

A rock lizard and a dawn hawk. These are their animals. The humans’ animals. But what was this mosaic’s point? Why was the gryphon in the center of these four scenes?

The corner below the Blackwater showed a bundle of cloth and pair of antlers. Vahly frowned, unsure what it could be. Engraved words ringed the two images, but the salt water had eaten the interior color away; the phrases weren’t legible.

Can you read this somehow? she asked Arc. Perhaps his elven sight could pick up more than her human eyes.

Arc swam down, then cocked his head, studying the lines. His fingers moved over the image. I’m not certain about the first part here, but the remainder is a spell. The words, they move me. He made a fist and pressed it against his chest.

Vahly swam closer and brushed a palm over the spell. Her head felt light as a feather. My magic agrees with you.

Arc tapped his bottom lip with his thumb, his feet kicking to stay in place. The section I can read says,

‘Two to twine,

Born to bind.

Earthen bred,

Power bled,

Alone alive’—I’m not entirely sure about this part either—‘as one to rise.’ That is my best guess, anyway , Arc said.

Born. Ah. So the bundle was a human baby. Perhaps the antlers indicated an animal familiar. Were they bound at birth? Or was this simply a reference to birth in another way?

The fourth corner of the mosaic held a sprawling oak.

Vahly and Arc rubbed the artwork until the algae gave way to the tree’s great limbs and roots, both of which were wider and more twisting than a dragon’s tail, if the owls in the image were indicative of scale.

The tiles that made up the earth at the base of the oak sparkled like coins.

It was so lovely, and the sight of it all lessened her terror of being down here under the sea. Her magic drummed a steady rhythm, and hope beamed inside her heart.

Then a sickening sound like a thousand breaking waves roared around them.

Vahly and Arc whirled to find the source of the noise.

A dark shape flew through the cathedral door.

It was one of the sea folk.

Feeling as though her chest were caving in, Vahly opened her mouth to scream as the sea kynd slammed Arc into the mosaic. Algae exploded in great clouds of emerald, and Vahly’s hand went to where her sword normally hung, but of course, it wasn’t there.

The clouds cleared even as Arc fought back with a cascade of inky, gurgling darkness that reeled the sea kynd around and pitched him backward.

The sea kynd raised a scarlet coral spear, and the water—still twilight-hued from air magic—heaved in on itself.

The current rushed at Arc in a torrent of whitewater.

Arc’s and the sea kynd’s movements blurred with the twist and roll of the ocean.

The sea kynd drove Arc across the room to smash into the cathedral’s obsidian bones.

Vahly nearly felt the hit herself, her head throbbing and her vision clouding.

The sea kynd faced her.

For a moment, they both paused, the beat before the fight. A strange calm overtook Vahly as the currents tangled the sea kynd’s ruddy beard.

Then he took off, aiming straight at her, his finned, powerful limbs driving through the sea, his eyes coal-hot, and a spear in his murderous hand.

Pulse roaring in her ears, desperate to access the earth and whatever sliver of power she might use against this vicious creature, Vahly shot toward the ground.