“What thefuck, Faun?”
“They call this the hollow pool.” Her voice slid through the dark, impossible to place. I jerked my head around; more inky nothingness. “Nothing sinks in it—everything floats. So there’s only one way to die in here.”
“Which is?”
“If you never find your way out.”
I could think of another way someone might die in here. When I escaped, I would pluck her hair from her scalp one strand at a time inthe darkness. I would force her to wear iron corsets and wide-skirted dresses and tread this water until she begged for clemency.
“You’re no longer my second-in-command.” I spun in the water. “Go to your chamber and pack your things.”
She barked a laugh. “How would you know I’ve actually gone if you’re stuck in the hollow pool?”
“I will know, because my life’s purpose has changed.” I thrashed, pulling myself through endlessness. “I exist only to destroy you. You have no idea what kinds of torture we devised in the Dip.”
Her laughter went on and on. When it faded, her voice had gone sober.
“You didn’t pick me as your second because you wanted a sycophant, Eurydice.” The edge in her voice cut clean through the dark. “You need to learn to see. Your fingers will be pruned by the time we’re done, but there’s no quicker way.”
“Icansee. Except you’ve taken away the light.”
“Now you’re being purposely obtuse. Do you want to know or not?”
“Tell me,pettifey.”
She barked a laugh. “Your tongue shapes that word like a baby learning the shape of its own thumb.” A pause. “First, you have to exhaust yourself completely.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
She didn’t answer. Maybe she had fucked off.
For a time I resolved not to speak to her again. And so I didn’t; I only swam through the cold ink. Each stroke dragged, awkward and slow. Hands cupped, pulled, slipped. If I made progress, I couldn’t tell; I might have been paddling in circles. The water got into my mouth, brackish and unwelcome. When it burned up my nose, my cursing and sputtering echoed back at me like mockery.
I swam until my arms burned. I swam until my breath was gone.
Eventually I turned on my back and lay there because I couldn’t do anything else. The water filled my ears, closed away all sound.
My almost-father had taught me to float in a bathing troughwhen I was a little girl. It was one of my favorite memories with him, because he’d loved me that day. That was what I had been about to tell Faun when she’d pushed me in—at least the first part.
“Dead yet?”
My head broke the surface at Faun’s voice echoing through the cavern. I lifted my hand and blinked into nothingness. “No, but I can’t even see my fingers.”
“You’ve spent twenty years relying on daylight. Do you really expect your eyes to adjust in an hour?”
“Has it only been an hour?”
“Not quite. Give it another five.”
Five?“I detest you.”
“Your insults don’t even pierce skin, kitten.”
“I’m ready to get out.”
“I’m sure you are.”
So that was that. I was doomed to spend the rest of my life in the hollow pool.