“I’m not cold,” I said, and I wasn’t.
“You’re nearly frozen,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’re almost there.”
As he said the word, we stepped out of the stairwell and down onto a platform. My breath caught in my throat, and the air, hot and wet, burned my lungs. I gasped at the sensation, and at the sight before me.
The room was huge, five times as large as the bedroom I had stayed in on my first night here. The walls shimmered gold, and at first I thought they were made out of gold itself. The dimmed lanterns hanging over the room reflected golden light, and marble columns and statues lined the walls, leading the way down to the center of the room, where the floor seemed to be made entirely out of mirrors.
Eliot walked down the stairs, still holding me. When he stepped down I realized that what I had thought were mirrors was actually water, and his steps sent ripples across the entire golden floor. He stepped down the submerged stairs until his pants were soaked, and then lowered his arms slowly until my body touched the water. I cried out in pain and clutched at Eliot’s arms. My feet and arms felt as though they were being stabbed with sharp needles, the pain wrenching my body. Eliot let me grip him but stepped down further so that my whole body was under water, and only my head above.
The pain sent tears to my eyes even as I began to shiver in Eliot’s arms. My dress loosened and flowed in the hot water, and steam rose from the glassy surface. My lungs struggled to breathe in the humid air and everything hurt all at once. My toes and fingers burned with the heat. Molten, I thought, with the golden light bouncing off of shined surfaces all around me. Molten like the sun. Too close to the sun. My head spun.
“Brynn,” Eliot said. His hand held my neck above the surface, his other arm encircling my waist. My hand reached out as if of its own accord and touched his cheek, traced his scar.
“I love you.” I heard myself say, the words mere whispers floating over the steam of the water. My eyes were closing, the fuzziness in my mind threatening to take over.
“I love you too,” Eliot said. His fingers slid through my hair, but I could barely feel their touch. He loved me.
“Brynn?” He loved me. He loved me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and let myself fall back into darkness.
I remember the way my mother washed my hair in the tub when I was little, rinsing the soap out with tepid water as I wrapped my arms around my knees and tried not to shiver. She sat behind me, and I remember most of all the large rust crack that ran down the side of the tub from the top, marring the old white porcelain with an ugly streak of red. Sometimes I scraped at the rust with my thumbnail to try to get it off, but it always came back worse. Some cracks can’t be fixed easily, I guess.
Evil things happen, and good things happen, and in neither physics nor religion is there an explanation that makes any kind of sense. When the world decides to hurt, there’s no way around it, no magical words that will save the day or turn back time and bring the dead to life. There’s no such thing as fate, or wickedness, or girls who can be princesses and girls who can’t. There’s only people, and we all do the best we can.
CHAPTER TWENTY
She’ll be okay. She’ll be okay. She has to be okay.
Eliot fielded questions from the policemen while his private doctor examined Brynn in the other room. Her breathing had returned to normal, but she slipped in and out of consciousness, whispering words that he could not understand. Once she cried out for her mother, and then fell into a sleep. He trusted the family doctor with his own life, but he couldn’t help but glance over nervously through the doorway as the police asked him for the hundredth time to explain the order of events. The hunter he had knocked out was not dead but close to it; Eliot frowned upon hearing the news. The policemen were suspicious, but Eliot’s surname and his family’s reputation were enough to grant him some amount of protection from overly enthusiastic officials. Once the police left Eliot hurried back to Brynn’s bedside. Her lips were a pale, pale pink and she was breathing shallowly.
“How is she?”
Dr. Toth took off the warm cloth from her forehead. His old hands still were steadier than Eliot’s, and Eliot waited in rapt attention for his verdict.
“She’ll be fine with proper rest. We’ll pay close attention to her extremities to make sure nothing is permanently damaged. It looks like you got her into a warm bath in time.”
“But she’s unconscious.” Eliot bent down to Brynn, watching her chest rise and fall under the covers.
“Not unconscious, just sleeping. She’s had a hard time and when she wakes up she’ll probably need to speak with another doctor.”