Page 102 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

“That will teach me to never follow you blindly again,” Lorelei groused.

Sylvia began to laugh. “Was that not incredible?”

The longer she looked at Sylvia, the less she could disagree with the sentiment.

Sylvia was practically sparkling, her hair pooled like molten silver around her. Lorelei wanted forever to bask in the light of her smile. She wanted to be carried on the current of her whims. She wanted to argue with her until she was breathless. She wanted to hurt her exquisitely, again and again, for as much time as they had.

The depth of her hunger frightened her.

“I suppose it was,” she said huskily.

Sylvia’s lips parted. Her eyes were hooded and darkly inviting, as though her thoughts had been following those same delirious loops ofI want, I want, I want. If she looked at her like that a moment longer, Lorelei was going to kiss her senseless.

“We should get moving,” Lorelei said hastily.

“Right,” Sylvia said, clearing her throat.

They ventured deeper into the cavern. Mist drifted along the floor, eddying around their knees, but fissures in the stone overhead let in the faintest wash of sunset. Ferns grew stubbornly in the meager light, emanating their own unearthly glow. She supposed the concentration of aether in the water made everything grow just a little strange. Ludwig would have loved it here.

When this is over, Lorelei thought,he will see a thousand sights as wondrous as this. No one else she cared for would die on her watch.

Eventually, the cavern opened onto a vast basin of limestone. It let in a perfectly round window of sky, from which a waterfall seemed to tumble from the heavens themselves. The cascade gleamed a frosty silver and emptied into a spring. The soil was warm and alive beneath her feet, and the air itself glimmered, as though crystals floated all around them. A sense of quiet awe struck her then. There was no mistaking it.

This was the Ursprung.

For a long time, neither of them said a thing. Lorelei had always prided herself on her rationality, but the last few weeks had disabused her thoroughly of the notion that natural philosophy could explain the whole of the world. There was something wild and magical about this place, something inexplicable, like the thrill of a nixie’s song. Like the sight of Sylviawhen—

“We did it!” Lorelei let out a strangled sound of pain as Sylvia grabbed her hand and squeezed. Every one of her tendons screamed, a thousand fires tearing through her arm.

“Oh, Saints!” Sylvia clapped her hands over her mouth. “I’m so sorry!”

“It’s fine,” Lorelei gritted out while her vision pulsed black.“Just...becareful.”

If nothing else, it had effectively cleared her thoughts of their moony haze. She felt, for a moment, like the boy in the Albisch Ursprung tale. She could almost imagine a dragon slain above her, its silver blood falling to the earth from a still-open wound. What would power like that feel like coursing through her blood? She would never again needto depend on anyone to protect herself or her people. But even if the Urspung found her worthy of its power, she would be hunted down. She would be reviled.

That alone was far too high a price.

“I’m going to collect a sample,” Lorelei said.

“Of course.” Sylvia’s voice still hummed with reverence.

Lorelei took a vial from her bag and dipped her hands into the water, half expecting them to blister. Mercifully, it didn’t seem to know a true Brunnestaader from aYeva—orperhaps you had to speak the magic words for it to read the contents of your soul. Scoffing, she filled the vial and corked it. It emitted an otherworldly glow, bathing her face in cold gray light. Swirled within it were particles that glittered like diamond, but its waters were a startling, incongruous black. It looked as though she’d bottled the night sky. She stood and tucked it away again.

“Lorelei.”

Startled, she whirled around. Sylvia was looking at her with a strange brew of uncertainty and hopefulness and expectancy that she could not entirely make sense of. Her face had taken on a rosy hue. Lorelei considered asking her if she was feeling well. “Yes?”

Sylvia shifted on her feet. “Will you come here a moment?”

“Now?” There were still so many things she ought to do. Change her bandages, forone—andcatalogue what remained of her supplies. She did not know what had been lost during their travels. She began rummaging through her pack. “I’m busy.”

Sylvia stood there, staring at her with an unreadable expression. After a long few moments, she turned on her heel with a dramatichmph!

It was only after Lorelei had clumsily managed to pry open her inkwell that she realized Sylvia had been staring at her with disappointment. It flew out of her hands and clattered to the ground. Ink sloshed out of the well and bled onto the stone.

You idiot, she scolded herself.

Leaving her bag abandoned by the spring, she chased after Sylvia.