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Anya immediately shakes her head. “You're hurt.”

“And you're eight, so unfortunately neither of us is qualified for this expedition.”

She laughs.

I look toward the guard. “Could you get that for her, please? I don't want her stepping onto the wet stone.”

He starts toward us. Anya, however, has already decided she can reach it herself. She places one foot on the edge of the submerged step.

“Anya, don't,” I say.

She looks back at me. Her foot slides. I react before I think. I grab her arm and pull her toward the dry terrace, hard enough that she stumbles into me.

The guard catches her before she can fall. For one second, everything is fine. Anya is safe. The guard has her. I am still standing.

Then my injured hip gives way beneath me.

My foot slips on the wet stone. “Oh, fuck.”

Then I fall backward into the pool. The impact knocks the breath from my lungs, and before I can understand what has happened, I am completely underwater.

I open my eyes. Blue. Everything is blue.

The surface is somewhere above me, sunlight breaking into moving, distorted shapes, and I kick toward it instinctively.

Except I don't know how to swim. I have never known how to swim.

I have spent twenty-five years avoiding deep water with considerable success, and apparently my body has decided this is the perfect moment to demonstrate the consequences.

I kick harder. My arms move uselessly through the water. For a second, my head breaks the surface.

I gasp. “Help!”

Water rushes into my mouth before I can finish the word. I go under again. My head breaks the surface for another second.

I hear someone shout my name. Then I sink again.

The water is in my nose now, burning all the way into my throat, and when I try to cough, I inhale more of it.

My chest seizes. I reach upward. Nothing.

The sunlight above me looks farther away than it should. I can see the edge of the pool, but I cannot seem to get closer to it. My arms are getting heavy. Water fills my mouth. I cannot stop it. The surface blurs above me. I reach for it one last time. My fingers close around nothing.

Then something moves through the water toward me. A dark shape. An arm.

I try to reach for it, but my hand won’t do what I want.

The last thing I feel is a powerful grip closing around my waist.

And then everything goes black.

9

NIKOLAI

I hit the water and the cold swallows me whole.

For one moment, the world disappears into blue.