The cell door slammed behind them. Sirius looked around a room that was all too familiar. The jail cells of Scarlett were situated at sea level, built into cliffs further down the coast. Each cell was large enough to hold a dozen prisoners or more, if you didn’t mind how closely people were packed. Today however, it was just the two of them. There were two main gates, made from the same metal as the rest of three out of four walls of the cell. It was a special kind of metal, engraved with writing and infused with magic that made it almost unbreakable. It was the sort of metal dragons loved to eat but Sirius had little doubt that other magic lay woven into these stone walls, magic to keep the dragons out and the people in.

  That didn’t mean the place was inescapable though. Sirius knew of at least two different ways and the moment their jailers disappeared from sight, he set about planning their exit.

  The back half of the cell was set below sea level and completely and permanently submerged by seawater. A tunnel set low in the wall let the water in. There were gates along the tunnel as well as booby traps but it was nothing he couldn’t handle and the metal under the water wasn’t like the metal that surrounded the cell. He took his coat off and set it aside. Then he started on his boots. It would be easier to go now, while the tide was relatively low. At high tide, the main area of the cell would flood by almost a metre of extra water. The jail of Scarlett was not designed to be comfortable.

  There had been too many to set on fire. Amanda had considered the notion and rejected it all within a second. The chance that one of them had fired their gun was too great as well. And so, both she and Sirius had let themselves be led obediently to the city prison. She watched their captors leave and then she turned to Sirius, who was currently in the process of taking off his boots.

  All the questions she had been about to ask were immediately replaced with a single one. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting us out of here.”

  She looked around the room. She didn’t see any obvious way out. Half the floor was covered in seawater and she could see that it didn’t go anywhere. The second level of the cell looked only a metre or so down. The main bars looked like a better option. Gingerly she fingered them and she started to concentrate.

  “You won’t be able to burn through those.” Sirius interrupted her focus.

  She turned toward him. “Why not? I’ve melted through metal before. Unless this one is a special kind?” She fingered the bars again. The texture was rough and obviously painted, slightly rusty in places where the paint had chipped, but not unlike other types of metals she’d seen.

  “It’s not the type of metal,” Sirius answered. He came up behind her and pointed. “Look.”

  There were words written into the bars up high. No, not words, symbols, the sort sometimes drawn into more permanent infusements. “Oh. It’s infused.”

  Still, she couldn’t help but attempt it. Sirius was right, it didn’t work. No matter how much heat she aimed into the metal, it just seemed to flow around it. Eventually she gave up and turned back to Sirius, who by now had his shirt off.

  “What are you doing?” she asked again.

  “There’s a tunnel,” he said and he pointed at the water. “It goes out to the sea.”

  Amanda peered into the water with a frown. “I can’t see anything. It just looks dark.”

  “At the back wall. See the bars.”

  “But what makes you think those ones are any different from these one?”

  “I’ve done this before.”

  “You’ve… wait, hold up.”

  “Hold up? The same way you did when we got to Scarlett?” He raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Well, come on... I…” He had a point though and she knew it.

  “What?” He raised his other eyebrow as well. “What exactly was your plan there?”

  “I was going to get the pegasus back,” she replied as if that explained anything at all. She knew it didn’t.

  “How? By walking up to Sirena and asking? Do you even know where to find her?”

  “Neko said she’d have a warehouse.”

  Sirius gave her a look that made her feel like she was back in school. “There are hundreds of warehouses in Scarlett.”

  “Yes, well…” She shrugged. “I could ask around. Maybe find someone with a list. And no, I wasn’t just going to ask her, I was…”

  “Going to steal it?” Sirius finished for her with a smug look.

  “It’s not stealing if it was mine to begin with.” She put her hands on her hips. “Anyway, you can’t judge. You’re a pirate.”

  “Merchant.”

  “Shipping stolen goods. That’s basically thievery.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Smuggling.”

  “What’s the difference? You even have that flag.”

  “I told you why I have that flag.” He glanced at the water and then slipped off his pants.

  For a moment she was distracted and then then she replied, “Well, anyway. It’s not like it matters if I take the pegasus now. Sirena already paid you so whatever happens to it won’t affect you.”

  “What happens to you affects me,” Sirius replied.

  Amanda didn’t have an answer to that. The straightforward way he said it left her completely disarmed. As if it were simply a fact he was stating, one she hadn’t expected.

  He continued on as if what he’d just said hadn’t just given her the biggest butterflies in the world. Warm, friendly, fluttering butterflies that threatened to carry her right off a ledge.

  “Anyway, none of that will matter if we don’t get out of here.” He’d thrown all his clothes into a pile and was now standing in nothing but his underwear at the edge of the water.

  “I don’t understand how you plan on doing that. Even if you can get those bars off, even if that tunnel leads to the sea, the fact that it’s so dark suggests it’s pretty long.”

  He nodded. “About 30 metres.”

  “30 metres… can you swim that far underwater?”

  He nodded. “I told you. I’ve done it before. There’s also another two grates and a couple of booby traps. It’s not a problem though. I just need to swim through and disable those and then I can come back for you.”

  It was a lot of information to process. “Booby traps?” Amanda asked.

  He nodded. “Trigger points that make the walls slam together. They take time to reset though so there’s a short window where you can swim past. I think they made it this way so water elemental prisoners would have an advantage at escaping but only if they knew about the secret in advance.”

  “How do you know about it?”

  “Good luck. Well, my good luck, someone else’s bad luck. Hey…” He’d been about to jump in but then he’d suddenly gotten that look on his face like he’d just thought of a brilliant idea.

  Amanda was still having trouble processing it all. “What?”

  He looked directly at her. “Do you think you could turn water into air? Under the water, like how you did when the prince threw that wave at you?”

  “The prince?” Amanda asked. This was too much. She took a seat on the stone floor and gave Sirius a tired and quizzical look.

  He nodded and then he climbed into the water. It came up to his waist. “That’s who you attacked and why we got arrested.”

  “I didn’t attack him. He was hurting that man. I was just defending the poor guy. Scarlett has a prince? Is there a king too?”

  Sirius leaned his elbows on the stone floor and gave a soft sigh. “Yeah, it’s a monarchy, the city at least. The surrounding area is all aristocrat controlled. They have a joint council, although technically the aristocrats have more power and there are several sub-councils as well who are a little more independent or report to one or the other, including a few double ups. Don’t ask me how they divvy things up. Anyway, water to air. That would make oxygen right?”

  “You mean to breathe under the water?”

  He nodded.

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. The chemical bonds don’t break when the water boils.” She was surprised he’d even thought of it given he’d never finished high school. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised though since he liked to read so much.

  “Not even if you did it really hot?”

  “You’re talking thousands of degrees.”

  “You can melt steel and turn glass to sand.”

  “Yeah but even if the bonds did split at only 100 degrees, even that would still be way too hot to breathe. I can push the heat of things away but that means pushing the thing that’s hot away, and what would fill that space would be water. I can smother a flame but I can’t cool things down.”

  “What if you created the air pocket first and then kept the heat at the edges? Made like a funnel or something so it forces the air in but has enough time to cool.”

  Amanda looked at the dark water. “I think that would be very hard. Also, people don’t just breathe oxygen.” Trying to control the fire was one thing, controlling what it did was something else entirely. The oxygen was less of an issue for short periods at least but she wasn’t sure if Sirius knew that and she really really didn’t want try this sort of thing for the first time in a narrow underwater tunnel. She didn’t even want him to swim through it, even if he had before. What if it had changed since. It didn’t look to be the sort of size that was easy to turn around in. If he got half way through and got stuck or found his way blocked...

  Sirius nodded. He turned in the water to face the tunnel.

  Amanda panicked. “We can try another way, maybe talk our way out. You said there was a second way out. What was that?”

  “Get lucky and bribe a guard.” He shook his head. “That guard’s not here anymore though.”

  “Well, what’s the worst that will happen if we wait?”

  “They could leave us down here for days. I need to get back to the ship, and you wanted to rescue a pegasus didn’t you?”

  “You mean you’ll help?” For a moment she forgot about what his plan involved and she let herself imagine them rescuing Ghost together.

  “Well, you made a good point about Sirena already paying us.”

  Her hope fell when she looked at the tunnel again. “I don’t think I can do that though, even if you can,” she admitted. “30 metres is longer than my high school swimming pool. We used to challenge each other to see how far we could get underwater. I don’t think I ever made even a third of the pool.”

  “You won’t have to. I’ll tow you.”

  “For 30 metres?!”

  He nodded. He looked so confident. But that tunnel was so dark and narrow. He must have been able to see the doubt on her face because he added, “I’ll go through first, make sure the tunnel’s clear, then come back for you.”

  “What if it isn’t clear? What if you get stuck? You promised you wouldn’t scare me like this again.”

  “We’re in here because you took off,” he countered but at the look on her face he quickly added, “Sorry. That wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “If you drown…”

  “I won’t. And you’ll only have to hold your breath for 30 seconds, 40 max, I promise.”

  “You can swim a metre a second in an enclosed tunnel while pulling someone?” She had no idea if that was actually fast or not but it felt fast.

  “I can do twice that easy in open water and the tunnel isn’t perfectly smooth. It has sections I can grab and kick off. Look, don’t worry about that part yet. First things first, I’ll clear the tunnel. Back soon. I promise.” He leaned forward over the edge toward her as if hoping for a kiss.

  “Aren’t you cold?” she asked as she crawled closer, anything to make him stay a little longer.

  He shook his head. “The water’s warm here, feel.”

  She dipped her hand in. He was right. It was warm, kind of like tepid bath water. While he was distracted by her hand in the water she quickly leaned forward and gave him a kiss right on the lips.

  He looked up surprised and licked his lips, obviously hoping for more.

  But she wasn’t going to give him anymore until he came back. Looking him squarely in the eye she said, “If you drown I will kill you and you’ll never get another kiss again.”

  His face split into a grin. “Noted. Back soon.”

  Before she could object, he turned, and dove into the water.

  “I love you!” she called after him, but he’d already gone under and she didn’t think he heard her. Maybe that was for the best, in the movies it was exactly the sort of thing one might say to a lover as their last words.