Read Chapter 23: The Waters Rise

The smoke hit them like a wall—thick, black, and acrid, burning Élodie’s throat as she staggered backward from the vent. The Turkish baths were flooding to her chest now, the warm water sloshing against the tiled walls, but the heat radiating through the grates told her the fire was closer than she wanted to admit.

“We can’t go back that way,” Tom said, his voice a ragged whisper. He leaned against the tiled wall, one hand pressed to his side where the blood had soaked through his torn waistcoat. His face was pale as bone, his lips tinged blue. “The coal bunker’s on fire. That whole corridor will be an oven.”

Marie—Winifred—stood shin-deep in the water beside them, her fine gown soaked to her knees, her eyes darting between the vents and the door that led to the mailroom below. For a moment, Élodie saw the woman hesitate, saw the pull of the deep pull of the water and the dark, and she grabbed Winifred’s wrist.

“No,” Élodie said, her voice steel. “You made a promise. You come with us.”

Winifred blinked, and something in her face softened. “I know,” she said quietly. “I know.”

A crash echoed from somewhere above them—metal groaning, wood splintering. The ship listed sharply to port, throwing Élodie off balance. She grabbed for Tom, but he was already moving, pushing himself off the wall with a grunt of pain.

“We go up,” he said. “Forward. Through the baggage hold, if we can. The bow’s going under, but the collapsibles are still on the roof—if we can get to them before she slips…” He trailed off, wincing as he took a step. The water was at his thighs now.

“You can’t lead us like this,” Élodie said, moving to his side, slipping his arm over her shoulder. He was heavier than she expected, and warm despite the cold water seeping through his clothes. “I’ll guide you. Tell me where.”

Tom managed a ghost of a smile. “First door on the left. Then straight until you hit the service stairs.”

They moved as a unit—Élodie bearing Tom’s weight, Winifred collecting Rose and Louis from the doorway where they huddled with two younger children, a boy and a girl whose names Élodie didn’t catch. The boy was crying, silent tears streaming down his face. Louis took his hand without a word.

The corridor outside the Turkish baths was chaos. Water poured down the stairs from above, carrying chairs, a child’s shoe, a first-class dinner plate. The electric lights flickered—one, two, three—before dying altogether, plunging them into darkness lit only by the orange glow of the fire through the grates behind them.

“Left!” Tom shouted, and Élodie pulled them toward a doorway that led into what had been a baggage storage room. Suitcases and trunks floated in waist-high water, bobbing like macabre buoys. She pushed through them, the cold water stealing her breath.

“Where are we going?” Winifred called from behind, her voice strained as she helped the younger girl clamber over a floating trunk.

“Service stairs,” Élodie said, trusting Tom’s words. “Up to the boat deck. We’ll find the collapsibles.”

But when they burst through a set of heavy iron doors and into a narrow stairwell, the stairs were gone. In their place, a churning wall of black water that roared like a beast, filling the shaft from below to above. Élodie froze, her hand on Tom’s chest.

“No,” she whispered.

Tom’s eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. The route was cut off, not by fire, but by the sea itself.

“We can’t go up that way,” Louis said, his voice trembling but steady. He was holding the crying boy’s hand, his own face a mask of forced calm. “We go back. We go back and find another way.”

“We can’t go back,” Winifred said, pointing behind them. Smoke curled through the door they’d just come through, black and thick, and Élodie could hear the crackle of flames eating through the corridor they’d left behind. “The fire’s reached the baggage hold.”

They were trapped between the rising water and the burning ship.

Élodie’s heart hammered. She looked at Tom—at the blood spreading fresh across his shirt, at the way his eyes fluttered, fighting to stay open. They had minutes left. Maybe less.

“Side stairs,” Tom managed, his voice barely audible. “Starboard. There’s a service passage—leads around the boiler casing. I saw it on the blueprints.”

Élodie grabbed his face between her hands. “Starboard. I can do that. Hold on.” She turned to the others. “Stay together. Stay behind me.”

They pushed back into the baggage room, now filled with smoke so thick Élodie could taste the soot on her tongue. She moved by memory, counting steps, her left hand trailing along the wall until—

“Here,” Tom said, his voice a rasp. He pulled her hand toward a narrow door, almost invisible in the dark paneling. “Kick it.”

Élodie slammed her heel into the door once, twice. On the third kick, it splintered, swinging open onto a corridor barely wide enough for two people to pass. The floor was tilted sharply now, the ship listing so hard she had to brace herself against the wall to keep from sliding.

“Go,” Tom said. “Go now.”

They ran—or as close to ran as they could manage, with the water sloshing at their knees and the smoke burning their lungs. Élodie led, dragging Tom by the hand, Winifred behind them with the children. A little boy stumbled, and Rose scooped him up without a word, her thin arms straining.

The corridor ended in a wide passage that opened onto the boat deck—or what was left of it. Élodie burst through the door and stopped, her breath catching in her throat.

The scene before her was a nightmare made real. The smokestacks had fallen—the largest of them slanting across the deck like a wounded beast, its paint peeling, its great black mouth still pouring smoke. Beyond it, the bow was gone entirely, swallowed by the sea. The waterline was midway up the deck now, waves lapping at the collapsed funnel’s base.

But there, beyond the fallen funnel, at the very edge of the visible deck, Élodie saw it: a collapsible boat, still attached to its davits, men swarming around it, trying to launch it.

“There,” she said, her voice cracking. “We made it. We made it.”

But as she turned to lead them toward it, she saw Tom’s face. He was staring at the deck between them and the boat—at the collapsed funnel blocking the way, its metal hull glowing red-hot in places, steam hissing where the sea met its still-burning core.

“We have to go over it,” Tom said. “Or around it. There’s no other way.”

Winifred stepped forward, her voice small. “The children can’t climb that. They’ll burn their hands. They’ll fall.”

Élodie looked at the boat again. The men on the other side were lowering it, slowly, into the water. They had minutes, perhaps less, before it would be gone.

She squeezed her mother’s brooch—gone, she remembered, lost in the chaos of the flooding, somewhere in the dark cold water of the hallway where she’d torn her coat. She had nothing left of home. Nothing but the locket in her pocket, and the satchel at her back, and these people who looked to her.

“Then we don’t cross,” she said, turning to face them. “Tom—can you swim?”

His laugh was wet, pained. “After a fashion.”

Élodie looked at the children, at their small trembling faces, at Rose and Louis, at Winifred, whose eyes were wide with fear but whose chin was set with determination. Then she looked at the burning funnel, and the water around it, and the boat beyond.

“We go around,” she said. “Through the water. I’ll lead. Tom, you take the rear. We stay together, we stay alive.”

Winifred shook her head. “The water’s freezing. The children will—they won’t survive.”

“They’ll die if we stay here,” Élodie said, her voice sharp. She knelt, taking the smallest girl’s hands. “I’ll carry you. I promise I won’t let go. Do you trust me?”

The girl’s lip wobbled, but she nodded.

Élodie stood, looking at Tom, then at Winifred. “When we reach the other side, we get to that boat. And we survive. All of us.”

But as they moved toward the water’s edge, a deep groan shook the ship beneath them. The deck beneath their feet shifted, tilting further—and with a sound like thunder, the fallen funnel began to slide, scraping across the deck toward the waterline, toward them.