Read Chapter 25: Out of the Depths

The cold was a living thing, wrapping around Élodie's limbs like wet rope. She gasped, her lungs searing, and clutched the wooden door with one arm while the other locked around Tom's chest. His head lolled against her shoulder, his blood warming the water between them in a slow, dreadful bloom.

"Tom." Her voice cracked. "Tom, stay with me."

He groaned, eyelids fluttering. "Cold," he muttered. "So bloody cold."

The ship behind them was a black monolith against the stars, its stern rising higher and higher. The suction pulled at their legs, dragging them backward, and Élodie kicked with everything she had. Her skirts were lead weights. Her boots were anchors. She kicked them off, feeling the icy water close around her bare feet.

The door tilted. Tom slipped.

She grabbed his collar, hauling him back, and her fingers found the wound in his shoulder—a hot, sticky gash that would not stop bleeding. She pressed her palm against it, and he winced, a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sob.

"Leave me," he said. "Élodie, you have to—"

"No." She said it like a prayer. "No, no, no."

Around them, the water churned with debris. Deck chairs. A child's shoe. A man in a white steward's jacket floated past, face down, and Élodie looked away.

The suction was easing. The stern was going down faster now, and with it came a wave—a wall of black water that lifted them, spun them, and spat them out into the cold dark beyond.

Élodie surfaced, gasping, and found the door still beneath her. Tom was still there. Still breathing.

And then, impossibly, she heard it.

A whistle. Three short blasts, sharp and clear over the water.

She turned, scanning the dark, and saw it—a lifeboat, low in the water, maybe fifty yards away. A figure stood at the bow, waving a lantern. The light swung in an arc, catching on the faces of a dozen survivors huddled inside.

"Here!" Élodie screamed. "Here! Please!"

She had no light of her own. The torch she'd carried was lost somewhere in the Turkish baths, abandoned in a rush of steam and flame. She had nothing to signal with—just her voice, raw and thin against the wind.

But the boat turned. She saw the silhouette of a woman at the tiller, and then another figure, leaning over the side, shouting something she couldn't hear.

"We're here!" Élodie cried. She waved one arm, the other still wrapped around Tom. "Please, we're alive!"

The boat pulled closer. The rowers were exhausted—she could see it in the slow drop of their oars—but they kept coming. Ten yards. Five.

A man reached out. "Grab hold, miss. Quick now."

Élodie tried to push Tom toward him, but her arms were shaking. She couldn't lift him. The cold had taken her strength, had turned her muscles to water. She looked down at him, and his eyes were closed.

"Tom." She shook him. "Tom, wake up. They're here. Help is here."

No response.

The man in the boat grabbed her wrist, hauling her forward. "Give me your other hand, miss. We'll get him in."

Somehow, between the man and the woman at the tiller and a boy who could not have been older than fourteen, they managed. Élodie shoved Tom up over the gunwale, and the man caught him, pulling him into the boat with a grunt of effort. Then hands found Élodie's coat, and she was lifted, dragged over the side, and dumped onto the floorboards among a tangle of wet bodies and frozen feet.

She crawled to Tom. He lay on his back, his face bone-white in the lantern light. The blood from his shoulder had soaked through his shirt and coat, painting the boards beneath him in a dark, spreading stain.

"Please," she whispered. "Someone help him."

The woman at the tiller—an older woman with a fur stole and a terrible calm in her eyes—knelt beside her. She pressed two fingers to Tom's throat and held them there.

"He's alive," she said. "But not for much longer if we can't stop that bleeding."

She tore a strip from her own underskirt—a fine, expensive silk—and folded it into a pad, pressing it hard against Tom's wound. He stirred, a low moan escaping his lips, but did not wake.

Élodie looked around the boat. There were eleven others besides the three of them. A few men in first-class dinner jackets. A woman clutching a jewel case. A child—a girl of perhaps six—sitting silent and still as a doll, her hand in the hand of a man who was not her father, because her father was gone.

The boat was half-empty. It had room for sixty.

Behind them, the Titanic was nearly vertical now. Her lights flickered—once, twice—and then went out, plunging the night into a darkness so complete Élodie felt it press against her eyes.

And then, with a sound like the world ending, the ship broke in half.

Élodie watched. She could not look away. The bow sank, and the stern rose, and for a moment the great ship stood on end against the stars, a monument to all that was lost. And then it slid down, down, down, into the black water, and was gone.

The sea closed over it with a hiss like a sigh.

For a long moment, no one spoke. No one breathed. The lantern swung gently, casting shadows across the faces of the living.

And then the screams began.

From the water all around them came the cries of the dying—hundreds of them, maybe more, calling out for mothers, for wives, for God. Élodie pressed her hands over her ears, but she could not block them out. They rose and fell, a terrible chorus, and the woman at the tiller bowed her head.

"We have to go back," Élodie whispered. "We have to help them."

The woman looked at her. In the lantern light, her eyes were glassy. "There's nothing we can do. We're full."

The boat had room for sixty. There were fourteen of them in it.

Élodie opened her mouth to argue, but the words died in her throat. Tom's hand found hers, weak and cold.

"Élodie," he breathed. "You're alive."

She looked down at him. His eyes were open, barely—two slits of blue in a face gone gray. "I'm here," she said. "I'm not leaving you."

He tried to smile. His lips barely moved. "Good," he said. "That's... good."

His hand went slack.

"Tom?" She shook him. "Tom, no. Tom!"

The woman with the fur stole pressed her fingers to his throat again. "Still alive," she said. "But barely. We need to keep him warm."

Élodie tore off her coat—already shredded and soaked—and draped it over him anyway. She crawled closer, pressing her body against his side, wrapping her arms around him.

The screams were fading now, the voices growing fainter as the cold claimed them one by one.

Élodie closed her eyes. She held Tom, and she listened to the silence.