Read Chapter 3: First Alarm

Élodie had not expected to enjoy the game. But there was something infectious about the way Rose commanded the deck as if it were her personal kingdom, arms spread wide, shouting *"I am the captain now!"* at the top of her lungs.

Tom, leaning against the railing with his arms crossed, had allowed himself the smallest of smiles. That alone made the cold worth it.

"Miss Marchand! You're the iceberg!" Rose called, skidding to a stop in front of her. "You have to stand still and I'll navigate around you."

"I thought I was supposed to be chasing you," Élodie said, pulling her coat tighter. The wind had teeth today, sharp and insistent.

"New game. I'm the ship. You're the danger. Stand there and look dangerous."

Élodie laughed despite herself. "I am a schoolteacher. I have been called many things. Dangerous is not one of them."

Rose squinted at her with the unnerving seriousness of a child who saw more than she should. "You could be dangerous. If you wanted to be."

The observation landed somewhere unexpected in Élodie's chest, and she had no time to answer before Rose spun away, arms out like a bowsprit, weaving an imaginary course between deck chairs and other passengers.

Tom drifted over. "She's taken a shine to you."

"She is a bright child," Élodie said carefully. "She sees things."

"She sees everything." Tom's eyes followed his niece. "That's what worries me."

They stood together in a silence that felt almost deliberate, like a held breath neither wanted to release. Élodie was about to say something—she didn't know what, perhaps something foolish about the vastness of the sea—when a small, sharp sound cut through the deck noise.

A child crying. Not Rose.

She turned. Near the base of the grand staircase, a boy of perhaps six stood with his back pressed flat against the wall, shoulders shaking. He wore a sailor suit that had seen better days, white collar gone grey at the edges. His face was blotchy with tears he was trying, unsuccessfully, to push away with the heel of his palm.

"You see it too," Tom said quietly.

Élodie was already moving.

She knelt to bring herself level with him. "Hello. I am Élodie. Are you lost?"

The boy nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again. The motion sent fresh tears spilling down his cheeks. "I can't find Marie."

"Marie is your mother?"

"Sister. She said stay here. Don't move. But then—" His voice hitched. "Then I moved."

A practical child. Élodie's heart twisted. A child who felt guilty for being lost, as if it were his fault the world had swallowed his sister whole.

"I'll stay with you," Élodie said. "We'll find her together. What's your name?"

"Louis." He sniffed. "Louis Bouchard."

"À bientôt, Louis Bouchard." She smiled. "I am French, too. We must help each other."

Louis stared at her. Then, with the solemn gravity of a child making a tremendous decision, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small silver locket. It was cracked down the middle, the hinge bent, one side hanging loose.

"Maman gave it to me," he said. "Before she went away. It's the only thing I have that's hers. Marie says I shouldn't carry it, but I do. You keep it safe."

Élodie blinked. "Louis, I cannot take your mother's locket."

"You have to." His small hand pressed it into hers with surprising force. His voice dropped to a whisper. "I'm scared I might drop it in the water. Marie is always saying I drop things. You're big. You won't drop it."

The logic was irrefutable.

Élodie closed her fingers around the locket. It was warm from his pocket. The crack ran straight through an engraved initial she couldn't quite parse. "I will guard it with my life," she said solemnly. "And when we find Marie, I will give it back to you. Agreed?"

Louis nodded vigorously, relief softening the panic in his face. He looked past her shoulder, and his whole body went rigid.

"Marie!"

A young woman was pushing through the crowd near the staircase, dark hair escaping its pins, face white as paper. She was perhaps eighteen, with a worn coat that had been let out at the seams and a grip on her skirt so tight her knuckles showed bone.

"Louis!" She swept him into her arms, burying her face in his hair. "I told you—Louis, I told you not to leave that spot—"

"Marie, this lady helped me," Louis said, muffled against her shoulder. "She kept me safe."

Marie looked up at Élodie with a face that carried too many years of worry for a girl her age. "Thank you. I—I only turned around for a moment. To ask the steward about our berths. He went to look at an iceberg." She shook her head. "Everyone's looking at the icebergs."

Élodie rose. "Your brother was very brave. He gave me something." She held out the locket in her open palm. "He asked me to keep it safe for him."

Marie's face crumpled. For a horrible moment, Élodie thought she would weep. But she swallowed it, forcing control back over her features. "That locket. Louis, Papa would—" She stopped herself. To Élodie, she said, "It's kind of you. We're in third class. It's chaos down there, all these new people. I didn't want to bring him, but there was no one to leave him with and—"

"You don't need to explain," Élodie said gently. "He was safe. He was brave." She crouched to Louis's eye level again. "You were very brave, Louis. Like a soldier."

Louis puffed out his chest. "I am a soldier. In my head."

Marie laughed, a broken, grateful sound. She took Louis's hand and gathered herself. "We should go. Thank you again, Miss—?"

"Marchand. Élodie Marchand."

"Élodie." Marie tested the name like it was a thing she wanted to remember. "I'm in your debt."

She said it the way someone might say a prayer.

Élodie watched them go, Louis turning back once to wave with his free hand. She waved back, the locket still cold in her palm, then slipped it into her coat pocket. She would find Louis later. She would return it properly, not in the middle of a crisis.

"Good deed for the day done early."

The voice came from behind her. She turned to find a steward in a crisp white jacket, brass buttons gleaming. He was young, mid-twenties, with the slightly bored expression of a man who had seen every kind of passenger in every kind of distress.

"Pardon?"

"The little boy." He gestured vaguely in the direction Louis had gone. "Third class. They wander up here sometimes. It's not allowed, technically, but—" He shrugged. "It's a big ship. Easy to get lost."

"Perhaps they should be helped, not turned away," Élodie said, more sharply than she intended.

The steward's expression flickered, then smoothed into professional neutrality. "Of course, Miss. We do our best. Though the ice warnings are keeping us busy enough tonight."

Ice warnings. Élodie felt a prickle along her spine. On the boat deck earlier, she had seen the icebergs—distant and beautiful, white ghosts on a dark horizon. Tom had gone pale at the sight. She had told herself not to be foolish. Icebergs were common in April. The ship was unsinkable, everyone said so.

Still.

"Ice warnings?" she repeated.

The steward waved a hand, dismissive. "Routine. Messages from other ships. There's ice ahead, but Captain's seen it all before. We're making good time. Nothing to worry about, Miss."

His smile was practiced. His eyes were not unkind.

But something in his voice sat wrong in Élodie's stomach. She thought of Tom, of the way he had looked at the ice field, of his murmured plan to "review emergency procedures" as if he were preparing for battle.

"Is it true?" she asked. "That there is more ice than usual?"

The steward's smile thinned. "I'm sure I wouldn't know about usual, Miss. I've only made this crossing twice before." He glanced at the sky, where the stars were being slowly swallowed by a thin, crystalline haze. "But I will say—I've never seen the water this calm. And they say calm water hides what's beneath."

He touched his cap and moved away, swallowed quickly by the press of passengers returning to their cabins as the cold deepened.

Élodie stood alone for a long moment. The locket was heavy in her pocket. She could feel the crack in its silver face, a fracture line running through something that had once been whole.

"Miss Marchand!"

Rose's voice cut through the fog of her thoughts. The girl came running, Tom a few paces behind, his face unreadable.

"I navigated past three icebergs and two old ladies with hats," Rose announced breathlessly. "I won."

"Of course you did," Élodie said.

But her eyes found Tom's, and she saw that he was looking at her with a new expression—something sharp, almost urgent. He had been talking to a man near the radio room. She hadn't noticed until now. A man in a green vest, with a thick moustache, now walking quickly away.

"Are you all right?" Tom asked, quiet enough that Rose couldn't hear.

Élodie thought of the steward's words. Calm water hides what's beneath. She thought of Louis's cracked locket, of Marie's face, of the third-class passengers who weren't supposed to wander up here.

"I'm fine," she said.

The lie tasted like salt.

She should warn him. She should tell Tom about the ice warnings, about the steward's careless dismissal, about the cold feeling that had settled into her bones like an uninvited passenger.

But Rose was tugging her sleeve, demanding another game, and the moment slipped away like water through fingers.

The stars above were vanishing one by one, swallowed by a haze that hung low over the sea like a held breath.