“There are whole worlds outside of what you know, aren’t there?” she pressed. “This isn’t the end at all.”

The water beyond the grate ran clearer, the floor smooth brick interrupted with rusted train tracks. Numbered doors dotted the walls at intervals. Chev eyed them suspiciously, as if they would burst open and pour forth an army of angry sunwalkers.

The water grew lower and lower, disappearing through invisible cracks, till it ran in isolated rivulets. Beth’s cardigan trailed loose strings into it like trolling lines from a hungry vessel. The tunnel echoed with gurgling—the sound of water falling. Belle had begun to squint, and I realized that the tunnel was growing lighter.

The floor sloped to a low dip where the last water trickled into a grated drain. Chev stopped.

He crouched over the drain and pressed his face against its darkness. “Here is our path,” he said.

No one responded.

“Give me the trowel.” He held a gnarled hand out to Beth. She handed him the tool and stepped back.

“Daylight bathes the understreets. We must go under again. Under-under. The Kindred belong beneath it all, where rare flowers grow—where they’re appreciated and not taken for granted.” He threw himself against the bricks, driving the trowel between them.

“Or maybe . . . ” Beth looked over her shoulder at the growing glow at the end of the tunnel. Her eyes flashed a small sliver of blue. “Maybe we should keep going.”

Chev tossed a loose brick over his shoulder into the shrinking puddle behind us.

“We could teach them, up above. Show them. We don’t love small flowers any less for being in the light. That’s what makes us Kindred.” Beth moved toward Chev.

Chev panted and heaved at another brick. The edge of the grate showed through the old grout like an exposed ribcage. He laughed with what little air he could draw, but his smile faltered.

“Maybe you’re right, child,” he said.

Belle and I looked to each other. She pulled Bracken close.

“You were right about the Last Drain, after all.” The fight had gone out of his voice.

“What about it?” Beth took a step closer to Chev, her toes edging up to where he lifted the groaning metal from the stones.

“That wasn’t the Last Drain.” He swung his legs into the dark hole. He handed the trowel back to Beth. “This is.”

He vanished into the dark, falling with the water that spilled over its edge, its droplets glowing like bright eyes in the rising glow from the end of the tunnel. We never heard him land.

***