Chapter 19
NINETEEN
The water carries me further and further out, until the depths gradually lower, and my body starts dragging over the foliage.
Still, the swell is tumbling me, pushing me over the forest floor.
But it’s slowing down. And I snatch out for anything I can grab onto, reaching out over and over, until my bare, raw hand finally clutches a fistful of shrub.
I hoist myself against the swell and drag my weight upright until I’m on my knees.
Head to toe, I am drenched to the bone. That water spills from all over my shivering body.
I double over—and hack up everything I’ve swallowed. So much icy water regurgitates out of me that, by the time I can pause for a breath, my brain is pulsing in my head.
Dizziness washes over me.
I wait it out for a while before I can even manage stumbling to my feet.
My boots are unsteady beneath me—and I stagger right into a tree.
Thick moss pads the trunk.
I sag against it, my eyes only half open in the dark. Bare patches of bark scratch my cheek, but I hardly feel it, not through the raggedness of my insides.
My legs tremble under me.
They give out, and I sink down the tree to the shrub at its roots, my weight striking down on my knees.
The pool of water climbs up to my hips.
I kneel in it.
It should feel ice-cold, but I’m already soaked through—and I don’t feel much more than the static humming in my ear and head pulsating.
It’s dizzying, and it takes all my strength just to stop myself from crumpling into the water.
But I have to get up.
I’ve got to gather enough strength to shout out for Samick. I know he was calling for me—before the waves pushed me out.
Now, there’s too much distance.
I don’t hear anything but the water settling and trees groaning.
My heart stills.
A breath pins to my throat—
And I listen.
The silence of the blackout is disturbed. Water sloshes not far from where I kneel, and it sounds like legs wading through the flood.
Someone is moving around in the forest. Someone caught in the tidal wave—but in thick blackness, I can’t see who.
Samick flashes in my mind, and my insides flip with hope.
But then, that’s just a guess.
Less than that, it’s just hope. Delusion, maybe.
It might not be him.
He’d be calling out for me.
So it could be another fae, or a human captive, or a stray, or someone who just happens to be near the camp.
My throat thrums, ragged. It burns with the urge to call out his name.
It’s a risk. One that quietens me.
Then I hear it.
A whisper, a very human voice, muttering—
“Fuck—ow. Goddammit.”
A trudge of water sloshes. Like a boot is coming free from it.
Then a stumble.
The accent is undeniable. Canadian. And female.
It’s hoarse, followed by coughs, the same that are nesting in my chest, choking my breaths.
The wading is closing in. Dragging closer, step after step.
I’m as frozen as my prickled flesh, listening to every scrape of bark crunching in the dark.
I need to know who’s coming this way.
But I don’t know if I should call out. Or light my torch.
Samick took it. He picked the torch up from the foliage, then pocketed it.
I don’t know if he returned it to my bag…
My bag.
The one weighing down on me, the strap cutting into my shoulder, it’s not mine.
It’s the satchel.
Samick’s bag.
The breath comes choppy from my lips.
And my mind lurches.
I grabbed it when Samick was dragging me to the circle of fae in the middle of the camp and the tidal wave was reaching above the trees.
I tried to get my own bag—but I got the satchel instead, and that’s not a total loss. Turns out, I grabbed everything I need.
The food supplies. The map. Maybe the torch.
The radio…
The fucking CB radio.
Anxiety trickles through me. Because my mind jumps to running.
‘You not see friend again.’
I…
‘ísalf choose.’
I don’t want to leave. A part of me fights to stay. To call out for Samick. To follow him through the blackout and to his world.
But if I do, how can I know if I’ll see Bee again?
‘Samick keep you.’
Mika could be lying to me. Toying with me.
But what if she’s not?
To go back to him, knowing there’s the chance that he’ll take me to a place of darkness, a world I can’t navigate, and lock me up—
It’s a risk, a dangerous one.
I have to reunite with Bee. I have to know she’s safe.
A horrible ache spreads through my chest as I decide.
I’m going to run.
But I wait. I wait until I don’t hear the steps sloshing anymore.
Then I push up from the flood—and cringe.
Water runs down me, and it’s not quiet. But the coast should be clear. I haven’t heard anything in a minute or two. So, water rushing down me, I start to wade through the flood.
And I have no idea where I’m going.
One hand outstretched in front of me, the other reaches into the outer pockets of the satchel and digs around.
I test the outer pockets first, because that’s where he keeps the map and compass. Easy to grab.
And I’m right.
The familiar cool touch of the torch presses against my palm.
I knew it.
I knew he kept it.
I kick through the water.
And, as I go, I fish out the inhaler from my pocket and draw in a breath, another, another, another.
But I can’t go using it all up. I don’t know if there’s a backup in the satchel that I can use or if I’ll have to make this one last.
So I pocket it, even though my lungs feel serrated. Barely soothed at all by the puffs.
Guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.
I switch on the torchlight—and drag the beam around the dark.
It looks as bad as it felt.
Soaked tree trunks, puddles glimmering, fallen branches, firewood floating, a bag caught up in a tarp, and—
A face.
A cry of fright hits me. I stumble back into a tree, the white beam ghosting over the face pokes out from around a fallen branch of leaves.
The face is familiar.
Hazel eyes, dark straight hair, and bushy brows.
Connie.
A deer in the headlights, all she can see is a light beaming right at her. Wisps of it curling around the darkness.
She can’t see me.
I could keep it that way.
Slip out of here, turn off the torch, and wade through the flood into the dark. But I need the light. To read the map. And the compass. And to see where I’m going.
Besides, maybe it would be useful to have someone with me. Maybe it won’t feel so terrifying if there’s someone watching my back.
I sell myself on it. Quickly. Too quickly.
And I turn the torch on myself.
I stretch my arm out as far as I can, and the moment the light hits my face, I regret it. The light blinds me, sends stars speckling through my vision.
I drop the light to the puddle between us.
Beams ricochet off the surface.
I watch as her legs straighten from a crouch, and slowly, she creeps out from behind the fallen branch and its tangled leaves.
She looks like she’s been washed and rinsed out a dozen times. Every strand of dark hair is a straight curtain down the sides of her face, just glistening with water, droplets falling over her polyester parka.
Her breath mists. Choppy, with the cold burrowing into her.
‘It’s me,’ I could say. But it feels weird. Like, we don’t even know each other’s names. ‘It’s me,’ just feels too familiar.
Connie is struggling with finding words, too.
In the reflecting beams of light, in the soaked and battered forest, both of us drenched through, we stare at each other.
She gestures to the torch with a weighted hand, exhaustion pulling her muscles down.
Her voice is rougher than if it was dragged over a cheese grater, “You got another?”
Then her face twists—and she lifts her hand to her mouth right before a horrible gurgling cough jolts her, but each strike sounds sharper than a blade.
I shake my head. Strands of hair are stuck to my cheek.
My cold lips tremble around the words, “Just this one.”
She looks around, like she’ll find another water-resistant torch dangling from a branch or floating in the water.
The palest shade of blue is sheeted beneath her warm, tawny complexion.
The cold is eating away at her.
Eating away at us both.
And it’s only going to get worse.
We need move—and get into dry clothes.
The thought yanks me back to the alley with Bee and Emily…
I shut my eyes, tight, as though I can shove out the memory. And I can.
My tone is hollow, “You can follow me.”
Connie aims a tired, pinched look at me. “Back to them?”
“No.” The word is exhaled from me, like a breath of pure fatigue, and every muscle in me is just aching to collapse. “I know where to go.”
“Where?”
“To the bridge.”
She blinks once, then makes a face—somewhere between a frown and a grimace. “A bridge?”
I look at her from beneath my lashes. “A gateway, a portal, or whatever you want to call it. It’s our way out.”
Our way out of what, exactly, I don’t know.
Canada, yes. But the fae?
They’ll be on the other side, in Britain.
I have the map, I know where to go, and maybe I can figure out how to avoid the other units… but more than that? Reunite with Bee? Find a way to her light lands, not Dorcha?
The doubt is creeping in.
Because, even if I do, I’ll be bringing a stranger along with me.
Bee will welcome her—it’s in her nature to. She’s warmer, nicer, than I’ve ever been.
Bringing Connie isn’t the problem I need to dwell on.
It’s how fucking hard it is out there I need to be worried about.
I turn a look back into the darkness, as though I can see the unit… the safety of them. Well, the safety of Samick.
Maybe I should go back.
If I go back now, if I call out to him, then he won’t know—he won’t know I almost ran.
Connie’s hiss comes before a splash. “Fuck!”
I look over at her, too exhausted to share her panic.
The faint torchlight struggles in the dark, but it lands on what she’s falling back from…
A body.
Face-down, arms out, floating through the forest in the pool of water.
Human.
“The fae won’t be dead,” I tell her, but I’m not even sure she’s listening as she runs her hands down her face, like she’s burying a silent, ragged scream into her palms. “They don’t drown as easily as we do.”
I know from experience.
Thanks to shooting Dare into the lake, and he survived that.
I wouldn’t bet on any fae drowning in the tidal wave.
Connie’s whisper carries over the splashing water. She treads closer, “They’ll come after us.”
The light curves around the trees.
I turn on the spot, eyeing every possible direction—but it all looks the same.
I could pick a route, and it might lead us back to the unit.
“Hang on.” I dig into the satchel.
The map takes a moment too long to find. The compass is clipped to it.
I peel the bundle out… and my face pinches.
Nothing is wet.
Not the map, not the compass, not the interior fabric of the bag itself.
Even the torch.
The satchel is soaked on the outside—bone dry inside.
I could trip over that, let my mind run around in circles. But the map and compass are intact. And that’s all I need to worry about right now.
“Here.” I hand the folded parchment to Connie. “Hold it out.”
She does.
I lift the compass, aim the torch at the map, and study the paths.
Problem is, I don’t know where I am.
It takes me a while to figure out where the bay is. There’s more than one bay around here.
And maps aren’t my thing.
Not my generation—and I think I was battered around too much in the waves, because my brain is slower than I can afford it to be.
Samick will be looking for me.
I stand here, wasting time, as he searches the forest for me.
And Connie’s mate, too.
It’s a wonder they haven’t found us already.
But then, the water might have disorientated them just as it did me. Maybe it washed away our scents, and there are no tracks to trace, and that’s slowing them down.
I need Bee.
She would know what to do, where to go, and I would just follow her.
But then, doing all that led us into this mess in the first place, really. If she never went off to track the other unit back in Kelowna, if she just came with me to the hospital, Dare never would have seen her.
None of this would have happened if she’d just listened to me.
Even the whole trip to begin with.
I didn’t want to do this.
I didn’t want to accept the offer and visit my dad for his fucking vow renewals.
Didn’t care that he was paying for my flights, or that Bee saw that as an opportunity to have a holiday, and then it grew from there into a whole thing with the girls, and a whole entire caravan trip—
I just wanted to stay home.
I wanted Bee to come to the hospital at Kelowna, not go out and scout.
I wanted Bee to leave Emily behind in the trap—and if, for once, she’d just fucking listened to me, we might have escaped.
We wouldn’t be here in this mess to start with.
So maybe I don’t need Bee here with me to find my way in the dark.
Maybe I should listen to my gut, not hers.
But my gut says to find Samick.
To call out for him.
To wander back into his trap.
Pinning my hopes and survival to a fucking fae… That’s something I just can’t do.
Whatever has happened between us, whatever has changed over the time we’ve been stuck together, it doesn’t change that Bee is my number one.
No matter how pissed off I am with her for getting us into all of this mess, that’s my girl.
It’s Bee.
And I won’t, I can’t, let some fae take me away from her.
It would break her heart.
And I would never see her again…
The thought twists my insides.
And I’m glad that there’s not some icy fae warrior hanging around to look at me, to pick up on all my feelings.
For the first time in a long time, it feels private.
I drag the light over the map, following routes and terrain that spear off from the bay. I don’t have an exact path to follow—but generally, North-East from the forest around the bay leads to a town.
I’ve been there before.
It was after Dad cut our camping trip short, because he just couldn’t handle it anymore.
I snatch the map into my grip with the compass, and with the other hand, aim the torchlight in the North-East direction.
“This way.”
I start through the ankle-deep waters.
Connie follows.