Chapter 16
Julian POV
My blade slipped through my suddenly numb fingers. My attention snapped forward as my senses tingled with the distant echo of roaring waves in my head.
“What’s wrong now?” Damen, ever the invader of privacy, asked as he rifled through Miles’s food bag. “You know, you need to stop freaking out every time Bianca’s out of your sight. Do you need some pointers for relaxation? I picked up a few new techniques—”
“Something’s off,” I muttered, picking up my blade and forcing a calm I didn’t feel. Damen had been getting on my last nerve this whole trip, but I usually could ignore him. However, the uneasy sensation gnawing at my gut was harder to dismiss.
Damen looked up, a smirk fading as he noted my expression. “It’s not like Miles is going to hurt her.”
“She might hurt him, though,” Titus piped up, half-joking as he leaned in, interested in the turn of conversation.
“How?” I countered, trying not to let my worry bleed through too much. Bianca was gentle at her core and only dreamed of hurting others when absolutely necessary. “Bianca isn’t violent,” I stated more firmly than I intended, meeting their bemused looks with a frown. “She’s not.”
I looked in the direction where Miles and Bianca had vanished and continued to fight back my rising anxiety.
“ Fine. ” Damen sighed. “Have it your way. We’ll check on them, but you can deal with Miles’s complaining. I’m not taking the blame.”
“Meh,” I scoffed and wiped my thighs. “He can’t do anything to me.” I touched my elbows, brushing my fingertips over the latch to release the blades strapped against the inside of my forearms.
The witch was my Controller, but for now, he was harmless enough. This suited me perfectly fine for the moment.
However, protecting Bianca was my priority. I had things to do before she could see the real me. I cherished our bond, yet hiding my darker self was becoming more challenging.
As we neared the river, Titus broke into a sprint, his urgency mirroring my unease. I followed quickly, my instincts sharpening as possible scenarios flashed through my mind.
We emerged onto an empty riverbank.
“Bianca?” Damen’s shout echoed over the area. He circled the bank like a hawk while Titus made a beeline for the water’s edge.
“Do you hear them?” I asked, following the dragon. His intense gaze didn’t waver as he examined the mud-caked roots and fallen branches.
“This was recently moved,” he said, his expression sharp. His nostrils flared as he strolled along the waterline, approaching the fallen trunk, barely held between two large boulders. My heart sank as he pushed lightly at it with his foot, and the tree wobbled precariously.
“They were both on here,” he said.
“On that?” Damen asked, joining us at last. “Why?”
“Who knows? I’m sure they had a good reason.” I pursed my lips, glancing toward the other side of the water. The branches barely touched the opposite shore. “They might have gone the whole way across.”
“Or they could have fallen in,” Damen added.
My chest tightened as I took in the roaring rapids.
They would be seriously hurt then—or even dragged down below.
Bianca couldn’t swim well, and Miles wasn’t strong enough to protect them.
I stepped further into the river, letting the cool water swirl around my ankles, then my knees.
I closed my eyes and extended my senses into the water’s depths, reaching for any trace of them.
The river responded to my presence, currents whispering against my skin. I sensed a subtle disturbance, a shift in the water’s flow. Miles had tried to use his abilities to forge a path.
But, of course, he’d failed.
I barely registered Titus shifting into his dragon form. My focus remained tethered to the faint clues hidden in the flow.
He walked into the water, stopping once it was as high as his chest, and peered downstream.
Damen knew better than to talk—as did I. Titus, in his dragon form, had much better senses than a human.
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath, and my lungs ached by the time he turned back to us. He swiftly returned to his human form beside me. “I don’t hear her. They’re not here.”
“You mean them ?” I corrected. “But at least we know they’re alive,” I added; nothing indicated our bond had been severed.
This was no time to panic.
“No, I mean her .” Titus moved to the shore and began to follow the river downstream.
A boulder jutted into the water, and Titus, spotting it, climbed over the top of the stone.
“I should be able to hear her. We should follow the river,” he said, pointing after it.
“But we’re not going to have a scent to chase. ”
“Will you stop posing like that and put some clothes on?” Damen snapped. “And obviously, they’d go downstream.” He turned to me and added, “Let’s grab what we can. They’ll need supplies once we meet up.”
“Didn’t you pack your satellite phone?” I stalked after him, hiding my hands under my sleeves.
There was nothing to fight now, but knowing my weapons were close helped me concentrate.
Panicking wouldn’t solve anything; remaining calm and collected would be the most helpful thing.
Damen was already looking for a reason to lash out, and I had to control my baser instincts.
It wouldn’t be helpful to antagonize Damen.
Maybe.
“We should call Bryce,” I added lightly. “He’ll probably want to help.”
The onmyoji froze mid-step and looked back at me. “ What ?”
“They need to know,” I reasoned, stepping past him. “Besides, the more people to help search, the better. Miles should be able to steer them through the rapids.” Hopefully , I added mentally. “So they’ll probably be okay. But can you imagine what Bryce will be like if we don’t tell him?”
He would never let us see her again, and Damen was forgetting that, right now, the fae had the upper hand.
“Who the fuck cares what he thinks?” Damen snapped.
“I’m calling him.” I stalked toward the camp. “I refuse to put Bianca at risk because of your ridiculous pride.”
“What do you mean you’ve lost Bianca ?” Bryce’s curt voice cut through our connection. As I suspected, he sounded less than pleased. “How do you lose a person?”
“They’ve done what ?” Brayden’s question echoed in the background.
“Miles is missing, too,” I reminded him.
I knew that being the one to break the news to Bryce was a bad idea.
But with Titus not being on good speaking terms with the fae, and Damen and Bryce’s history, I was the only person available to hold back the impending fae implosion.
“They were alone together, and now they’re gone. ”
“Don’t give me that shit,” Bryce continued, voice seething. “Miles can take care of himself. I want to know where the fuck you put my sister.”
“We didn’t put her anywhere.” I watched Damen and Titus hike ahead, their attention riveted to the water.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll keep walking along the river until we run into them.
They’re bound to be here somewhere. I just thought it might be faster if you helped.
Maybe start at the other end of the park? We can meet in the middle.”
“Why do you say that?” Bryce, typically slow to catch on and often oblivious to subtleties, seemed unusually sharp today. There was an accusation in his question as he asked, “Are you telling me you let my sister get swept downstream? She can’t swim.”
“I warned them,” Brayden shouted in the background, presumably speaking to someone else. “I said, one hair .”
“She’ll be fine,” I replied, trying to reassure myself more than him. “We’ll find her eventually.” But he was right. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d been there.
Damn river.
“Tell Damen to summon Kiania,” Finn suggested, and I realized that, at some point, Bryce had put me on speaker. “She should be able to find Bianca from anywhere.”
Wonderful. Now I was stuck talking to the bespectacled catastrophe.
“He did.” I fought to keep the venom from my voice. I could be civil with him, for now. “Kiania said something was blocking their connection, Captain Obvious.”
“He’s talking to Finn now,” Damen was not-so-quietly whispering to Titus. “Payback’s a bitch. He never should have called.”
“That’s not a good sign,” Finn continued.
No, really . The irritation was building up inside me. But, hopefully, I could keep myself composed a bit longer.
Bianca POV
“What were you doing in the water earlier?” I asked, watching Miles place the matches aside and tend to the small, growing fire.
I had been thinking about his actions during the ‘rescue’ for a while. These thoughts lingered even as he settled me into a corner of the cave and searched the entrance for something to keep us warm.
There’d been a stack of dried wood along with the matches already in the cave, which suggested that someone else might have camped here before us.
At my question, Miles paused, halfway to standing, and looked at me. “In the water?” he asked, his forehead creasing with confusion.
“When you jumped in after me?” I pressed.
He had picked up a roll of dark brown fabric and was absently running his fingers over it. Glancing up at me, he hesitated, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his face. “Oh…” He faltered, then met my gaze firmly. “I was trying to control it.”
My interest piqued. “You can control water?”
But Julian was Water…
“No,” Miles corrected quickly, shaking his head. “At least, not the water itself. I was trying to influence the earth nearby to make a dam, of sorts. I thought I could mitigate the water’s force so we could escape.”
I furrowed my brow, not fully grasping his meaning.
“But I have to be confident,” he continued, his voice tinged with frustration. “That’s why I suck at it.”
My stomach dropped at his desolate expression. I hadn’t brought this up to make him sad. “I suck at it too,” I offered, scooching closer to the fire. “I’m not confident at all.”