Chapter 39 #2
Her hand flew to her chest. The breath Uisce had lent her was gone, taken with the spirit, that final mercy spent and vanished into the dark.
She pushed off from the old paving and fought upward, slow at first, her body heavy in the deep water, her cloak dragging at her like hands from below.
Then panic took hold. Her legs kicked harder.
Her free arm clawed through the dark. The dagger was still in her fist, and she trapped it against her hip before it could slip away, fingers cramping around the hilt as her body remembered the oldest command it knew.
Up.
Her lungs convulsed.
A thin stream of bubbles tore from her nose before she could stop it, and the loss sent terror flooding through her so violently her limbs faltered. The surface did not seem any closer. The darkness only widened around her.
Then, a current brushed her elbow.
The touch came again, deliberate this time, urging her upward. Another pressed at the small of her back. Another along her ribs. Small guidings. Small mercies. A familiar Draoth—and Uisce still lingering in the water itself, in the river’s body, in the old deep ways of it—just as she always would.
Grief struck Elara then, harder even than the need for air.
Three Sídhe had died to open the gate that had brought her into this world.
Three souls she had never known, whose names had not been given to her, whose lives had nonetheless been spent so that she and the others might live.
She had carried them for weeks like a stone she did not know where to lay down.
And now a spirit older than courts, older than kingdoms, older than the realms had gone the same way.
For one gate.
How many more were there?
The question came to her just as the light did.
She broke the surface with a ragged, fractured gasp.
Air tore into her lungs and she coughed, then again, harder, until something dark came up with it and struck the water below.
Blood. It spread out in thin red skeins around her as she spat and dragged in another breath, only to double over with another cough.
Then hands were on her, hauling her up onto the stone, and the moment she was clear of the water, fingers were at her face, pushing the soaked hair from her eyes, lifting her chin, searching.
Reynnar’s gaze moved over her franticly, his Draoth followed after it in a low, urgent sweep, passing over her again and again. His fingers shook where they held her.
Elara caught his wrists. “I’m fine,” she said, though the words came broken and wrecked. “It’s done. The gate is closed.”
But his hands did not leave her face. They stayed there, trembling, unwilling to release what they had just regained.
“Aoife followed you down,” he said, his voice roughened to something almost unrecognizable. “Her Draoth stayed with you the whole way. In case you needed her.”
Elara looked past him.
Aoife stood braced against the bridge stone with one hand flat to it, her head bowed, her breathing measured in slow, careful pulls.
She was shaking—still not fully restored from what Osin took from her.
When she lifted her face, her eyes were emptied of all but effort, like a lamp burned to its last drop of oil.
“We have to move,” she said. “Runners have been out for ten minutes. The guard will already be on its feet.”
They burst from beneath the bridge in a tight cluster, Aoife leading and Eamon closing the rear, while Reynnar and Caelion kept Elara near the center, bearing more of her weight than she could properly carry herself.
By the time they reached the stairs, the street above the canal was already changing.
Wardlight flared along the upper bridge.
Figures gathered at the corner. Somewhere ahead, the Naidiryn crest flashed bright against the dark. One voice rang out. Another answered.
Aoife veered left into a narrow alley without breaking stride.
Elara could not stop coughing. Blood came with it, dark and hot against her mouth. At the last turn, Reynnar abandoned the pretense that she could keep pace and lifted her fully into his arms.
Odhrán’s house rose ahead through a blur of slanting streets she scarcely saw. They entered through the back. The door slammed shut behind them. Aoife dropped the bar into place.
“What in the deep—”
Odhrán was already on his feet in the hall. Behind him, the healer stood over Tieran’s still body laid out on a cot. Odhrán’s gaze went first to Elara, then Reynnar, then to the blood on her face and down the front of her clothes. At once, his expression hardened.
“Out,” he said. “All of you. Garden. Now.”
They spilled into the back in a rush of wet shoes and strained breath. Reynnar lowered Elara onto a bench. Caelion pressed a cloth into her hands.
Odhrán looked at her once more, then at the rest of them.
“I have just heard that Uisce rose from the canal,” he said.
His voice was not loud. That made it worse.
“A thing that has not happened in generations. By morning, every Sídhe in this city who saw will know that a Tuatha or blood-royal or something near enough is here. The guard is already moving. The Concordium will have its scryers on the canals before the hour turns.”
“Then we leave,” Reynnar said at once. “Tonight. Before the city closes.”
Caelion shook his head. “The ward-gates will be sealed already. Roads, bridges, tunnels—everything. You heard the horns. They’re closing the district.”
“Then we go below,” Aoife said. “The aqueducts—”
“Eilíara can’t swim, she can barely stand.”
“Then we cut our way through,” Eamon said.
Odhrán gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “Through half the city guard? With her coughing blood?”
“Enough.”
Reynnar knelt before Elara, one knee sinking into the damp earth, and lifted a hand to her face. His fingers turned her chin gently toward him. “Can you open a rift?”
Her spine locked—she had not expected it. Not the question. Not the way he asked it. His eyes held hers, and beneath the fear—beneath the tight-held terror of the night, of the blood, of nearly losing her and then finding her again—there it was.
Unwavering trust.