Chapter 22
Rheave
If there weren’t angry people waving daggers and swords in our direction, I’d probably enjoy the leap from the rooftop. Soaring through the air like I’m flying just for a moment. Hitting the water with a chilly splash.
The current of liquid consumes me, rushing against my skin and into my clothes and hair. The cold prickles through my nerves in an invigorating way.
Then my limbs push at the water, and my head breaks through the surface. A marshy smell fills my nose, with a slightly rancid note that suggests the river isn’t as clean as the streams we drank from during our many travels across the countryside.
Urgent shouts bombard my ears. I grip my bow against my side and blink the moisture from my eyes to see better.
Several figures in red shirts have charged to the edge of the riverbank, which is built up in a stone wall a few feet above our heads. In the water around me, my companions bob.
My gaze latches on to Ivy’s reddish-blond hair first, turned darker than usual by the wetness. She’s swimming with the flow of the water, her slim, pale limbs rising and falling a few arm-lengths ahead of me.
Just beyond her, Casimir and the robed man from the temple sway in the current, clutching the poor victim of the scourge sorcerers between them. Of course—a man with no arms can’t swim.
Petra’s dark head shows against the rippling gray surface near them. She’s rolled onto her side as she kicks at the water, her head tipped to focus on the boat that’s just a few paces farther down the river.
Our soldier stands at the side of the curved wooden structure, hunched so he’s ready to snatch Petra’s hand and haul her into the vessel when she reaches him. He’s meant to do the same for all of us, but with a flick of my gaze, I estimate that I can propel myself high enough to grasp the edge of the boat all on my own.
I haul my limbs through the flowing water—and an arrow humming with magical energy soars past me from the bank toward the boat.
The projectile slams into the boat’s hull. I know from my own practice that a normal arrow would simply dig its head into the wood and hang there without doing more damage than marring the surface.
But this is clearly not a normal arrow.
With whatever magic the scourge sorcerers have cast on it, the arrow splits right through the boards. A crack opens around the point where it’s penetrated, straight down to the surface of the water.
And the river gushes in.
The soldier gives a bark of alarm and turns toward the hole. Even in my limited knowledge of boats, I can see there’s no patching it.
Then another arrow whirs through the air and plunges into the soldier’s chest.
This time, it’s Petra who cries out. The soldier staggers and crumples backward in the already sinking watercraft.
A jolt of urgency races through my veins. Our escape plan has just been destroyed—and the scourge sorcerers are going to keep shooting at us.
I spare one worried glance Ivy’s way and then grope for my bow. Maybe I can push myself high enough in the water to launch an arrow of my own. If I can just get into the right position…
As I wrestle with the weapon against the current, I twist to face our attackers. They vanish from view for a moment as I sweep past the capsizing boat. I grope behind my shoulder toward my quiver?—
And my other arm slams into the stone wall along the river. My elbow shudders, and my fingers spasm apart.
The bow swirls away from me, caught in the gushing water. I spin around the bend I didn’t realize was coming.
The currents shift, whipping me faster along. I surge past Ivy so swiftly that I don’t have time to grasp at her.
Heaving myself to the side, I manage not to collide with Casimir’s trio. My hands scoop uselessly at the water.
Petra lifts her head all the way above the surface to gasp out an order. “We still have to get to the grate! We can leave the same way. Just swim!”
Just swim. Just swim.
But we can’t move through the water as effectively as the boat would have. We don’t have the shelter of its wood, as poor a shield as that turned out to be against the scourge sorcerers’ weapons.
A fresh volley of shouts rings out on either side of us. More red-shirted figures appear on both banks, having run ahead or caught word from their colleagues.
A woman on the farther bank draws back her bow. Is she aiming at Ivy?
My pulse hitches with panic. The image flashes before my eyes of the arrow smacking into Ivy’s skull the way the other did the guard’s chest.
No.
I flail at the churning water, but I can’t push myself any closer to her. My waterlogged clothes drag at my limbs.
She’s too far beyond my reach.
I can’t let them hurt her. My Ivy. My little vine.
The arrow arcs through the air—and hits the water just shy of Ivy’s shoulder. Instead of relief, more panic surges through my body.
It was so close. So much closer than I am.
They could murder my precious woman right in front of me.
I lift my arm to try to hurl some of my crackly magic at our attackers, even though I’m not sure how much damage I can do from this distance. But the shifting currents throw my aim off-kilter.
The sizzling light I fling out smacks into the riverbank instead, slashing black streaks across the stones.
Another arrow flies at us, and another. We swing around a second curve in the river.
For a second, I find myself spun around, unable to even see Ivy.
As I claw my way through the water to face her again, a thicker fear wraps around my chest, squeezing my lungs.
If we can’t make it out of this—if I lose her—all the pain that burned inside me after Lothar took her will wrack me again. Worse than being pierced with a hundred arrows.
I don’t know—I can’t even wrap my head around the thought— What am I supposed to do?
How can I save either of us?
Watching that man hold a knife to her throat the other night was bad enough. At least I could see right away how to blast him away from her.
Now I’m as caught up as she is. Nothing I can do is making a difference.
Ivy’s mouth dips below the level of the water. She sputters and waves her hand toward me. Whatever she says is lost in the swell of desperation that’s engulfed my body.
I stiffen and sink. My legs jerk automatically, sending me back to the surface with a sputter of my own.
Petra shouts something too, from off to my left. Casimir glances back at me, his brow knitting.
One of the men on the bank hurls a knife at Ivy’s head. She flinches to the side, but a protruding bit of its hilt smacks her temple.
My mouth opens with a wail of protest building in my throat, and her gaze snags on mine, startlingly blue compared to the murky water. Finally, her voice penetrates the haze in my head.
“The grate!” she calls out. “It’s time!”
Understanding snaps into place.
I have to carry out my part in the plan—even if we were in the boat, I was meant to fulfill this task.
My fears blotted my duty right out of my mind.
With a ragged breath and a surge of shame, I yank myself around purposefully. Just a few boat-lengths away loom the thick city walls—and the bridge that arches over the river with a steel grate beneath to prevent covert travel by this route.
The opening rises only a few feet above the water—we’d have had to hunch low in the boat to pass through the space beneath the stone arch. That won’t matter now that we’re in the water, but we still need it to open.
If we hit the bars while they’re still closed, we’ll be easy targets for our pursuers.
I shove all of my attention toward the metal structure—toward the lock that secures the grate—and thrust my hands forward.
The first smack of my magic warps the metal but doesn’t break it.
As I speed ever closer, I will another, sharper blast of the searing energy out of me.
The lock melts away, along with a significant chunk of the deadbolt it held in place. I tip myself backward and slam into the bars feet first, aiming one final surge of magic at the hinges on the other side.
The strips of metal sizzle, and the grate pops off. It rushes beneath the bridge ahead of me, tugged by the river’s current.
I right myself in time to see my companions gliding through the opening after me. Yells of frustration carry from the other side, but the scourge sorcerers aren’t going to follow us into the water—and they can’t jump right over the wall.
They’ll have to dash around to the nearest gate on the land. We can be far away from the city by the time they reach the river.
As we bob along in it, the waterway flows past a few farms and into a patch of forest we surveyed ahead of time. The log the now-dead soldier and I heaved most of the way into the current still protrudes from the bank where we left it.
I catch a branch and whirl around to help pull Petra over to safety. Casimir and the devout work their way along the soggy wood to the shore, pulling the sacrificial accomplice with them.
I stay in the water until Ivy reaches me. She extends her arms to stop herself against the log, but I wrap my arm around her first.
The question spills out shakily. “Okay, Little Vine?”
She peers at me, no mark on her except the start of a bruise where the knife hilt knocked her temple. “Just glad to be out of there. Are you okay?”
I push my mouth into a smile. “I am if you are.”
As true as that is, my heart thumps heavily against my ribs as we slosh to the shore and tramp through the forest to the waiting horses we hid. Toast snorts in greeting as if he’s as relieved to see Ivy returning as I am.
She is okay. But not thanks to me.
I almost put her in even more danger when I froze up in the river.
What’s wrong with me? Was that paralyzing mix of fear and pain some effect of my human body that no one thought to warn me about?
We set off for the temple as fast as the horses will run, the devout holding his armless companion tight against his chest to ensure his balance. An ache of desire and shame courses from my throat down to my gut—wishing I could hold Ivy like that, wondering if I deserve it after I nearly failed her so badly, hating that I can’t say I do.
The journey passes in a blur of tangled emotions. When we reach the temple stable, I slide off my mount’s back, planning to gather Ivy to me and hold her until everything inside me settles down again.
But Casimir grasps my arm first.
“Rheave,” the courtesan says in a quiet voice, “we should give the ladies a chance to wash off the muck of the river and the road on their own time. Why don’t we get ourselves cleaned up too?”
Something about his tone makes me think this diversion is important to him. He might know something I don’t.
When I look at Ivy again, one of those unsettling twinges that’s both devotion and horror shoots through my stomach. I don’t really know what I want right now anyway.
So I follow Casimir through the buildings to one of the temple’s bathing rooms, collecting a change of clothes along the way. My river-drenched tunic and trousers have stiffened against my skin.
From what I understand, Elox isn’t concerned about sensual satisfaction like Ardone, Casimir’s patron godlen. But the godlen of peace and healing does care about comfort. While the bathing room is small and plain, it’s filled with warmth, with ample towels stacked on a shelf. A lingering scent of lavender washing oil hangs in the air.
Rather than moving to one of the shower stalls right away, Casimir sits down on the smooth white bench. He motions for me to join him.
“Something’s been bothering you for a while now,” he says as I sink down at the opposite end. “You haven’t been back to your old self even after Ivy returned to us. I’m guessing your disorientation in the river is connected to that problem.”
An embarrassed heat prickles up over my face. I suppose if any of my companions were to guess at my feelings, it makes sense it’d be the man who’s so in tune with emotions and relationships. At least there’s no judgment in Casimir’s tone.
Maybe he can help me untangle the muddle I’ve gotten into.
I look down at my empty hands. “It doesn’t make sense to me. The feelings don’t fit together.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it, and I’ll see what I can make of them?”
I inhale deeply. “I care so much about Ivy. I don’t know… I don’t know if I’d still want to keep this body and live a sort-of human life if she wasn’t in it. Just being around her makes me so happy. I think that’s what you would call love, isn’t it? I love her.”
The words spark a flare in my chest that’s both warm and sharp. I know they’re true before Casimir even replies.
“You’re the best judge of your own emotions,” he says. “But from that description, I’d agree.”
I grimace. “But isn’t love supposed to be good? It’s supposed to bring joy and make your life brighter and… It should be those things. Why would it hurt me too?”
Casimir rests a gentle hand on my back. “How does it hurt you?”
I grapple with my tangled feelings before I can wrestle a coherent explanation out of them. “When Lothar took Ivy—when we found out what he’d made her do, how she’d had to hurt herself, and we didn’t know if we’d be able to rescue her—I’ve never been in pain like that, not even when I’ve been injured in this body. And I couldn’t get away from it. There was nothing to heal or bandage. It wrapped around me from the inside, like… like I was trapped in the pain.”
My voice drops. “It reminded me of when the scourge sorcerers first stuffed me into this body, when it was still clay and I couldn’t move it. When I really was trapped.”
“Ah.” Casimir’s voice stays soft. “That must have been very frightening.”
“Yes.” I swallow thickly. “But it shouldn’t matter now. She’s here. She’s safe. I just—I was worried about her, and then I remembered how it would feel if I lost her, and all of that together was too much for a moment.”
“That’s understandable,” Casimir says. “Especially when you’re still getting used to human emotions. The rest of us have had our whole lives to make peace with the interplay between joy and pain.”
I glance sideways at him. “What do you mean?”
“Opposites always go together.” He takes back his hand to interlace his fingers in demonstration. “You can’t have happiness without sadness, peace without violence, love without heartbreak. They’re equal sides of the same coin. One might dwindle to give the other more prominence, but circumstances can always flip it back. And that’s how it should be. The joyful parts wouldn’t feel as powerful if we could take them for granted.”
That’s what my old existence was like. Nothing meant particularly more than anything else, all just minor blips in my awareness. It does feel dull, looking back on my past experiences now.
I rub my face. “I don’t want to feel anything bad about loving Ivy. I don’t want to be afraid of caring about her. I don’t want to hold back from loving her more… but the more she matters to me, the more it could hurt. How do you ‘make peace’ with that?”
Casimir lifts his shoulders in a subtle shrug. “To some extent, we don’t. That’s why we fight so hard to protect the things we care about—which I think is a virtue, not a flaw. But it’s also in how you look at it. Yes, in some ways, love is a cage that chains us to the person we’ve fallen for. Doesn’t it also open up so many possibilities that were once closed to us? How many things have you discovered or experienced that you wouldn’t have if you didn’t care about Ivy?”
The question sends a flood of images through my mind. The feel of Ivy’s cheek against my fingers, the brilliance of her smile. The exhilaration of riding alongside her, the rush of pride when she turns to me for comfort. The heady pleasure of our bodies merging.
There’s a whole world inside this love. That’s why I don’t want to lose it.
Will I really, though, no matter what happens? We’ll still have been together; I’ll still have meant so much to her and her to me.
No one can erase what we’ve already shared.
The lingering ache melts away with that realization. I smile at Casimir. “Thank you. I hadn’t been thinking about it in that way.”
The courtesan chuckles. “Very few of us, even those of us practiced at dealing with emotions, react perfectly when someone we love is threatened. I’ve had my share of conflicted impulses. It’s all part of this bizarre but wonderful existence you’ve found yourself in. Of course, if the rest of us have any say about it, Ivy will make it through any danger that faces her for a long time to come.”
I push to my feet, buoyed by my new perspective and a rush of determination. “Yes, she will. And I want to get to feel everything else I can with her, even if there’ll be parts that hurt too.”