Chapter 40
Sava flies faster than the previous times I rode on her back. The wind snatches water from my eyes.
Roiven is behind me, his mouth so close to my ear that I can hear him despite the heavy wind.
The witch explains magic as we fly. The way he describes using his power is not entirely different from channeling a Hellion, even if the source is different.
I only hope the lesson is not too little, too late.
Avreen’s red dragon flies beside us, Torain’s blue and Imili’s green a little ways back. If we fail here, it’s not just Aveinor that will suffer. The Tower will be without its ancients or its most powerful witches. Only the hatchlings and the warriors who stayed behind will be there to fight.
We fly through the afternoon and the night. Dawn rises, dimming the blue glow that guided us.
I’m napping against Roiven’s chest when I hear a sharp whistle.
Aria waves at us from the red dragon. I lift a hand up to shield my eyes from the sun as she swings one arm around, then pumps the other, then points down at a spit of black rock about a mile away.
From the corner of my eye I see Roiven wave his arm in response. Sava tilts downwards.
“We’re landing?” I ask. The wind snatches my words and I huddle lower.
“Just for a few minutes. We’re nearly there. It’s time to eat and stretch so we don’t arrive too fatigued for a fight.”
Sava plunges, snapping her wings out to slow her fall as we barrel toward the black rock below us.
We land so hard I feel it in my bones. Her wings snap shut a fraction of a second before the red dragon slams down beside her, right where her wings were.
The green comes in more slowly. Roiven crouches and has me climb onto his back again before he scales down.
“Let’s keep this quick,” Roiven says to the other witches below me.
The witches are all gathering to my right. Aria distributes food to them. The ocean is to my left, a hundred feet or so away.
I should go with Roiven to hear what’s happening. I’m part of this now. And while I don’t see how I can be a queen of people I’ve spent my life hunting, I can at least try to honor the trust Roiven has put in me.
But I can smell the ocean, taste the salt on my tongue. I hear it crash against the rocks. And I’ve spent so long being kept from it.
My feet move before the rest of me can make up its mind, carrying me toward the edge of the rocky island and the lapping waves. I pause to loosen the laces on my boots one-handed, toe them off, and strip my socks. The trousers, I don’t worry about.
I stand on the glistening rocks and let a wave roll up over my feet. Unlike the Tower’s cove, where the waves broke further out and only lapped against the shore, here they rise two or three feet up before curling and crashing down. The pale dawn sun paints the ocean beautifully.
Salt water makes me come alive, like fire searing through my veins. Yearning rises in me, from the foamy water lapping over my toes up to the roots of my hair. I take another step forward, and another, until the water rises and falls around my heels but I stay submerged.
There’s a presence in the water. A low, distant hum that tugs at my stomach.
He’s here. My familiar. My chin clamps tight as I fight the urge to cry. My eyes fall shut as I reach my mind outward.
It isn’t like at the Tower, where the only thing greeting me was empty silence. He isn’t talking to me, but I can sense him, somewhere nearby. He’s curled up north of here, past an isle that’s barely visible from where I stand. It’s just a smudge of gray.
“Hello?” I call quietly.
There’s no answer but emotion. This is different from Roiven’s feelings. There’s an inhuman edge, even stranger than Sava, more alien.
He’s upset at me. The water rocks back from the isle. The next wave starts rolling in. It builds, and builds, until it’s double the size of the others and still growing. My teeth grit tight and I stumble back out of the water as the wave towers up over me.
It crashes down in front of me and a flood of water surges up around my waist, yanking me into the ocean.
I dig my feet against the rocks. For a moment I lose touch of the bottom and I’m swept back toward the sea.
The water rises around my breasts, then up to my armpit, as my legs float up at an angle.
I swing my left arm through the water, fighting to right myself.
One heel touches the rocky bottom, then the other. The water recedes, falling back down around my waist, and I drag myself through the tide’s pull as my heart pounds. When I reach the dry rocks I stumble and collapse, shaking.
“Are you trying to kill me?” I ask.
There’s no answer, but I can feel a bolt of pain through the bond connecting us. The thought comes in ideas, not words. He felt my hatred before, and now I reject him again instead of letting the wave sweep me in. He never let me drown before.
If I don’t want to come see him, he won’t make me. The feeling of the familiar in my mind slides away.
“Wait,” I call. But he’s gone, silent like he was at the Tower. I stand and stumble back toward the water, my sopping clothes clinging to me. Planting my feet back in the swells, I reach for him, but it makes no difference that I’m touching the water. There’s no response, and no awareness.
I clench my jaw hard and stare in the direction I know he is. My heart aches.
“Cai,” Roiven calls. I turn over my shoulder and see him walking past Sava toward me. The witch breaks into a jog, quickly closing the distance. He’s holding a handpie. “We’re ready to… what happened to you?”
“My familiar. He’s out there.”
“You feel him?” Roiven’s eyes widen. He offers me the food, and I take it even though I’m too agitated to feel hungry.
“I need to go to him.” My voice trembles. I feel cold all over.
Torain might hate me, but he was right when he said a witches’ familiar was their split soul.
There’s a part of me missing, an emptiness where the kraken should be.
And I can’t just wait for the kraken to forgive me.
I need to go to him, and prove I’m worthy of the bond.
Prove I’m not just going to reject him again.
“But you can’t swim.”
The other riders are mounting up. Aria scales the side of Avreen’s dragon as Sava stares at us. Through the bond I can feel her impatience, and Roiven’s worry.
“I have to,” I explain. “He’s upset at me. I need to fix this, if I’m going to make any difference at all.”
Roiven nods slowly, his forehead furrowed.
“Alright,” he says. “I’ll come with you.”
I feel relieved for a moment at the idea of not doing this alone, but I shake my head just as quickly.
“You know you can’t.”
“You can’t swim. I’ll make sure you don’t…” Roiven starts.
“They need you,” I interrupt. “At Aveinor. You were strong enough to beat me back then, and I was the Empire’s best knight. If I can’t get him to talk to me, you’d be stuck out in the ocean away from everyone.”
Roiven squints out at the horizon, then looks down at me again. I can feel he’s uncomfortable.
“You’ll stay on the shore, then?”
“I think I have to go to him somehow.”
“But you can’t… Cai, this is madness.” Worry pulses out from him.
“He never let me drown before. I think I have to trust him if I’m going to ask him to help. Don’t you want me to try?”
“Of course I do,” Roiven says hoarsely. “But you have to understand why that would scare me. The hotspring was one thing. The ocean can take even good swimmers. I do believe in you, Cai, but why can’t I help?”
“Because your help is needed elsewhere.”
“Just…” Roiven drags a hand over his face. “Wait here, alright? And eat that.”
He strides away, shrugging his coat off his shoulders as he goes.
I sigh and take a bite. Is he stripping so he can swim after me?
I know I have no business being in the water by myself.
But what if I fail anyways, and Roiven is separated from everyone, in the middle of the ocean because I couldn’t reach my familiar?
True, Sava could come get him if the reapers haven’t killed us yet, but then she won’t be there to help Aveinor either.
Whatever slim odds their mission already has will be ruined entirely because I couldn’t do this on my own.
I finish the food quickly.
Roiven scales up Torain’s blue dragon, not Sava. I frown and turn back to the water, close my eyes, and reach with my mind.
“Please, won’t you just talk to me?” I call. “I didn’t know, alright? I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.” For an ancient being, I’m surprised the kraken cares at all whether I hate him.
The water laps over my toes, but I feel nothing. I draw a ragged breath as my chest goes tight. All Roiven’s hopes are wasted on me.
A minute later I see motion from the corner of my eyes. I turn to see Roiven jogging back with a strange object tucked under one arm. It’s the same black color as the jacket he was wearing, but it’s shaped more like a long, plush pillow.
“Here,” the witch says, and hands it to me. There’s a strap on one side. I blink and reach out to grab it. It’s lightweight, like there’s nothing inside it despite the inflated shape, and it feels like the same cloth he was wearing.
“What is this?”
“Torain crafted it from my coat. I used my power to trap air inside. It will stay like this unless you puncture it.”
“What?”
“It’ll float,” Roiven says. The witch’s jaw is tight.
“So if you’re determined to go without me, it can keep your head above water.
And if you’re trying to get somewhere, kick, alright?
Point the way you want to go, and get your legs behind you.
Hold your head up on that device. Don’t thrash.
Like this,” he holds up a hand, middle and pointer finger sticking out, and demonstrates with his fingers how I should move my legs.
“Swimming lessons,” I joke dryly as my heart thuds in my chest.
“Very poor ones,” Roiven mutters. There’s a storm behind his eyes, in his tense shoulders and the cut of his jaw. He doesn’t like any of this. “Are you sure I can’t come with you?”
“You know you’re needed elsewhere,” I tell him, my mouth dry.
I wish Roiven could come. I know he would in a heartbeat if I asked him to. He doesn’t want to turn and walk away. But he needs to reach Aveinor as quickly as he can. And I think, anyways, that I need to reach my familiar alone.
“If you need me, call me,” he urges. “No matter what. Alright? Don’t hesitate. Sava and I will come as fast as we can.”
He really shouldn’t promise that, but I nod, because I don’t think he’ll leave if I don’t. Roiven nods back sharply, jaw tight, and turns.
This might all go horribly. The ocean might kill me.
The Hellions might kill him. Odds are high we will never see each other again.
I know I barely know him, but the thought of losing him breaks my heart worse than the fear I might not survive.
His people need him. And if I live, I think I might need him too.
“Roiven,” I call. He turns. My heart’s pounding so hard I’m surprised it’s still in my chest. “Thank you for believing there was good in me. For getting that armor off me.”
“Don’t you dare thank me for that,” Roiven says. He closes the gap and takes my face in my hands.
He kisses me, standing there at the edge of the sea, the waves breaking over my feet.
Roiven’s lips move slowly against mine, gently testing, then harder, his tongue sweeping into my mouth like this is a final goodbye.
My knees buckle and I don’t want the kiss to ever end.
When Roiven steps back I’m blinking away tears.
“Just live, knight,” he whispers, and then he turns, and strides away, and I don’t have the strength to call after him.
He doesn’t look back. Sava bursts into the air, followed by the others, and I am alone on the rock isle, with the taste of Roiven on my lips and the Wild Seas dragging at my heels.