Chapter 21 The River Remembers
The river wouldn’t be the answer.
This wasn’t even the right river. The note hadn’t meant this shallow strip of water churning under the city bridge, littered with beer bottles and shopping carts rusting in the shallows.
I knew that somewhere in the rational part of my brain, the part that wasn’t burning with fever or screaming with grief, fear, and exhaustion.
But rational had left the building hours ago, maybe days ago. I couldn’t tell anymore.
Everyone was gone. Every person I trusted had either disappeared or been locked away, and the ones still here were feeding me half-truths that tasted like ash.
My body ached with fever that made reality shimmer at the edges. My thoughts scattered like leaves in the wind, unable to hold onto anything solid. I didn’t remember walking here, but I found myself at the riverbank, the October air biting at my skin, unable to retrace my steps.
The note, written in my own handwriting, had said: Seek the river, seek the truth.
So I did. I had nowhere else to go. It was the only clue I had left. Some part of me whispered that water held answers. My skin felt too tight, too hot, like I was being cooked from the inside out. Sweat plastered my hair to my neck despite the chill.
The water would help cool me down and wash away whatever was trying to crawl into my skin and take root.
I kicked off my shoes and rolled my jeans to my knees, my hands shaking. The bank sucked at my bare feet, damp earth clinging as if it were trying to hold me back. I stepped into the water anyway.
The cold hit my feet first, so icy it felt like fire against my skin. I gasped, almost stumbled back. The fever made everything feel wrong, but I kept going anyway, wading deeper, the current tugging at my legs with increasing insistence.
The world shifted.
At first, I thought it was just the fever, the way the water looked darker, deeper than it should be. The way the city sounded seemed to muffle and fade, as if someone were turning down the volume on reality.
Then the riverbed beneath my feet changed—no longer mud, but stone, worn smooth by millennia of water flowing over it.
The murky brown water turned black like obsidian.
It appeared endless and deep enough to swallow worlds.
Thick mist coiled above the surface, swallowing the world around me.
The temperature dropped further, like standing at the edge of nothing and feeling it stare back.
On the far bank, jagged rocks jutted out in formations that couldn’t be natural. They were carved, marked with spirals that made my stomach turn when I tried to follow their patterns with my eyes.
This wasn’t the same river—this was the Styx. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did.
And I wasn’t alone.
A figure stood on the far bank, half-hidden in mist and shadow so thick it seemed to absorb light rather than cast it.
I could feel its gaze, heavy as stone, pulling at something deep inside me.
Recognition without understanding, knowledge buried so deep in my bones I’d forgotten it existed.
My body swayed toward it before my mind could catch up.
The water lapped at my thighs now, deeper than it should be, and the current pushed me forward.
Come home, something whispered. Not spoken aloud, inside my chest, wrapping around my ribs and echoing in the hollows of my bones. Come home…
My feet moved without conscious thought, drawn by that voice, and the certainty that on the other side of the river was everything I’d been searching for. The figure raised one hand toward me, beckoning—
“Melanie!”
The voice cracked through the mist, and suddenly the figure wasn’t alone. Another shape moved, charging through the mist with desperate speed.
The vision tore. Reality stuttered, then fractured—
My legs buckled, the current surged against my knees, and the river swallowed me whole.
Ice clamped down my throat as I plunged under.
The world dissolved into black water and panic.
I kicked my feet uselessly, unsure of which way was up as the current carried me.
My back struck something sharp, and all the air rushed from my body.
My lungs seized, and my vision swam. My fist clenched around the note, the paper already dissolving against my palm.
Through the chaos of water and terror, I saw him standing on the bridge above.
His hands were tucked in his pockets like he was watching a theater production, not a drowning.
Cyrus’s lips curved in the faintest smile.
Not cruel or gleeful, just… clinical, like he was watching an experiment unfold exactly as predicted.
Our eyes met through water, and I knew he wasn’t going to help. He was just going to watch because if the river claimed me before I was ready, then that was useful information too.
A strong hand caught my arm.
Arms locked around my chest, hauling me upward with force that drove the air from my lungs. My head broke the surface, and I gasped, water burning as it tried to drag me back under.
“I’ve got you!” Kian’s voice broke through the roaring in my ears. “Hold on—just hold on to me!”
I could only cough and shake while he kicked us toward shore, one arm holding me like iron, refusing to let me go. With blurry eyes, I glanced back towards the bridge. Cyrus was gone as though he had never been there to begin with.
He half-dragged, half-carried me onto the muddy bank. I collapsed forward, coughing so hard I thought I would vomit my lungs up. Water streamed from my nose and mouth, choking me. Kian’s hands were everywhere, checking over me frantically.
“Breathe,” he commanded, voice shaking. “Melanie, breathe—”
I tried, but my chest and nose burned. After several moments, I could finally drag in a full breath again.
The coughing subsided to ragged gasps. His hands moved across my arms, my face, checking for injuries.
Then he grasped my shoulders and turned me to look at him.
His whole body was trembling as hard as mine.
“What the hell were you doing out there?” He shouted, split between fury and terror. “You just sank—you didn’t even try—”
My throat closed. Heat flooded my cheeks, burning hotter than the fever. I looked away, shame crawling up my neck.
The silence stretched between us, heavy and damning. His body went rigid.
“You can’t swim,” he breathed. I didn’t answer, curling in on myself, my shoulders shaking with barely suppressed sobs. “What the hell were you thinking?” He demanded. “You could have… You nearly—!”
My trembling hand shoved the note at him. Soggy, half-dissolved, but still readable in places. He stared at it uncomprehendingly at first. He looked from the note to the river to me, and I saw him realize I’d come here because of some message I’d found, feverish and alone.
“Gods,” he crushed the note in his fist. His other hand came up to rake through his wet hair. “You can’t follow breadcrumbs from past lives like this. Not when he’s watching for you to—”
“I don’t know what’s happening anymore.” The words scraped out of me, my voice breaking. Kian froze, watching me closely. “I don’t—”
And then the dam burst.
“Amy’s in a coma. My mom is missing. Her car was abandoned, and the police don’t believe me that someone took her.
They think I’m being paranoid.” My voice climbed higher, words tumbling out faster.
“Leo got arrested while trying to help me. I’m seeing things I shouldn’t be able to see…
Rivers and figures that aren’t there. There’s a man who keeps appearing, and he knows things about me I don’t even know, and he gave me a coin that won’t stay gone and—”
I couldn’t breathe.
“I’m having dreams where I die over and over, and everyone keeps telling me I’m remembering something, but no one will tell me what I’m remembering, and I feel like I’m going crazy, and I’m scared—” My chest heaved.
“I’m so scared all the time, and I don’t know who to trust, and I can’t do this anymore, I can’t—”
Sobs tore through me. Every fear, every secret, every moment of terror I’d swallowed down to keep functioning poured out of me in an unstoppable flood.
His arms locked around me, pulling me against him as though he could hold all my broken pieces together.
His hand cradled my head against his chest. His heart thundered beneath my ear.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into my hair. “Gods, Melanie, I’m so sorry. This is my fault—”
His voice broke.
“I’ve failed you,” he breathed, and I felt wetness against my hair that wasn’t river water. “I’ve failed you again.”
I clutched at his soaked shirt, while Kian held me tightly to him, stroking his fingers soothingly across my back while I fell apart, weeping into his chest. When the storm inside me dulled to a quiet ache, and I could barely hold my head up, I pulled back.
“S-sorry,” I muttered, scrubbing at my swollen eyes.
Kian bent to retrieve his coat from where it had fallen on the bank.
He shook it out and draped it over my shoulders, his knuckles brushing the exposed skin of my collarbone.
His hands tucked the collar close against my throat, and he traced the line of my jaw with his knuckles.
Wordlessly, he lifted me into his arms, holding me as if I might shatter.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Let’s get you out of here.”
He carried me from the riverbank with painstaking care, cradling me against his chest. I buried my face against his neck, feeling his heartbeat pound against my cheek.
By the time we reached his car, my body was trembling from the cold that had sunk into my bones.
He lowered me into the passenger seat gently, crouching beside the open door.
His hand hovered at my cheek, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from his palm.
His thumb brushed away tears I didn’t know were still falling.
“You’re burning up,” he said, pressing the back of his hand to my forehead. “We need to get you warm. Get you out of these wet clothes.”