CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN #2
“Don’t look at me.” I turned away, arms crossed tight over my body, but there was no hiding it. The light poured out of me, bright and merciless, alive in a way I wasn’t ready for.
“Kera,” Will said, his voice softer than before.
“Just… don’t.”
But of course he didn’t look away. He drifted closer, letting the water carry him toward me. The glow spilling from my skin lit his face in gold. Water drops clung to his lashes and his hair was plastered to his forehead, dark and dripping. And still, he looked at me, not with fear, but wonder.
I wanted to slip beneath the surface. To disappear.
But then his hand lifted, slow and sure. He reached for me, fingers brushing against my cheek and I didn’t flinch.
I didn’t think of Arche. Or the others. Or the last time someone touched me.
Only him.
Will was safe. His hand was warm, not rough. Gentle.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
He saw me. All of me. And he didn’t turn away.
So I let myself feel it.
His touch. The water. The light.
“I’m sorry for the past few days, weeks,” he said, and his hand drifted away from my face. “It wasn’t you. I’ve just been… stuck in my own head. Everything hit harder than I thought. And I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel like you did something wrong.”
I let the water carry me back a little, just enough to breathe. My arms moved slowly to stay afloat.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “I get it. I don’t think I’ll ever stop grieving them. I didn’t even know how to move at first. How to get up in the morning when it wasn’t for them. But now…” I glanced over at him. “There’s you. And Aran. And Licia needs us. And I feel like I have purpose again.”
Will shifted closer, his hand brushing against mine beneath the surface.
“You don’t know how worried we were, Kera. I could barely sleep, when you just lying there.” His voice cracked. “It hurt to see you like that. To know I couldn’t protect you. Again. I’ve been thanking the gods every day since you woke.”
I gave a small laugh. “You don’t even believe in the gods.”
“I know,” he said softly. “But they gave you back to me.” His eyes found mine. “And you’re my reason to keep moving, too.”
His warmth brushed against mine, light glinting off the water between us. A quiet pull stirred in the air, and he looked at me like I was something divine. I didn’t know what it was, but in that moment, it felt like the world had stilled around us.
I leaned in without meaning to. The glow beneath my skin softened, dimming but not fading, as if it was listening.
Then the moment shattered. Aran’s scream tore across the water, sharp and panicked, ricocheting off the cave walls.
“Aran!” Will shouted, his voice cracking.
He was getting really bad at pretending that he didn’t care about him anymore. I kicked hard, muscles burning as we rushed toward the sound. Aran thrashed ahead, wild-eyed, arms lashing the water as he gasped and choked.
“Something grabbed me!” His voice broke. “Something fucking grabbed me!”
A chill rolled through me. It coiled low in my stomach and crawled up my spine, heavy and thick like it had been waiting beneath us this whole time.
Will reached him first, hands steady on Aran’s shoulders.
“Hey. Breathe. It was probably seaweed.”
Aran’s eyes darted around, wild and unfocused, chest still heaving.
“No. No way. It pulled me down.”
“Seaweed,” Will said again, calm as ever. “Or maybe a fish.”
I swam in closer, scanning him quickly.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” His jaw tightened. “But I’m done.”
He swam off, cutting through the water like he couldn’t get away fast enough.
“Is he serious?” Will asked, laughing as Aran shot toward the exit.
“Say what you want—he’s fast.”
I glanced down at my arms, expecting the glow. But there was nothing. No shimmer. No warmth. Just skin. Pale, damp, ordinary.
It felt strange.
And I almost missed it.
Will nudged my shoulder. “Race you.”
Up ahead, Aran was dragging himself out of the water, muttering curses as he yanked a length of seaweed from around his leg.
Will called out first. “See? Told you.”
“Shut up,” Aran snapped, not even looking at him.
I pulled myself up beside him, breath still uneven. “You good?”
“Fine,” he muttered. “Just not going back in there.”
Night settled softly.
The fire behind me had burned low, nothing but a sleepy flicker now. I sat at the edge of the water, knees tucked to my chest, watching the stars shimmer across the surface like they were trying to speak to me.
I glanced back once.
Aran was already out cold, sprawled on his side, snoring like thunder. Will lay still by the fire, curled slightly. The light touched his cheekbones, catched in his hair, and he looked so peaceful.
Beautiful.
He made me feel things I wasn’t sure I could still feel. Safe. Wanted. Like there was still something soft left in me.
I tore my eyes away.
Sleep wouldn’t come. My mind was loud, pacing circles.
I hadn’t taken the moon drops that evening. Maybe that was it. The waters ahead glimmered beneath the moon, silver and quiet.
I thought of the glow. That strange pulse inside me. The moment it vanished, I’d felt hollow. Like a part of me had gone with it, and I needed to understand. Why it came, what it meant, and what it had changed.
I couldn’t let it go.
The water called to me.
So I rose, slow and careful, making sure not to stir the boys.
The cold water crept higher with each step, climbing my legs, wrapping my waist, pressing against my chest until every breath felt heavier and the world behind me slipped away.
I looked back once to where the boys lay curled in sleep, before I dove and cut through the surface.
Below, the silence was complete. The kind that presses in on your skull and makes the blood in your ears louder than anything else. Fish darted past in quick shadows, and the current slipped its fingers through my hair.
The water pressed close, alive with something I couldn’t see, and the cave loomed ahead, its entrance barely visible in the murk. I reached for the wall, my fingers brushing stone and the uneven edges of crystal. Then came a pull. A hum. Like something inside me was stirring awake.
I closed my eyes and let it draw me in, stretching my hand forward as if the current itself might take it and led me. And when I opened them, the darkness was gone.
Around me, fish drifted through the glow like living shards of glass.
I didn’t move. I only floated, weightless, while they circled me with wide, unblinking eyes.
Ribbons of lakeweed swayed slow and gentle, the whole place moving as though it breathed.
Light wound through me, curling in my chest like a second heartbeat before spilling into the water.
It wasn’t fire. It wasn’t pain. It didn’t burn or ache.
It was warm. Soft. Golden.
And then I saw a shape on the cave floor.
It didn’t swim, it didn’t stir the water. It simply was. Slipping through the depths like it belonged there, like it had always been there, waiting.
Light didn’t touch it, and the world warped in its presence as it rose. Something unseen closed around my ankle, pulling me down, and I knew what it was. Not because I had felt it before, but because I had seen it, through her, through the Seer.
In that moment when her eyes turned black and her lips shaped a warning she couldn’t force out, when her trembling hands wrapped around the dagger and dug into her flesh.
That hadn’t been her, it had never been her, and I knew it. It was the shadow, whatever it was. A god, a spirit, a demon.
Had it lured me there? If it was a god, it would be smarter than all of us combined. And crueler.
And it had come for me because she failed, because I was what was left, unfinished business, something dangerous it couldn’t allow to grow.
Some of them want me to kill you, to protect the rest of the world.
The gods—if that’s what they were—wanted me dead, or some of them did while others didn’t, and I couldn’t make sense of how many there were or why they were divided, but none of it mattered, not when something was dragging me down and I couldn’t reach the fire.
I tried anyway, clawing inside myself past the panic and the ache, searching for the place where it used to live.
That spark, that warmth, but there was nothing, only cold and silence and water pressing into every part of me.
It hurt. Gods, it hurt.
My chest convulsed, tight and panicked, every instinct in me screaming to breathe.
My throat burned. My ribs felt like they might split.
I tried to hold it back. The gasp. The surrender.
But my body betrayed me, and water rushed in.
Cold, sharp, suffocating. It scalded on the way down, filled every part of me, and I thrashed, arms flailing, head spinning.
I couldn’t tell which way was up. The glow was gone, and the pressure crushed me from the inside out.
So this is how it ends.
Will and Aran were just outside, sleeping like none of it was happening, and they would wake to find me still and bloated and blue.
I’d never see the sun again. Never feel it warm my skin.
Never find Licia. Never hear Aran’s awful jokes or meet Will’s eyes again, and that thought cut deeper than anything.
They didn’t just need me.
I needed them.
I didn’t want to die. I really didn’t want to die.
So I let go. Of the panic. Of the shame. Of the armor I’d buried myself beneath for so long. Even as the terror curled tighter in my veins. Even as the edges of my mind began to dim.
Something inside me split. It felt like a scar tearing open, like a part of me breaking loose that had been waiting for that moment, waiting to be unleashed. A scream tore out of me. Not made of sound or magic or heat. But of rage. Of grief. And I let it out.
The thing inside me.
It didn’t come as fire. Or as light.
It came as a quake. A deep, violent pulse that tore through my chest and exploded outward, shaking the water itself.
And the shadow shattered.
I didn’t stop to ask how.
I didn’t think.
I just kicked upward, desperate for air.
Precious, taken-for-granted air.