Raithe
“Come on,” I hissed under my breath, fists clenched at my sides. “Come on.”
The moment Rahzlyn disappeared beneath the surface, my body quaked in protest.
Three bell tolls had passed.
Rahzlyn had to live. She fucking had to.
Felaf elbowed my side. “Calm the fuck down.”
I shot her a look, though she’d been right. I was shaking and on the verge of losing my shit.
Hector’s final written words had haunted me from the moment I’d read them. I hadn’t wanted to frighten Rahzlyn with them when she was anxious for today, especially when I had no idea what they meant.
Four bell tolls.
I listened to Rahzlyn’s accelerating heart rate.
It’s not real.
What had Hector meant? I couldn’t fathom why he didn’t tell me he was also looking into the curse.
Regret pitted my stomach. I may have cared for him, but I never let him all the way in.
If I had, maybe he would have told me his suspicions.
I’d kept everyone at a distance, and now I was paying for it.
Being a guardian, having a purpose to serve and protect, was all that had once mattered to me.
It was how I survived beyond my painful childhood.
Around Rahzlyn, my world was no longer black and white.
It was bursting with color, life, and a call to live beyond my duties.
But that life—one that I never envisioned nor believed possible for me—could only exist by sharing it with others.
With her.
Five bell tolls. Pockets of air slipped from her mouth.
I’d thought that part of me was broken, damaged, or simply nonexistent. That was what made me so successful up to this point. No distractions to impede my goal of proving everyone around me wrong. That I was worthy of being Chosen. Of existing.
Rahzlyn got under my skin in a way no one else did. She talked to me like she wanted me to know her. Not as her guardian, but as a man.
Six bell tolls. Her first choking sound decimated my ears.
Feeling this much terror was worth it if it meant that she was real. There was no faking what she did to—
Faking.
Fake.
The gears in my mind spun around that critically important word.
It’s not real.
Hector’s journal. According to him, the curse wasn’t real. There was something else stuck in the chaos of my mind, waiting for me to find it. To figure out what wasn’t sitting right with me, and why it was critical in this moment that I remember.
The curse. The apostai. Both intertwined somehow—by the brand, the bracelets, by…
Stones.
Seven bell tolls. Rahzlyn’s underwater struggles gave way to violent, sobbing chokes.
I couldn’t stand here and listen to another second of her torment.
It’s not real.
Gemini sent Gregorios a message about the Black Rose, not Rahzlyn.
Eight bell tolls.
I begged my intuition to chime in at any fucking time now.
It was all connected somehow. Rahzlyn had been dancing as the Black Rose when I saved her from the apostai’s grasp.
If King Zephyr was there that night, I couldn’t detect him the way I normally could because of some effect the bracelets had.
And if I hadn’t been there, Rahzlyn would have gone through with seducing him and stealing his talisman, and…
And replacing it with a fake.
Nine bell tolls.
My knees buckled.
Kole never revealed what they intended to do with his agate, but it would have rendered King Zephyr powerless.
It’s not real.
The stone on Rahzlyn’s royal necklace wasn’t real. Someone successfully did what Markus had wanted Rahzlyn to do to King Zephyr. Only somehow, they’d gotten away with it for twelve years.
No wonder the past twelve Chosens all drowned. They had no way to harness their powers to save them. Not without the real topaz to wield. There was no fucking curse.
It took everything I had to restrain myself in place. To keep my knees bent, my head bowed. I shook with the blinding clarity bearing down on me.
I’d always walked the line between what I thought was right and the actual law. But that was always for my own self-interest. Whatever I needed to do to prove I had a purpose, that surviving my childhood to protect others, to protect this queendom, had been my guiding star.
Ten bell tolls. Rahzlyn convulsed, any remaining air gone.
My obsession had robbed me of so much, rendering me down the path of isolation. Now I knew it wasn’t for nothing. I’d willingly broken more than one decree of the Treaty already. For the first time, I was willing to break the law not for myself or what I deemed the good of the queendom—but for her.
Follow, my intuition had instructed upon first seeing her.
So I did.
Eleven bell tolls. I could get to her in time—
Felaf gripped my arm, holding me back. “What the bloody stars do you think you’re doing?”
I tried to pull away. “Saving her.”
“It’s treason to interfere—”
“I don’t fucking care!” I roared, yanking myself from Felaf’s grasp.
Twelve bell tolls.
Her grip faltered. I lunged forward. The temple gasped as I dashed into the basin and dove headfirst. The water was pitch black even with my eyesight.
My glowing eyes and glyphs were swallowed by the darkness.
I swam viciously, down and down, but the liquid was deceptively thick and stifling the further I went.
I was pulled down with ease, but swimming upwards or even laterally became almost impossible.
The fact that I couldn’t hear her anymore propelled me faster, harder through the dense abyss.
My hands searched all around me, seeking contact until at last my fingertips met a silky, weightless softness.
Hair. Rahzlyn. I grasped for her, the outline of her body barely illuminated by the glyphs emanating from my skin.
I curled my hands under her shoulders to yank her upwards.
My kicking barely held us in place against the force that pulled us down.
No life sounded from her. No heartbeat, no struggles.
No, no, no!
I sealed my lips to hers, prying them open carefully and sucking the water that filled her.
Clamping her nose, I spewed the water I’d sucked, then took her mouth back with mine.
I blew—using all of my guardian strength to send ample breaths into her.
I didn’t know if resuscitating underwater would even work, but I knew I had to fucking try.
Even if it meant giving my all, including my life.
I wouldn’t let her die.
Breathe, my intuition commanded.
I exhaled ferociously. All that mattered was reviving Rahzlyn before it was too late. My body faltered. I’d never felt so breathless before. My legs grew tired, no longer able to tread us in place.
The seconds dragged. My chest burned from how much air I expelled into her.
Thump, thump.
Her heart, thank fuck.
I continued, giving her all of my air as her pulse steadily increased.
Then her body jolted against mine, and she was gasping into me.
Choking. Her eyes widened. I wanted to reassure her that she was safe, that I would always keep her safe, but I couldn’t spare another second. I couldn’t let her die.
I slid my topaz ring from my finger onto hers. My remaining strength waned. The faint light from my glyphs and eyes disappeared, plunging us into darkness. Hopefully her donning a real talisman would work long enough for her to wield her power. To succeed. To survive.
Her hands clutched my shoulders. A brightness kindled in her eyes. With our mouths still fused, a new symbol emerged on her forehead. The shape of an upside-down triangle appeared. The symbol of water, her primal glyph.
She did it.
Her hands touched my cheeks as gold light poured out from all the connected glyphs that marked her skin.
An amber hue blazed suddenly and vibrantly until it nearly blinded me.
A force ripped her from me. I reached after her in the darkness that surrounded, but she was gone.
Safe. My crazy, thoughtless plan miraculously worked.
Thank you, Hector.
Out of breath, out of life, I sank further into the abyss.