Chapter 9 The Water
The Water
He does not answer right away. The wind moves between us, dragging at my hair, pressing the damp fabric of my clothes against my skin. The ship rises beneath us and falls again, the rhythm uneven enough that I have to keep one hand on the rail to stay steady.
“You don’t have a choice,” he says at last.
Something in me gives a quiet, humorless sound. “You keep saying that like it means something.”
“It does.”
I turn to face him fully now, slower than I want to, waiting for the ground to hold beneath me before I let go of the rail.
The lantern light catches along him in pieces, along the rings at his hands, along the circlet at his head, everything about him composed in a way that makes what he’s saying feel even colder.
“This ends with you in Alarna.”
“There are two ways this can go,” I say. “You’re just choosing not to take either of them.”
His expression doesn’t shift.
“You can find a way to get me on another ship so that I can return to Veynar,” I continue, my voice steadying as I speak. “Or you can let me go to Alarna without you.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It is. You just don’t want it to be.”
“I’m keeping you alive.”
“For your war," I say with a bitter laugh.
He doesn’t deny it.
“The most unsafe thing about Alarna," I go on, "would be your presence there. You are an entirely different sort of cruel, Teorin. The kind that is dangerous. The kind that must be avoided."
"Is that so?" He looks almost amused.
"Yes. You are the kind of dangerous that fucks with matters of the heart." I narrow my eyes. "That is a different sort of cruel."
I draw in a breath. "Especially because I’ve done nothing to deserve it."
Silence.
And then, “You need me.”
“No.”
“You’re not thinking clearly.”
“I am thinking exactly as clearly as I need to.”
He exhales, slower this time. “You need to think about Colsar. About the child.”
The laugh that leaves me feels wrong in my own throat, thin and edged with something I can’t smooth over.
“You just told me the man I love isn’t coming,” I say. “Or that he’ll die if he tries. So tell me what exactly I’m supposed to be holding onto?"
His jaw tightens. “Then think of your child, Asharin--"
“My child is likely dead, Teorin," I cut in. The words come out quieter than everything else, but they carry more weight than anything I’ve said so far.
A look of worry and pain crosses his face so quickly I think I imagined it. He moves toward me immediately. “What—”
“Let me check—”
“Don’t come near me.”
He stops.
“I can’t feel anything,” I say, forcing myself to hold his eyes. “I don’t know if it’s because I’m weak or if it’s gone. I don’t know if anything survived what I’ve been through.”
The wind rises around us, pulling at both of us, the sea louder now beneath it.
“I need to know if you’re going to let me go to Alarna without you,” I say. “Or if you’re going to force this.”
“You would be safer with me.”
“I don’t care.”
“That’s not—”
“I don’t care,” I repeat, softer now, but steadier. “Do you understand that? I don’t care what happens to me if the alternative is being near you.”
I narrow my eyes at him. "You saw what my brother did to me. You saw what Sevrin did to me. You know--" my voice breaks.
I draw in a breath and continue "You know exactly what these last weeks have been for me. In many ways you were what I thought was my only friend. My only solace."
I laugh bitterly. "The lies perhaps I am soft enough that I would have forgiven, because you saved my life. But locking me up and tying me to a fucking chair?"
A shadow falls across his eyes. Shame, perhaps.
"A fucking chair?" My voice trembles.
"Even Sevrin didn't tie me up like a rabid animal."
I stare out at the water. I feel something press inside me then, something quiet and final. “If you try to force me into Alarna,” I say, “you will be taking my corpse.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“There’s nothing left to lose.”
The edge of the deck is right behind me now. I can feel it without looking, the open space beyond it, the pull of the water below.
“If that’s the case,” I say, my voice quieter now, almost tired, “then this pain I’m in… it ends.”
Something shifts in him then. Not enough to name, but enough that I see it.
“And if the child is gone,” I add, “then there’s nothing tying me here at all.”
I smile softly. "And in truth, if Colsar is gone and the child in the womb is gone, perhaps becoming undead will allow me to see him once last time. I can wait here for him."
Teorin's face darkens. “Asharin.”
I don’t answer. I take one more step back.
He moves at the same time, but it is too late.
The cold tears through me.
It takes everything at once. The air in my lungs, the heat in my body, the last bit of control I had over anything disappear beneath the force of the water as it closes over my head and drags me under.
It is quieter beneath the surface.
Darker. The world above disappears in an instant, replaced by pressure and cold and the dull roar of water filling every space around me. My body reacts before I can think, forcing me upward, breaking through the surface with a breath that tears into my chest.
The ship looms above me. I don’t reach for it or try to swim back. The water moves around me, lifting and dropping, pulling me farther from the hull with every shift. My limbs feel heavy, slower than they should, the cold already sinking deeper into me than I can fight.
Dark forms break the surface nearby. One. Then another. And yet I don’t feel fear. Only a quiet, hollow peace. As though the weight of all of it--Yvara, Sevrin, Teorin. The pain. The pregnancy. Everything has suddenly been lifted.
It is far easier to be nothing. Nothing, I realize, is weightless.
The shadows drop into the water without hesitation, turning toward me in a way that leaves no question of what comes next.
Then there is only memory. The warmth of Colsar’s hand at my back. The way he said my name when he thought I wasn’t listening. The way everything had felt before any of this began.
I hold onto that. I close my eyes.
Then another memory. The memory of long before him, a memory I now find too painful to think of. A memory that, now that I was weightless, did not hurt.
It was the memory of what it meant to have hope. To have optimism, to have the feeling that things might get better if you just hold on. That if you push through the pain, the beatings, the disappointment, there will be a life worthwhile on the other side of it.
That version of me feels distant now, as though it belonged to someone else, someone who believed there was something on the other side of all of this worth reaching for. I no longer have the strength for that kind of faith, not when I know exactly what it costs to hold onto it.
I have seen what waits there. Joy. Safety. The brief, fragile illusion of a future that might hold. I had it, once. With Colsar. A life that felt within reach, a family that felt possible. Now it all reads like something imagined, a story I told myself long enough to believe it might be real.
There is something cleaner in this than anything this world has offered me, something quieter than the slow erosion of being used, broken, and made to endure it. Better this way than at the bottom of someone's boot.
Another splash reaches me, distant at first, then closer, followed by the low rush of water shifting around something that moves with purpose. A voice cuts through it, carried thin across the dark, my name pulled apart by wind and distance. I let it pass.
The water lifts and lowers me, pulling me farther from the ship in long, uneven swells, and I give myself to it, letting the motion carry me where it will without resistance, without thought. The cold settles deeper into my skin, into my limbs, dulling what remains until even that begins to fade.
Then something seizes me.
Teorin's hand closes around my arm and wrenches me sideways through the water, hard enough to rip me out of the numb calm I had slipped into.
The surface breaks around us, the cold rushing back all at once as he drags me upright and into him, his grip locked in place, his body already braced against the pull of the current as though he intends to hold me there by force alone.
“Asharin—what the fuck are you doing?”
His voice carries, rough and raised in a way I have never heard from him, stripped of the control he holds over everything else.
I sag against him, my limbs slow to respond, the cold pressing deeper now that I’ve been pulled back into the current. My breath comes unevenly, my throat raw as I try to slow it.
“I told you,” I say, the words scraping on the way out. “I’m not going to Alarna with you at my side.”
His arm tightens around me as another body hits the water somewhere behind us, the sound cutting across the dark.
“This isn’t a choice you get to make.”
“It is the only one I have left.”
The water moves around us, gathering in a way that has nothing to do with the tide. I feel it press inward, tightening, and his attention leaves me, turning outward as something else draws closer.
Another splash follows. Then another.
Bodies break the surface and rise immediately, turning toward us with a certainty that leaves no question of what they are coming for. More drop in behind them, joining the mass, the distance between us collapsing faster than it should.
I lift my head just enough to see them properly.
They stretch across the water in every direction, some already pushing forward, their upper bodies dragging through the surface, others still breaking through as they join the advance.
The numbers build with every second, the movement direct, unbroken.
I close my eyes, unafraid. Waiting.
Teorin’s voice is edged with urgency, his focus locked on what’s coming. “Asharin, listen to me. They have been like this too long, and there are too many of them. We need to get back on the ship.”
“Don’t you control them?” My voice is calm.
The answer comes immediately. “Not these.”
One surges too close, rising within reach before it can fully drag itself through the water.
The current breaks beside us as something unseen hits it and drives it backward, pulling it under in a single, violent sweep.
Another takes its place immediately, then another behind it, their movements continuous, closing the distance without pause.
The force he throws at them disrupts the front of it, but the mass does not falter, swallowing whatever opening he creates almost as quickly as it appears.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” I say, quieter now, the words worn down to what matters. “Let me go.”
His grip tightens, pulling me closer into him as the current shifts again, stronger now, pressing in from every direction. “Shut up.” The word comes out rough, immediate, carrying more strain than anything he has said so far.
The pressure builds around us, tightening through the water until it feels as though everything has been pulled inward and held there. The surface trembles under it, the bodies closest to us caught for a fraction of a second before everything gives.
The force drives outward all at once. The water surges forward in a wide, crushing sweep, dragging everything in its path with it. Bodies are thrown back and pulled under, scattered just long enough to leave an opening where there had been none.
He takes it immediately. His arm tightens around me as he drives us forward, pulling me through the churn of it, his breath rough against my shoulder now, the effort no longer concealed. The water resists him at every step, rising and falling in uneven swells as he forces us toward the ship.
Behind us, the surface breaks again as they return, more of them this time, filling the space as quickly as it was cleared, the distance closing with a certainty that gives us no time at all.
“I don’t want to be there with you,” I say, my voice fading thinner now, but still clear. “Do you understand that? I don’t want to be anywhere near you.”
His hold shifts, not loosening, but tightening in a way that feels almost instinctive, as though he’s bracing against something he cannot allow.
“You’re not dying out here.”
“I already decided—”
“Shut up.”
This time it comes lower, closer, the words pressed between us as the water surges again. The ship looms ahead, the dark hull cutting through the water as the distance narrows.
That is when I feel it. It is small, so small I am not sure if I imagined it. A flicker of life. I search for it again, but it’s gone. Or I can’t reach it. I don’t know which. The sensation leaves something behind anyway, a memory rising through the cold before I can stop it.
Colsar. The last time I felt like this, he was there. At the edge of that cave. Another wave pulls behind us as the bodies press forward again, the surface breaking over and over as they come.
If he is alive, he will find me.
The child may still live.
My thoughts are broken by Teorin swearing under his breath, harsher this time, something in it giving way. Then the water lifts. The force pulls upward, carrying us with it as he drives us out of the current, over the edge, and onto the deck.
The impact runs through me, but I barely register it before he’s pulling me upright, his grip still locked around me as water runs from both of us, pooling beneath our feet.
His breathing is uneven now, no longer contained.
I push against him, slower than I want, the effort heavier than it should be. “You shouldn’t have come after me.”
The lie sits wrong in my mouth.
He doesn’t answer.