Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter
twenty-eight
I hit the water feetfirst, a breath-stealing plunge into the cold. Into the dark. I do not think about whatever monsters might be waiting for me as I begin to make my way down toward the bottom, kicking and clawing into the abyss.
The desert shoals ensure the sea here is shallow compared to some of the deeper stretches of ocean we have traversed on this voyage, but by no means is it a short swim.
And by no means am I the strongest swimmer.
The only thing I do have on my side is my maegic.
A bubble of air surrounds my head, allowing me to breathe far beyond my lungs’ normal capacity.
I use the bond like a tether, propelling myself along the current that connects me to Soren.
Deeper, deeper.
Darker, darker.
My head begins to ache from overexertion. I have used so much of my power already, my reserves feel thin indeed. But I cannot stop. I will not stop. Not until I’ve found him.
Emotions are not a liability; they are a limitless resource, Soren is whispering in my memory, a phantom spurring me on. You want to wield your power like me? You need to feel it. All of it.
Panic is my fuel, distress my propellant. I feed them into my wind like kindling to a fire, until my power swirls through my chest in an unstoppable squall. I push on. Past the point of reason, past the point of all endurance, to a place somewhere beyond any previous limit.
He is still alive. I can feel his life force, though it seems to flicker periodically as the moments pass. Diminishing, even as I grow nearer. I speak to him, knowing all the while he cannot hear me in his unconscious state.
“Hold on. Just hold on. I am coming for you.”
Only days ago, I asked him if he could drown. He laughed me off. Curse him for not giving me a straight answer. Curse him for his need to always turn things into a jest. Curse him for making me care about him if only to—
No.
No.
He will not die.
I swim harder, though my muscles scream for reprieve. The pressure at this depth is its own sort of entombment. Not quite as bad as being buried beneath the earth, but still distinctly unpleasant. My claustrophobia rears its ugly head, threatening to paralyze me before I make it another fathom.
Ignoring the buzzing at my temples, the thrumming of my heart, I press on. Passing schools of silver-scaled fish and drifting clouds of diaphanous algae.
Deeper, deeper.
Darker, darker.
Until, finally, my hand reaches forward in a blind stroke and strikes sand.
At last, I’m at the bottom. I can see next to nothing at this depth.
All is in shadow, a blue-green world leached of color.
I feel my way to him, pulse roaring so loud inside my head I can hardly hear the ragged pants that come from my mouth on each winded exhale.
I shove aside a clump of thick seaweed, plunge past a cluster of debris from the shattered ship, and then—
There.
There he is, floating like a ghost. Limbs deadweight, dark hair drifting in the currents.
His skin is so pale it nearly glows. My heart cries out at the sight of him as I swim closer.
I claw my fingertips into his tunic and drag his limp body into my arms. It is a struggle.
He’s heavy, even underwater. Waterlogged like…
A corpse.
His heart is not beating.
He is no longer breathing.
How long has he been without breath?
I cannot risk swimming back to the surface with him in this condition.
He’ll never make it. With a great torrent of maegic, I expand the small bubble of air around my head until it is large enough to contain us both.
The weight of the water pushes in from all sides, but I do not waver, shoving it back until we are encircled in a dry sphere on the seafloor.
I take a thin breath. “Soren?” I slap his cheek lightly. “Soren, can you hear me?”
My frantic eyes roam his features, looking for signs of life.
There is nothing, not even a flicker. I bring my lips to his, ignoring their lifeless chill, and breathe, forcing air into his lungs.
When that does not work on its own, I use my maegic to aid me—flooding his airways, attempting to expel the water he’s swallowed.
Still nothing.
His lungs remain unmoving, his heart with them. Our bond is eerily numb. And his life force…that remote flare I felt when I first found him here on the bottom…
It has sputtered out.
“Soren,” I plead, trying again. Tears track down my cheeks, a relentless stream. “Please do not do this.”
My maegic is waning, the effort of holding our air pocket intact taking every ounce of my energy. I am very near to passing out. And then where will we be?
Both dead.
“You cannot leave me,” I tell him through the bond, forcing more of my maegic into his deathly still lungs. Into the very fabric of his soul. “I will not let you flee to the skies. They are my domain, and they cannot have you. Do you hear me, Soren? I cannot let you go.”
But he does not hear me.
For he has gone.
Sobs tear at my chest, unchecked. The grief is impossible to swallow, impossible to breathe around.
I ignore it, refusing to process the loss.
Refusing to accept what it means. If I accept it, that means he is truly dead.
Truly out of my reach. Never again to make me laugh or cook me dinner or look at me in that singular way of his that makes me feel as though no one else in the world has ever looked at me before and truly seen me.
Never again to wrap me in his arms or press his mouth to my skin or rest his forehead against mine so we might share breaths.
Never to be mine in anything but a memory.
No.
Pushing aside those morbid realities, I give more of my maegic.
More of my very self. I feel my essence tearing away as I force it into him, feel my own life force rippling like I, too, might turn cold and blue, another corpse on the seafloor.
It is not painful. It is something so far beyond pain, I have no words for it.
An excruciating cleaving of the very soul.
I am shredding myself apart, bit by agonizing bit. Yet I cannot bring myself to stop. I will claw him back from the brink of death even if the effort takes me along with him.
“Take my breath, take my blood, take my beating heart. My very soul is yours, if only you come back to me.”
His body convulses like he’s been shocked by a bolt of lightning. Choking and spluttering as water surges up from his lungs, Soren snaps back into consciousness as though he’s only been lightly dozing on the sofa in his library, not slipping into the afterlife.
His eyes flicker open, their sapphire depths swirling with incomprehension as he takes in the sight of me looming over him—soaking wet and sobbing, shaking with pain and relief and exhaustion. His chest rattles as he takes his first true breath.
He is breathing.
His shocked gaze shifts around the air pocket I’ve created, struggling to comprehend the dark sea that surrounds us on all sides.
Grief flows from my eyes in a torrent. I wipe it away and see it is not tears, but blood. With an exhausted whimper, my head drops down to rest in the crook of his shoulder. I weep from sheer relief.
A shaky hand reaches up to thread into the damp hair at my nape.
“Rhya?” His voice breaks on my name.
I suck in a breath, trying to slow my tears. “You’re alive?”
“Signs point to yes, if the searing pain in my head and at my ribs is any indication.” He pauses, voice lightening. “I also thought I was meant to be greeted in the aether by the angels, but there’s only you here, so…”
My battered body tenses. “So help me gods, if you even think about making a joke out of this situation—”
“Skylark, look at me.”
I pull back enough to comply. My face is a mess of blood, my eyes are stung red, my hair a snarl of salt and seaweed…
but he is looking at me like he doesn’t notice any of that.
He is looking at me with such a heartrending flood of emotion, I know whatever he is about to say will make the tears that have only just subsided rush out again.
“Rhya, I—”
Two colossal orange tentacles wrap around the air pocket without warning. They’re so large, they block out the dark ocean. All I can see are suction cups, pulsing periodically as they slide against my solidified bubble, searching for weak spots.
“Fuck!” Soren curses, sitting up. His hand presses to his side, where his ribs are shattered. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Really? I thought we’d stay awhile, maybe have a chat with the octopaeron before it eats us alive.”
“Now who’s making jokes?” His eyes are deadly serious as they scan up and down my face, no doubt reading the exhaustion etched into my features. Before I can blink, he is flooding me with his maegic, his reserves shoring up my flagging ones.
“Soren, you’re still weak.”
“I’m fine,” he grits. “You’re about to pass out.”
“That’s—”
My words turn to a gasp as the tentacles suddenly tighten, the pressure of it nearly doubling. I refortify my air pocket, the effort of it setting off sparks in my peripherals. Four orange arms now engulf us. And where they converge…
I shudder, seeing the mouth of the gigantic beast. A circular opening fettered with ring after ring of razor-sharp teeth. It, like the suction cups, pulses periodically as it attempts to swallow us whole.
“If you can just hold your air shields, I’ll do my best to propel us to the surface.” Soren grabs my hand, twining our sandy fingers tight. “Together.”
I shake my head, rapidly rejecting that haphazard plan. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“Have you forgotten you were actively dying about three seconds ago? You’re not about to expend any more of your maegic. I can feel how weak you are through the bond. We aren’t taking any chances.”
“Do you have any better ideas?”