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At some point Clare stopped shivering. She felt like she was floating inside her body, detached, and fear took her. She’d felt this way once before, the last time she’d given the Song any true freedom, and been forced to fight it for control. Then, she had known she was going to lose the battle. That she would lose and the Song would overtake her, and the only way to prevent it had been by descending into the madness. By snapping the tether to herself and entering that place where she hadn’t controlled her body, but neither had the Song.
She didn’t want to become that empty thing again. Didn’t want to trade a swamp for a forest, to give up the life she’d just started to live.
Clare Brighton. She repeated the name to herself, over and over again. She was Clare Brighton. Not a thing, not a vessel, not a doll, but herself.
Eventually, the fever cooled a little, but didn’t ebb entirely. Her body was an odd kind of numb, and she looked out dazedly at the lake below, watching the rain drops plinking onto its surface in a patterned dance of infinite complexity. She became entranced as she tried to capture the exact moment where they fell through from the world above to the one below.
The lake seemed like a beautiful, serene thing. Here in the storm, the sun hidden, it was enchanting, half-mystic. It called to her. She had a thought of walking into the lake, rain falling, and continuing to walk until the waters slipped over her head, and she found out what kind of world lay beneath them. Maybe there she could find Clare, and leave the Song and the madness behind.
It wasn’t until she felt the water lapping at her hands that she realized the impulse had become more than a thought. Dense, icy water lapped over her hips. The water caressed her skin, inviting, and she pushed forward, marveling at how difficult it was to walk in water, especially the deeper one attempted to go. Her boots had filled with liquid, the extra weight adding to the strain in her muscles as she moved forward.
She sank to her stomach, her chest, her collarbone. Distantly, she thought she heard someone call her name. The voice sounded frantic, and she wondered if she should turn back. But then the water was slipping over her head, and she was opening her eyes wide, wide, wide, disheartened to learn that in the darkness, she couldn’t see what lived beneath the water’s surface after all.
She took a breath and found that breathing underwater wasn’t pleasant. A small corner of her brain that was not as calm as the rest of her screamed that one didn’t breathe underwater at all, and she needed to go up. The only trouble was, her feet didn’t touch anything anymore, and she had no real concept of which direction up was.
Just when she would have tried breathing again, hands wrapped around her arms and she was pulled up against someone blisteringly hot. Or perhaps she was cold? Her head broke the lake’s surface and she coughed, her lungs violently rejecting the water in them. She tried to breathe but only coughed again, repeating the painful exchange over and over, until her lungs were finally clear.
The air that rushed into her body brought with it blessed clarity, and she took stock of where she was. Namely, draped across someone’s legs, the position keeping her head and torso out of the mud. Strong hands held the wet curls of her hair back from her face, their touch gentle and warm against her skin.
She forced herself up with shaking arms, sat back, and looked into Numair’s almost-black eyes. He was angry, in that way only people well-accustomed to hiding their emotions can exude a force of anger by stilling their features into perfect immobility. It was, oddly, that anger—directed sideways of her, for her rather than at her—that melted her irritation at the silence he’d maintained since she’d invited him to the Musicale House.
“What were you doing?” he asked, the pleasant civility in his voice belying his fury.
Clare stared at the water. “Almost dying, I think.” Her lips wouldn’t move properly. She’d started shivering again, a good sign and likely due to the spelled heat pouring off Numair in waves, reaching for her.
“And you wanted that?” he asked sharply.
“No.” She had never courted death intentionally, not even in the darkest periods in her life when she had wished for the strength to wish for death. Some stubborn part of her had always been determined to survive, to keep going, because if she didn’t, then what had any of the pain and suffering she had already experienced been for? If there was never going to be anything better, why had she bothered enduring?
“Then what were you doing underneath the water in winter in a damn thunderstorm?”
“Discovering that I can.” Discovering that she had, indeed, taken some control back from the Song.
“Can what?”
“Die.” Because the Song would never have let her come close to drowning, had it been in complete control. And at some point, beneath the icy lake, she had shoved it back into its cage.
Numair stared at her a long moment. “Anyone can die. Are you convinced you’re human now you know you can?”
When she only smiled, he shook his head and muttered a curse. “Your lips are bluer than Ferrian’s flames.” He grabbed a coat off the ground, one he must have discarded before jumping in the lake after her. It was obviously spelled against things as common as dirt and water, looking no worse for wear for having been lying in the mud. He wrapped it around her shoulders and warmth and dryness settled over her, better even than the spelled heat slipping off him.
She slid her arms into the coat sleeves, and after she tried twice to stand and failed, she let him help her. Then he bent down, untying the laces of her boots.
“What are you doing?”
He looked up at her with a glare that clearly said she wasn’t allowed to question his actions right now. But he answered anyway. “You don’t need to carry the lake back with you. Can I?” He indicated her shin and she nodded, more out of curiosity than anything else. He gripped her leg, bracing her, and pulled the boot off. When he flipped it over, a surprising amount of water dumped onto the ground.
He shook his head, muttering something she couldn’t understand because she was pretty sure it hadn’t been spoken in Common, and carefully put her boot back on. He repeated the process with the other foot, and there was something about his irritation, at odds with his gentleness, that had a grin curving her lips.
He finished retying the laces and stood. When he saw her face, his scowl deepened. “You cannot be smiling right now.”
She grinned wider. He cursed again, and she smothered a laugh while he turned and whistled for the horses. They trotted over, Kialla looking fresh as daisies while Hellack looked miserable, clearly wondering what offense he had given to be dragged out into this downpour.
Numair offered Clare a leg up, and it took her a moment to realize he intended to put her on Hellack with him.
“I c-can ride on my own.” Her damn teeth were chattering as she warmed enough to feel again, and she snuggled deeper into the coat’s warmth.
“You’re half-frozen and Kialla doesn’t have a saddle. There’s no way you’re keeping your seat on her.”
