The current tore at us, trying to claim her back, but I held fast.
Until finally, we hit the shallows hard.
I surfaced with a gasp, already reaching for her. She was right beside me, sputtering, struggling to find a footing on the slickstone. Together, we scrambled up the embankment, climbing onto a flat slab just above the waterline.
I collapsed onto my back, soaked and heaving. She dropped beside me, coughing, her chest rising and falling in sharp, uneven bursts. For a few breaths, neither of us moved; we just lay there, side by side, the world spinning above us.
Then I sat up, chest still tight, and leaned over her. Her lips had a blue tinge. Her eyes fluttered open, dazed. Wet hair clung to her cheeks like riverweed.
I cupped her face. Still gasping for breath, I forced out the words “You’re safe. You’re all right. I’ve got you.”
She blinked at me. “You…you came after me…”
“Of course I did.” My voice was a ragged whisper.
She gave a weak laugh.
“Is now a bad time to tell you I can’t swim?” she puffed out.
I stared at her.
Then I laughed. Broken. Real.
She smiled.
The remainder of the group caught up to us after we made camp beneath the crooked skeleton of an ancient tree that had collapsed into the ravine wall. The roots twisted like the fingers of a dead god, forming a hollow deep enough to block the wind.
Jasira reached us first, hair wild, eyes frantic. She dropped beside Wyn and wrapped her arms around her tightly. “You’re alive,” she breathed. “Saints above, you’re alive.”
“I’m all right,” Wyn whispered. “Erindor found me.”
Alaric was next; his face had gone pale beneath streaks of mud. “Don’t you ever do that again,” he muttered, voice choking. “Don’t you dare disappear on me, Wynnie.”
Wyn reached out; her hand was cold but steady. Alaric grabbed her and kissed her forehead, pulling her close.
“I thought—”
“I know,” she mumbled.
Gideon knelt at the fire, eyes scanning the darkness. “No sign of Riven. He’s gone for now. But that bastard won’t stay gone forever.”
“We lost Corren and Lark.” Alaric’s voice wasa monotone drone, a stark contrast to the storm of grief brewing behind his eyes.
The silence that followed wasa crushing weight, a silent testament to the grief and shock that filled the camp.
The fire crackled softly, a small comfort against the sudden fury of the storm that finally broke overhead, pattering against the tree roots and soaking the mossy floor. We wrapped ourselves in cloaks and silence. Each of us was too grateful, too raw, and too shaken to say anything else. As the others drifted toward sleep, Wyn shifted beside me and reached into her pocket.
“I picked this…before the attack and the fall,” she whispered.
In her hand, an impossible thing: a small, frost-pink flower, its delicate petals unmarred despite its journey over a raging cliff and through the churning rapids
She placed it in my palm. Her fingers grazed mine, sending sparks of heat through my arm despite the cold.
She gave me a gentle smile that took the breath from my lungs, then turned to sleep, curling beside the fire.
I didn’t speak. I just stared at the bloom in my hand—fragile, improbable, still clinging to beauty after everything it had endured.
I turned it over gently, memorizing the color, the curve of each petal, and the faint scent like snow and wild honey.
