This perfect painting of her was shattered when a dark shadow grew in the waters beneath her. I shouted her name through the bond but not fast enough to alert her before a hand lunged up, wrapping around her forearm and pulling her fully underwater in the blink of an eye.
Eltanin roared in distress, darting sideways to turn around, but that would take too long. I used the void, appearing in the air where she’d gone under, and I dived in after her.
Astraea was fighting with all her might, but the creature was too strong. I swam hard as it kept dragging her deeper, and I reached for her, but she was too far. My golden tattoos glowed and her silver ones did too. I felt a type of magick in me I’d never used before, but I didn’t think, only seized it at the same time Astraea sent a blast of light toward her assailant, freeing herself from their clutches, and I attacked in the same manner before the next darting up from the depths could reach her.
I could use Astraea’s light magick.
I didn’t know how; it wasn’t something I’d taken from her in the past, but I knew it was possible to share power between some Bonded pairs.
Astraea threw her head back, and her frantic eyes caught mine. She tried desperately to swim up, but she wasn’t getting far. Then to my horror I realized it was because she couldn’t swim.
The distance between us felt endless. Impossible. But I would never give up.
More bodies came up from below, and my rage was building, already gripping the loose power Astraea was expelling from her survival instinct; perhaps her magick reached for me when it knew she needed help the most.
Her hand strained for mine, and when I reached her, I pulled her to me, about to explode my wrath into these waters.
The creatures, nymphs from their human-like facial features, balked as light glowed from both of us, but it wasn’t our magick that frightened them off. Another nymph hissed and clawed at the face of one. A cloud of black blood made me lose track of them, and the rest stopped reaching for us to regard the interference.
I was already kicking away as the burn in my lungs grew. The darkness pressed in, the surface seemed impossibly far, and my vision blurred as clouds edged in. My limbs grew heavy, each movement sluggish, but still I swam with everything I had.
Then we were shooting for the surface faster than I could carry us.
I held Astraea tight as we gasped for air the second it surrounded us. Her head lost balance as she choked, coming in and out of consciousness. Her forehead rested on my shoulder, and all I could do was hold her, smoothing away her wet hair.
“So silly.” I knew that voice all too well, had recognized our savior the moment I saw her stark black tail.
Fedora swam around us, and Astraea tensed in fright. The nymph’s head canted with a smile of wicked amusement. She reached for Astraea, tucking a lock of her wet hair behind her ear.
She’d visited me more times than I cared for in the cave under the library, accessing it from the passage of water that filled a shallow pool. I’d asked her to take Astraea’s dagger and leave it in a place she would find in Goldfell manor, and my end of the bargain, retrieving a powerful trident she was after that was on land, remained unfilled.
“We can scent celestial blood when it touches our waters, even from the depths,” she said in that melodic voice of hers.
“How did you scare them off?” I asked.
Eltanin roared above us, but he wouldn’t be able to get close enough to help us, and the void to pass through wouldn’t open in water.
“There are advantages to being dark and unknown, as you well know,” she said.
Her black tail kept them afraid, as her kind thought her a bad omen just like the celestials harbored disdain for black wings. However, fear was a power in itself.
“You have no magick though,” I pointed out.
“Yet.” She floated closer, resting her hand on my shoulder while the other idly played with Astraea’s hair. “I’m waiting for that to change with what you owe me.”
Astraea’s teeth bashed together, and her lips were turning faintly blue. We had to get out of the water before the icy cold killed us instead of the nymphs.
“As fate has it, that’s exactly what I was going to retrieve for you. But I need something more from you.”
Her black eyes flared with excitement but quickly narrowed with ire.
“I did my part in making sure your star found her stormstone dagger in Goldfell manor.”
“That’s hardly a fair trade for what you stand to gain in return.”
“It’s not my fault you chose such a pathetic request.”
Distant voices caught my attention, and I found a ship heading our way.
