I am gone, and I don’t know how to return.
And still, the water holds me. Too long. Too deep. Too much.
Then—
A shift. Not water. Something warmer. Sharper. It slides in like smoke through a crack in stone. It’s not gentle. It’s desperate.
Shadow.
It coils around the edges—reaching, both furious and frantic, like it’s tearing the dark apart to find me. The two forces twist, water and shadow braiding together, not fighting but fusing. A cocoon of midnight and moonlight—shadowmire.
I feel him through it. His panic. His presence, seeping into me. I lean into it without thinking. Into him. Into the only dark that’s ever felt like home. Like mine.
And slowly, I start to remember.
My chest spasms. My heart kicks once, then again. The ringstill burns on my hand, the sapphire flaring blue against the white.
Hands. Strong. Familiar.
They pull me up and out of the water.
“I’ve got you,” he growls, and I don’t know if he means my body or my soul, but I’m pretty sure in this moment, it’s both.
Air slams into me like a blow. My body collapses against stone, skin intact once more—but trembling, brittle with cold and something deeper. Terror.
Rigid arms are around me, my face pressed against his chest, no space, no air—like distance is a risk he’s not willing to take. A towel he must have grabbed on the way is held tight in his hands as he tries to warm my chilled skin. His body is solid heat, his breath harsh against my temple, jaw flexed. He looks at me like he’s not sure I’m all the way here.
“What the hell just happened?” he demands, voice low, the force of it cracking like thunder through the Cavern walls.
I open my mouth, but the words won’t come. I’m still trembling. Still tasting salt and fear. Sorrow and resolve. Tears now flow freely, both from the panic and from what was just revealed about the past.
I feel his hands on me, pressing into me—whispers of shadow leaking warmth into my core—until my breathing starts to settle. Until my hands finally come up to cover his. My fingers curl around him like instinct. Like memory. Like need. And he finally exhales the breath he was holding.
“I couldn’t see you,” he says, barely audible over my gasping breaths. “You were just—gone.” The words scrape out of him. He reaches out, brushing the wet hair from my face. A flash of fear, for me. And something deeper. Absolute. Unyielding. “Celeste,” he says, gentler now. “That wasn’t just water memory.”
I nod, or try to. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know it could?—”
“Keep you?” He stares at me, soaked and speechless for along moment. Then finally, voice rough: “It almost didn’t let you go.”
His arms stay around me like armor. But I’m not cold. Not anymore. I think back to the vision in the pool.
Thorne killed my father not out of simple malice, but because he wantedme.
Now, with the legacy of Thalrien in my hands, I see the path laid before me: either embrace the very power my father sought to reject and protect me from, or decide, once and for all, what kind of future I want to forge.
The Thalrien crest still waits at the bottom of the water, glinting like a secret yet to be claimed. Gavrail fishes it out with a flick of shadow—sharp and quick—not willing to let me near the water again.
Because the waterwantedme.
And next time, it might not let me go.
CHAPTER 51
Some rivers run forward. Some run back. And some run beneath us—their current carrying what was once lost.
—Waters of the Deep
Ican’t sleep.
