Rafe left him there, rising to his feet to get to Isla.
She hadn't moved. Her hands were still flat on the water's surface, the charge still arcing, her eyes closed, tears running down her face. The storm overhead was enormous, three separate cells feeding each other, lightning columns burning from the lake surface. She was at the center of all of it and she was giving up. He recognized the expression. He'd worn ithimself once, standing at the helm of a ship he knew he was about to lose.
"Isla. Look at me."
"You need to go." Her voice was barely audible under the storm. "I can't hold it. I can't stop it. You need to get away from me."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Rafe, please." Her hands pressed harder against the water. "The storm wasn't my father's. It was mine. The boats, the crew, my father trying to stop what I started. He burned out countering my power. The men on the dock finished what my storm already did to him."
So that’s what had triggered this massive set-back. A decade of buried truth spoken out loud by a man determined to see her fall, as long as she took down Rafe with her. This was on him.
"Look at me," he said again. Quieter. His hands found her shoulders. "Open your eyes."
She opened them. Blue-gray, swimming with tears, the charge reflecting in them.
"You were seventeen," he said.
"It doesn't matter."
"You were seventeen years old and afraid and carrying a power no one taught you how to use because they thought ignorance as truly bliss. You were a child."
"I killed people, Rafe."
"A storm killed people. A storm you didn't know how to control because no one taught you." He held her gaze. "That's not the same as choosing to kill. That isnotthe same."
"The result is."
"No. It isn't. Because the woman kneeling in this water right now held a storm for an hour this afternoon. She redirected lightning away from buildings and people. She chose control. She chose to protect." He was close enough to see the chargeflickering in her irises. "The girl at Ardenmere didn't have that choice. You do. Right now."
"I don't know what my control is built on anymore." Her voice cracked. "I built it on a lie. On the idea that it was his storm, that I was the witness. If that's gone, what am I standing on?"
"Me." He said it without hesitation. "You're standing on me. On every hour you spent in that meadow. On every session at the shoreline. On fifteen minutes of clean wind over a ridge that you held because you stopped being afraid of what you wanted. That's yours, Isla. The lie didn't build that. You did."
Behind them, Malrick had gotten to his feet, one arm across his ribs. "She can feel the truth in her blood, Lupeus. The bracelet showed her what she is. You can't talk her out of that."
Rafe didn't turn. He kept his eyes on Isla.
"I love you," he said.
The wind stuttered. The rain continued but the gusts lost their edge for a fraction of a second, the storm hiccupping around them.
"I love you," he said again. "Not your power. Not what you can do for my routes or my contracts or my ship. I love the woman who makes terrible chamomile tea and shows me salt pouches at eight in the morning and argues with me about rope coils. I love the woman who held a storm for a doubtful town because it was the right thing to do." His voice was rough, stripped raw by the shift and the wind and the truth of it. "I'm not leaving. I'm not going back to the water without you. The river was my life and now you are. That's not the bond talking. That's me."
The charge in the water flickered. The lightning columns over the lake stuttered, their pattern losing coherence.
"You can choose," he said. "Right now. Let this storm consume you because a man with a stolen bracelet told you atruth you weren't ready to hear. Or stand up and take your power back and decide for yourself what you do with it." He put his forehead against hers. "I'll be here either way. But I'd rather be here with you standing."
She was shaking. Behind them, Malrick was watching, waiting, sure the math was still in his favor.
Isla pulled her hands out of the water.
The charge came with them, blue-white arcs dancing between her fingers, but she held them in front of her face watched them. Recognition instead of fear.
"Give me room," she said.
He stood and took a giant step back.
