Sava plunges, snapping her wings out to slow her fall as we barrel toward the black rock below us. We land so hard I feel it in my bones. Her wings snap shut a fraction of a second before the red dragon slams down beside her, right where her wings were. The green comes in more slowly. Roiven crouches and has me climb onto his back again before he scales down.
“Let’s keep this quick,” Roiven says to the other witches below me.
The witches are all gathering to my right. Aria distributes food to them. The ocean is to my left, a hundred feet or so away.
I should go with Roiven to hear what’s happening. I’m part of this now. And while I don’t see how I can be a queen of people I’ve spent my life hunting, I can at least try to honor the trust Roiven has put in me.
But I can smell the ocean, taste the salt on my tongue. I hear it crash against the rocks. And I’ve spent so long being kept from it.
My feet move before the rest of me can make up its mind, carrying me toward the edge of the rocky island and the lapping waves. I pause to loosen the laces on my boots one-handed, toe them off, and strip my socks. The trousers, I don’t worry about.
I stand on the glistening rocks and let a wave roll up over my feet. Unlike the Tower’s cove, where the waves broke further out and only lapped against the shore, here they rise two or three feet up before curling and crashing down. The pale dawn sun paints the ocean beautifully.
Salt water makes me come alive, like fire searing through my veins. Yearning rises in me, from the foamy water lapping over my toes up to the roots of my hair. I take another step forward, andanother, until the water rises and falls around my heels but I stay submerged.
There’s a presence in the water. A low, distant hum that tugs at my stomach.
He’s here. My familiar. My chin clamps tight as I fight the urge to cry. My eyes fall shut as I reach my mind outward.
It isn’t like at the Tower, where the only thing greeting me was empty silence. He isn’t talking to me, but I can sense him, somewhere nearby. He’s curled up north of here, past an isle that’s barely visible from where I stand. It’s just a smudge of gray.
“Hello?” I call quietly.
There’s no answer but emotion. This is different from Roiven’s feelings. There’s an inhuman edge, even stranger than Sava, more alien.
He’s upset at me. The water rocks back from the isle. The next wave starts rolling in. It builds, and builds, until it’s double the size of the others and still growing. My teeth grit tight and I stumble back out of the water as the wave towers up over me.
It crashes down in front of me and a flood of water surges up around my waist, yanking me into the ocean. I dig my feet against the rocks. For a moment I lose touch of the bottom and I’m swept back toward the sea. The water rises around my breasts, then up to my armpit, as my legs float up at an angle. I swing my left arm through the water, fighting to right myself.
One heel touches the rocky bottom, then the other. The water recedes, falling back down around my waist, and I drag myself through the tide’s pull as my heart pounds. When I reach the dry rocks I stumble and collapse, shaking.
“Are you trying to kill me?” I ask.
There’s no answer, but I can feel a bolt of pain through the bond connecting us. The thought comes in ideas, not words. He felt my hatred before, and now I reject him again instead of letting the wave sweep me in. He never let me drown before.
If I don’t want to come see him, he won’t make me. The feeling of the familiar in my mind slides away.
“Wait,” I call. But he’s gone, silent like he was at the Tower. I stand and stumble back toward the water, my sopping clothes clinging to me. Planting my feet back in the swells, I reach for him, but it makes no difference that I’m touching the water. There’s no response, and no awareness.
I clench my jaw hard and stare in the direction I know he is. My heart aches.
“Cai,” Roiven calls. I turn over my shoulder and see him walking past Sava toward me. The witch breaks into a jog, quickly closing the distance. He’s holding a handpie. “We’re ready to… what happened to you?”
“My familiar. He’s out there.”
“You feel him?” Roiven’s eyes widen. He offers me the food, and I take it even though I’m too agitated to feel hungry.
“I need to go to him.” My voice trembles. I feel cold all over.
Torain might hate me, but he was right when he said a witches’ familiar was their split soul. There’s a part of me missing, an emptiness where the kraken should be. And I can’t just wait for the kraken to forgive me. I need to go to him, and prove I’m worthy of the bond. Prove I’m not just going to reject him again.
“But you can’t swim.”
The other riders are mounting up. Aria scales the side of Avreen’s dragon as Sava stares at us. Through the bond I can feel her impatience, and Roiven’s worry.
“I have to,” I explain. “He’s upset at me. I need to fix this, if I’m going to make any difference at all.”
Roiven nods slowly, his forehead furrowed.
