Now her words hit me,hurtme, right in the chest. I shake my head, wordless, water stinging the corner of my eyes—from wind, from tears, I’m not sure.
“I’m…I’m…”
Because that question, of all questions…
That is a question with no right answer, isn’t it?
I lurch. Sideways, violently, my right leg plunging into icy water up to my knee.
Who do you think you are?the Lady’s voice resounds.Who do you think you are?
“I don’t—” I gasp as my left leg drops, too, the water burning cold against my skin.I’m sinking.“I’m just?—”
It’s too late.
The water gives way, and I plunge.
Cold. Cold. Cold. It is so cold, such a sharp and vicious cold that it seems to strip the skin from my body, to grate steel wire over every nerve and push oxygen from every cell. Tocrush.
I think nothing, see nothing. I am only heavy, dark, downward. Lost. Gone.
And then, just as sudden, warmth. Of a kind. A burning, prickling, rasping feeling at my fingers and toes, crawling up limbs towards the vital center of me, like my blood is crystallizing drop by drop until at last my heart will be frozen still.
Oh, but it’s pleasant. Startlingly easy. If my eyes were open, I’ve now let them close. If my body was struggling, I let it rest.
How long will it take to die?I wonder idly. Then:Maybe this is what needs to happen.
Force. A grip at my waist, pulling upward, the rest of me following like a doll. Then frigid air slashing my face, needling my nostrils and lips, pouring down to lungs and limbs. I cough, painful, splutter and splash and suck breath all the way down to my belly as black water and black sky and white stars wheel around me.
“Don’t,” comes a gulping voice. “Stop. Don’t move.”
Water churns around us, but I can onlyhearit, crashing loud in my ears, because my vision is sloshing and my skin is numb, my body is ice, and it’s only when I feel the soft push of sandy earth beneath me that I realize I have been pulled out. Saved.
“Gwenna!” A voice—voices—I can’t discern. My body curls in on itself automatically even as I force my gaze up, and see—barely—a giant form, jaw juddering, lips blue, hair dripping—Callahan—but then I’m surrounded, arms, hands, fabric flapping.
A coat—black, heavy, the inner satin still warm with body heat. And hands, broad and strong, bracing under my arms so I stand, holding me upright almost painfully hard.
My body fights it, the spasming need to cough contorting my insides and fisting everything out of my lungs.
“Can you walk?” It’s Kai, eyes blazing, keeps his arm firm around my shoulders.
I nod. Suck for breath that doesn’t come. Doesn’t come and doesn’t come and doesn’t come. Then retch cold water and bile and what feels like the fiery lining of my throat.
Then collapse.
EIGHTEEN
KINGSTON
“Gwenna!”
Kai’s scream is like nothing I’ve ever heard.
Drenched, wild-eyed, he clamps her limp form into his chest, catching her weight. But he only holds her a split second before he tips back her head, touching two fingers to her neck.
Feeling for a pulse.
My stomach goes cold.
