Page 60 of Heart of Night and Fire

Where the atmosphere had been one of simple panic a moment ago, now it had turned into a tide of terror. Suvanna was slowly raising her arms with her head tipped skyward. Beads of water continued to jump from the ocean, feeding the hovering mass above.

There was a hush of paused breath.

A dimming of the senses, like everything had been coated in fog.

A calm before a storm.

And then Suvanna snapped her arms down, and the world exploded.

The pool in the sky burst apart, a thundering stream of water drenching the Jai Tree.

It cascaded through the branches and down the trunk, its waves spreading through the courtyard, knocking everyone still within its walls off their path. Zarya was hurled off her feet by a cresting wave. Its force dragged her along the stones, the hard surface biting into her thin leather armor, until she crashed into something hard and unyielding that sliced into her side.

Trying to keep her head above the water, Zarya sputtered and coughed as she was pressed into whatever blocked her path, stone digging into her ribs. Another wave crashed towards her, knocking her sideways, the stone tearing through leather and skin before the water tossed her into the chaos.

Zarya clawed at the surface, trying to keep afloat, only to see she was being dragged towards a low section of the partially repaired palace wall. Beyond it lay the chasm that had split the street apart a few weeks earlier.

Her heart thudded in her ears as she careened towards the opening, fighting against the wave, paddling towards a higher section of the wall. But she was too far away. She was being dragged too quickly.

Making a split-second decision, she sunk into the water, waiting for her feet to brush the bricks below. With every ounce of strength she could summon, she launched herself off the ground and streaked diagonally through the water, hoping she was on the right course. She uttered a silent prayer of thanks that all those hours she’d spent in the ocean at the cottage had made her a strong swimmer.

The distance felt endless. Her lungs burned, the effort of holding her breath turning her light-headed. Unable to hold it any longer, she swam up, emerging just past the point she’d been aiming for. The force of the water slammed her into the partially repaired wall.

The stones offered little in the way of handholds, but she gripped them with her fingertips, the waves intent on dragging her towards the chasm. A man swept past her, his arms flailing and his head bobbing as he wrestled against the current, but it was too strong.

She was too far away to reach for him, and she saw the moment he realized it was no use. That his end had come. Their eyes met, and all she could do was fight down a sob as he tumbled over the edge and disappeared from her view.

“No,” she whispered before a scream caught her attention. A woman was barreling towards her, thrashing against the water, and it was obvious that she had no idea how to swim.

Zarya gripped the wall with one hand and lunged towards the woman. As she caught her wrist, Zarya noticed the linked black stars tattooed around her throat.

“Grab my hand!” Zarya yelled. The woman turned towards Zarya’s voice, flailing harder, her movements jerky and frantic. She reached out, her nails scraping along Zarya’s skin just before their fingers locked. They gripped each other as the water continued to pummel them.

Zarya felt the woman sliding out of her grasp, her grip on the wall weakening as she dug her fingertips into a line of mortar, trying to anchor herself.

“Hold on! Stop kicking!” she screamed, but the woman was delirious with fear, her hand sliding until they held on by just their fingertips.

“Hold on! You have to hold on! Stop kicking!”

“I can’t!” The woman was sobbing. “I can’t!”

“Don’t let go! Don’t let go.” She gritted her teeth, trying to pull the woman in closer. But Zarya wasn’t strong enough. The woman’s fingers slipped out of her grasp, and the last thing Zarya saw was her face, frozen in terror, as she flipped over the edge of the chasm and disappeared into the abyss below.

Zarya clung to the wall, sobbing, as the tide finally ebbed. The water flowed out of the courtyard, gushing into the palace and out through the gate, pouring off the edge of the chasm that had just claimed the woman’s life.

After what felt like a lifetime, the courtyard finally fell silent, the deafening roar of water replaced by a heartbroken echo.

Zarya slid from the wall and collapsed to the ground in a shallow puddle.

Her tears mixed with the salt of the sea as her heart cracked in two.

TWENTY-TWO

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The sound filtered through the courtyard where Zarya lay on her stomach, shivering and soaked, water pooling around her. Her tears flowed as the cold spread through her limbs, everything numb and broken.

For all her talk about killing Aarav, she had never actually seen a person die before. The reality was a reminder of just how little she understood about the world she’d found herself in.