Page 39

“Go on,” she whispered.

He sang, and he didn’t hold anything back. He sang the way his body told him to, low and deep and long. The note rolled out of him and into the stone, and the stone answered. The plug shivered and shook, and then it gave way with a roar, and the water came.

It burst through the gap in a white, foaming rush and poured down the old channel. It was cold and clean and fast, and it filled the channel from wall to wall. It came down past them in a torrent. It found the ancient spillways at the foot of the channel, and the spillways caught it and slowed it and spread it, exactly the way they had been built to. It ran down into the river below the falls with a sound like laughter.

And then, somewhere far above them, he felt something else.

It came faintly through the stone, a deep, rising murmur, and then a pressure, and then a sweet, cold rush, like a breath being drawn after a long, long time without breathing. It was water, rising in the sealed chambers high in the rock. Springs that had been dry for longer than memory, waking up and filling and overflowing, one after another after another. And the memories came with it.

They hit him all at once, so hard that he staggered and caught himself against the wall. They poured into him the way the water had poured through the gap, too fast and too many to hold. He heard voices raised in song, many voices, deep and rolling, singing together in a great dark chamber full of water. He saw hands on stone and water rising at their call. He saw channels running full from one end of the world to the other, and the songs following them. He saw his people standing in the rivers with their heads thrown back, singing the water home.

He didn’t remember names or faces, but he remembered this. Finally, he remembered what he was.

“Korrak?” Frankie’s hands were on his face, and her eyes were frightened. “Korrak, what is it? What’s wrong?”

He looked down at her, and he was shaking, and he didn’t care.

“This is what I am,” he said, his voice rough and broken. “This is what I was made for.”

Her face softened and her eyes filled. She didn’t ask him what he meant, because she seemed to understand anyway.

He caught her up in his arms and swung her joyfully around, and she shrieked and then laughed and clung to his neck. He kissed her hard and deep, with the water roaring below them and the springs waking in the rock above and the old songs still ringing in his head. She kissed him back just as fiercely. Her legs wrapped around his waist. Her fingers dug into his hair. He pressed her back against the wall of the channel and she moaned into his mouth. The heat rose through him like the water rising through the stone.

He wanted her urgently, right here, right now, in the singing dark, with the river running free around them. And when he lifted his head and looked at her, breathless and flushed against the wet stone, he saw that she wanted him too.

“Yes,” she whispered, before he could ask. “Yes. Here.”

He carried her down to a broad, smooth shelf of rock beside the channel, just above the rushing water, where the spray drifted over them in a fine cold mist. He laid her down and knelt over her, and she was already tugging impatiently at the fastening of her covering. He helped her. He drew it down over her shoulders and her breasts and her hips, and the spray beaded on her bare skin. She shivered and laughed and pulled him down to her.

He took his time, even now. He kissed her throat and her shoulders and the soft curve of her breasts, and he closed his mouth over one tight, cold nipple until she arched off the stone and gasped his name. And without meaning to, he began to hum. It came out of him the same way it had at the rockfall, low and deep, and it traveled through his lips and into her skin. She jolted beneath him.

“Oh God,” she breathed, her fingers clutching his hair. “Oh God, Korrak, do that again.”

He did it again, deliberately, and she cried out, and he felt a slow, fierce pride. So he kept humming. He hummed against her breasts and the soft skin of her stomach, and he felt her tremble under his mouth. His tail curled around her calf and held her there. The water roared past beside them, and the springs sang in the rock above them, and the song rose up out of him and poured into her.

When he moved lower and settled between her thighs, she was already shaking. He tasted her slowly and thoroughly. She was hot and sweet against his tongue, and she made a sound he had never heard from her before, long and helpless and wild. He held her hips firmly and hummed against her, deep and steady, and felt the vibration of it go through her. Her heels dug into the stone, and her hands fisted in his hair. She said his name, and then she couldn’t say anything at all.

He listened to her, the way he always did. He listened to every broken gasp and every tremor, and he followed them, until her body drew taut and trembling beneath his mouth. Then she came apart with a cry that echoed off the walls of the channel and was swallowed by the roar of the water. He held her through it, humming softly, until the shudders eased and she lay limp and gasping on the wet stone.

She didn’t stay limp for long. She reached down and caught his face in her hands and dragged him up over her, and she kissed him hard, tasting herself on his lips. Her legs wrapped around his hips. His cock slid free of its sheath, aching and heavy, and she reached between them and closed her fingers around him.

“Now,” she whispered against his mouth. “I want you now, Korrak. Please.”

He braced himself over her, and she guided him to her. He felt the heat of her against him. He was just beginning to push inside her, slowly, with her breath catching and her eyes locked on his, when he felt the drill change.

The slow, steady pounding that had been coming down through the rock for days went suddenly louder and sharper and faster. The thudding became a grinding scream, and it was so close that he could feel it in his bones.

He went rigid as he understood. His song had woken the springs in the sealed chamber above, and the rising water had soaked into the rock around it. The rock between that chamber and the drill had softened. The stone that should have held for days had gone soft and wet and weak, and the drill had found it.

She felt him freeze and pulled back, her eyes wide. “Korrak? What is it?”

Above them, the grinding rose to a shriek. There was a sudden, terrible crack that he felt through every bone in his body. And then there was silence.

He drew back from her slowly, every muscle protesting. He looked up at the dark, wet rock above them, where the springs were singing and the old channel climbed towards the surface. His heart was pounding so hard it hurt.

“They are through,” he said quietly.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN