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I gritted my teeth and ran faster, willing myself to banish the name from my brain. The more I tried, the more it clung.
Abigor.
"You can't have me," I gasped.
But even in the moonless dark, the path underfoot was clear to my eyes. I had names and images floating in my head. Heat within me, burning, flames licking at my very soul. She already had me.
"I'm here," I whispered, a desperate plea. But it was a lie. I was already gone.
Darkness.
When I came back, when my body was mine again, there was no air to breathe.
My eyes shot open, revealing nothing but a haze of murky blackness. Cold leached into my skin, and understanding lanced through me like an arrow. I was underwater. Oh my God, I was going to drown.
I scrambled, arms and legs flailing as I desperately tried to orient myself. But there was no light, no way to tell where the surface was, or how far away. Panic gripped me like a vice, squeezing the air from my burning lungs, and along with it, all rational thought. My mouth opened on a soundless scream, water flooding in to fill the void, and something latched around my upper arm. I struggled to free myself, jerking my arm, kicking my legs, but whatever was holding me down was too strong. I wasn't going to survive this. I was going to die here, trapped underwater, my last lucid moments filled with terror.
But no—I was moving. Whatever was fastened around my arm wasn't holding me down, it was pulling me, towing me through the water. I reached with my other hand and encountered blunt fingers, a strong hand, and before I could make sense of what was happening, my head broke the surface and I drew in a rasping gasp, then another, and then I was coughing, choking, a lake's worth of water spewing out of my heaving lungs.
I couldn't stop coughing, couldn't stop my limbs from shaking. My hair was plastered to my face, obscuring my vision. I flailed. Was I sinking? Was I drowning?
"I've got you," said a voice, low and gravelly.
The grip on my arm loosened, and then an arm wrapped around my torso, solid as oak, and began swiftly dragging me toward shore. When my feet hit the ground I practically cried with relief, but my legs wouldn't support me. A moment later I was moving through the air, an arm coming under my legs and lifting me out of the water. My cheek landed against a shirtless chest, the skin warm despite the cold of the water. With an effort, I pushed my hair out of my eyes and glanced up. Shock spread through my limbs.
"Julian," I coughed.
"Shh," he said, his voice more gentle than I'd expected. "Just hang on."
Yes. I could do that. I wrapped my arms around his neck and laid my cheek against his chest again, and let him splash his way up onto shore. He didn't put me down right away, just followed the edge of the water, picking his way silently through the undergrowth. The heavy thump of his heartbeat under my cheek was solid and reassuring, and I let my eyes drift closed for a moment.
They opened again when I felt him bend, and then he was sitting me down on the rough surface of a fallen tree. There was a bundle of fabric draped over the log, and as he shook it out, I realized it was his shirt. Rather than put it back on, he wrapped it around my shoulders, tucking the edges tight around my sodden torso.
"A-Aren't you cold?" I asked through chattering teeth. The night air, though cooler up in the mountains than it had been back in Kulmeira, still held some lingering warmth from the day, but the chill of the water seemed to have seeped into my bones.
He shook his head and reached toward me to pull the shirt tighter around my shoulders. It was surprisingly soft, and it smelled not-unpleasantly of wood smoke. He must not have been in the water as long as I had.
My gaze strayed toward the glassy black surface of the lake, and I shuddered. "Wh-What happened?"
He'd been occupied with replacing an enormous curved knife into the sheath on his belt, but looked up at my question. "You went over the waterfall."
“I…what?" I whispered. My gaze tracked further upstream to where a chaotic rush of water spilled over a rocky cliff high above. Very high above. I swallowed, my eyes following the falling water down to where it crashed into the lake, churning the water to froth.
What if there had been rocks below? Or if I'd hit the water at the wrong angle? “It wasn’t me,” I said, inanely. “I wouldn’t—I didn’t.”
Julian's eyes were as dark as the surface of the water. "No. It was Lilin.”
My breath caught. It was too late to pretend this night was some kind of horrible dream. Too late to tell myself I was suffering from a vitamin deficiency, or it was all in my head, or a simple case of sleepwalking. "Lilin," I repeated softly. "Is that her name?"
He nodded.
"And…and she's trying to kill me?" My voice was a little too high and shrill.
Julian blew out a breath, then joined me, sitting heavily on the fallen tree trunk.
"Honestly," he said, "I don't imagine she knows what she's doing."
"What do you mean?" I asked in a shaky voice.
