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Rushing water swirled around her. Something was dragging her into the ravine but she wasn’t hurt. She could feel the pointed pressure of the teeth around her ankle, but no pain. The jewels saved her from that harm.
Who attacked you? Do they have weapons or are they using magic? Are you in immediate danger or are they taking you somewhere?
Through the swirling water she caught a glimpse of thick, pebbled skin. A long reptilian tail. Elongated jaws with rows of serrated teeth.
A mudbeast. She’d been taken by a snapping mudbeast. The kind that dragged their prey underwater to drown.
The realization forced her to beat back another surge of panic. The mudbeast was not hurting her…but she would drown. Her rings protected her from outer harm, not inner harm. Water in her lungs was most definitely inner.
And her chest was already aching so badly.
Do you have a weapon? Can you injure them?
Elina’s entire body screamed as she curled forward, fighting against the flow of water, against the desperate need to take a breath. She might thrash forever trying to stab its undulating body with Warrick’s knife, but she knew exactly where its brain was because its jaw was clamped around her foot.
Wildly she stabbed its head. Again and again. Either its skull was too thick or her arm was too weak.
She plunged the blade deep into its eye.
The mudbeast’s head whipped to the side, jolting her hands away from the knife. Then the beast went still.
Dead.
Can you get safely away?
She couldn’t swim. But perhaps she could shove her feet against the side of the ravine and push herself upward.
The beast’s teeth were still clamped around her leg. Trying to pry its jaw open did nothing. Panic set in. She could remove the rings, rip open her ankle to get free—but the blood would only draw more mudbeasts to her and she would have no protection from their tearing jaws. Already she could see them, their circling shadows visible through the haze of glittering gold that hung in a cloud around her head. The paint and powder were washing off, leaving only the naked face of a woman who would never properly become queen.
She’d known she would die. But not this way. Not this way. When she’d only just found her warrior. When she hadn’t freed her people.
Darkness filled the edges of her vision. A shadow approached—not circling but coming straight toward her. She would die here. But she would take another mudbeast with her.
With the last of her strength, she yanked the knife out of the beast’s eye—and Warrick was suddenly there, just beyond the cloud of gold.
Too late. Her chest was about to burst, heaving relentlessly, her body fighting her mind in a frantic need to take a breath. She could not hold out long enough to reach the surface.
And Warrick—he did not appear frantic as he swam in closer. Or even concerned. Though grim, he seemed…pleased.
Surely that could not be. But whatever she’d seen in his expression mattered not at all when he suddenly stilled, staring at her. Perhaps memorizing her face as she was his.
Elina was not sorry that Warrick would be the last thing she would ever see. And she could not fight her body anymore. Her last gasp exploded out of her lungs—
—and Warrick’s mouth crashed down over her opening lips. She braced for the agony of drawing in water. But it was air. Hot, moist air.
Warrick had given her his breath.
Her chest still heaved for more. Yet the darkness receded.
His mouth broke away from hers and he vanished from her sight. The pressure on her ankle released. Then his arm circled her waist, small bubbles streaming around her as his powerful kicks drove them upward.
He shoved her up to the surface ahead of him. Elina broke through, coughing and gasping, into a cacophony of shouting and splashing. Serjeant Iarthil surfaced near them, relief scoring his face. Warrick swam with her toward the edge of the ravine, where it seemed her every attendant and knight was waiting to pull her into the shallows.
Warrick snarled at them all and swept Elina up into his arms.
She clung to his neck, still coughing, her lungs spasming painfully with every drawn breath. Her attendants swarmed around them as Warrick strode to the shore, where Nanny Char waited, her lined face made haggard by her concern.
“Let me have her. Let me tend to her. Serjeant Iarthil! Tell him!”
From behind Warrick, the serjeant said something in the eastern tongue. Likely imploring the warrior to give Elina over into their care.
Warrick ignored them, sitting Elina upon one of the boulders surrounding the pool. He took her robe from a dripping Dara and wrapped the brocade securely around her shoulders—the heavy material no longer a smothering weight but a comforting warmth.
Elina had preferred his arms, yet could not say so while still coughing.
