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Just a little bit farther.
I couldn’t hear anything behind me, just waves crashing.
Five more strokes and I would be around the steep, jagged rocks of the cove and the waters tossing me in every direction.
Four more.
Three.
Two.
A hand wrapped around my ankle, pulling me under.
I fought it, kicking and thrashing as I went under. Fought it, water filling my lungs in great clumps as I was dragged back toward shore. Deep under the water, my body started convulsing, trying to expel the water while only sucking it deeper into my chest.
Shit.
This was how it was.
I’d heard stories of panthenites drowning. What it felt like. The torture of being alive but not being able to move one’s body under the weight of the sea.
I twisted, my limbs slower than I needed them to be through the drag of the water. Fighting. Fighting. I managed to get my fingers to my leg and tried to pry the hand clamped around my ankle free.
A fucking vise I couldn’t crack.
Fighting.
Fighting for consciousness, since the fight for air had already been lost.
Out of nowhere, a wave crashed over my face.
Air.
Sand scraping up my back.
My body flung through the air and I landed on my belly on the hard shelf of sand, the impact forcing water to spew from my lungs.
A sucking gasp, just to be interrupted by more liquid spewing outward, hacking out all the salt water I’d just inhaled.
A breath. Another one. More water choking out of me. Gasp. Two more and air actually sucked down into my lungs.
Coughing, scrambling my hands in the sand, I pushed myself upright and twisted around.
Damen a distance behind me. Shirtless. Shoeless. Pantless. Just sopping black boxers hanging off the muscular cut of his hips. The skull inked onto his chest glaring at me.
Impending death vibrating in his amber-brown eyes.
I reached over my shoulder for the handle to my blade. Not my favorite blade that I’d lost in the rubble of Netherstone, but it would do—I’d practiced with it for thousands of hours with Venetia during the last four years.
With that one motion, Damen’s eyes grew colder—turning into icebergs a million years old. The left half of his top lip curled into a snarl and he kicked at the clothes by his feet, bending over and grabbing his short sword from the scabbard he must have been wearing under his shirt.
He flexed his wrist in a wide circle, his blade glimmering in the sunlight.
I glanced around, expecting to see a horde of men converging on me—I would expect no less from Damen.
But nothing.
The only things moving were the ocean’s unceasing waves foaming into the sand and the leaves of the scrub trees that hung to the edges of the beach along the high cliff walls surrounding us.
