“You would be. I can see in the dark,” Leif said, and began tugging off his boots.
“What?” Reggie said, expression going slack with surprise.
“You’re mad,” Connor said. “That water isblack. Even if she’s down there, you’ll never find her.”
Leif wiggled his bare toes into the cold, dew-drenched grass and started on the laces of his tunic. “I’m sure the lady will be touched to know what lengths you were willing to go to,” he said, harsher and angrier than the dry tone he’d aimed for. His pulse continued to accelerate as he cast his tunic aside, and watched the two men across from him try, and fail to concoct a noble excuse.
Connor’s lips pressed together, tendons throwing shadows along his tight jaw. “Go, then,” he said, coldly. “And try not to drown.”
Leif sent him an approximation of a smile, took a running leap, and dove into the pond.
He closed his eyes before his face breached the water, his last glimpse topside that of his clasped hands arrowing down between two lily pads. The water was cold, bitingly so, far colder than a stagnant, ornamental pond should have been. When he opened his eyes, the bottom dropped out of his stomach, because Connor had been right. It was black as night down here, the water thick and viscous as he swiped his hands through it; he could see his upper arms, the gold bands he wore there, but the dark swallowed everything past his elbows. Something slick andpliable wound round his ankles, slipped between his toes: reeds of some sort. The cold pressed at his chest, his throat. He swept his arms, and kicked his legs, and spun in a circle.
Nothing. He could see nothing.
But he started propelling himself through the water, hands outstretched, and after a moment, his eyes began to adjust. They stung, and he blinked often, but the underwater landscape began to take shape.
Moonlight offered a pale skein of white-blue on the surface, and the reeds, thick and waist-high, wavered like silver banners as he swam. He spied the shapes of dropped manmade things: a great stone urn that had likely once held a potted tree; a wagon wheel tilted on its side, half-sunk in the muck at the bottom; the bright glimmers of fish darting away from him.
His lungs started to burn, and still he pressed on. Because if Amelia wasn’t underwater, and she wasn’t in the garden…he had a terrible feeling that none of them knewwhereshe was, only how she’d been taken.
~*~
Leif dove so neatly and cleanly that the water stilled within moments, as if he hadn’t gone in at all. Alpha shrieked again overhead, and Reggie wanted to clap his hands over his ears.
He also wanted to curl up into a little ball on the grass and close his eyes until he woke up from what he wished was a nightmare, but he could only submit so much to the panic that filled his veins like poison.
“She’s dead.” He thought he sounded remarkably calm, given the uneven drumming of his heart. He thought it might punch straight through his ribs and leave a gaping hole in his chest. “If she fell in the water, she’s drowned by now.”
“Maybe,” Connor said, in a way that meantyes, of course. “Or maybe her magic somehow…” He made an empty gesture toward the pond. “Protected her.”
“No, she’s dead.” He thought that if he said it enough, if he believed it, then it would get easier to move forward, as opposed to panic-spiraling into paralysis, which he could feel happening to him now. “If she was here somewhere, her bloody beast would find her.”
Alpha let out another pointed shriek overhead.
“All we can do is search, and wait for daylight,” Connor reasoned. “We might find some sign of her when we can actually see more than two feet in front of us. Speaking of.” He nodded at the black surface of the water. “He’s been down a long time. Has he drowned, you think?”
“That’ll be lovely. Not only has the only dragon-rider in our company perished, but the heir of Aeretoll drowned attempting to rescue her.”
“Reggie.Reg.” A firm hand closed on the back of his neck and squeezed. A thumb pressed at the hinge of his jaw, and Reggie ducked into the pressure, turning to face Connor. “You’re falling to pieces,” Connor said, as gently as he’d ever said anything. It was downright sweet.
But Reggiewasfalling to pieces. So he snapped, “The only critical advantage we have is those dragons, and the one woman who can control them has likely plunged to her death, so yes, Connor, I’m going to fall toallthe pieces if that’s bloody all right with you!”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You’ve made friends with that one drake. The female one. Valerie.”
“Valencia.”
Connor waved, uncaring of the distinction. “Why can’t you ride her? Control the drakes. Be our eyes in the sky.”
A wild, humorless laugh burst out of Reggie’s mouth before he saw that Connor wasn’t smiling; that he was in fact quite serious. “Are you insane?”
“I’m pragmatic, and it would be wonderful if you’d be pragmatic, too. Pull yourself together. You’re a sight prettier than me, and I’ll need you to be the one to tell the king of Aeretoll his nephew’s drowned.”
“Fuck off.”
