My glow surges white-hot, skin almost too bright to look at. I shove every scrap of energy I have into her, trying to jumpstart the fire in her veins.
Her dra-kir stays silent.
I press my lips to her wet temple, then open my mouth and let the sound rise. A deep, shaking vibration that starts low and builds, rising through my ribs.
I press my sternum against hers and force that sound into her body. A shock. A demand.
Beat, I snarl into the bond, ramming the command down the new, thick connection between us.I am beating. You beat.
I do it again. The roar turns into sound and vibration, pounding through both our chests, rattling her lungs, jarring her heart.
“COME BACK!”
I crush her in my arms, squeezing her ribs, then releasing. Squeeze. Release. A crude, desperate mimicry of breath.
“Mih-kay-lah!”
The sound when it comes is awful.
She gasps.
It’s a tearing, wet drag of air.
Her whole body bows in my hold. She chokes, heaving, and I flip her quickly, supporting her as more water gushes from her mouth onto the stone.
She coughs. Hard. Her lungs fight, dragging in and expelling air with harsh, painful-sounding hacks.
It is the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.
But she does not wake. She does not come back. Her body is limp against mine.
I pull her back against me, into my lap, wrapping around her shivering body as I rock her, burying my face in her wet woven strands, my own body shaking with the aftershocks of fear and fire.
My glow doesn’t fade.
It wraps around us, turning to steam where it meets the water on our skin, drying her scale-tunic as quickly as it can. It feels like building a cocoon of light around both of us. I push harder, sending her all of my light. All these sols consuming Ain’s gift, I send to her now.
But underneath, something is wrong.
The pain in my body is not easing.
It is growing.
It feels like my bones are cracking and knitting into new shapes. Like my skin is shrinking, trying to contain something that has outgrown it.
I look down at my claw where it clutches her shoulder.
It is not gold.
The golden skin is darkening, deepening, turning the color of charred stone. And within the darkness, points of light are blooming. Little pinpricks of brilliance.
Stars.
My skin is turning into the dark sky.
A groan tears out of me. The pain is in my chest, my groin, my spine, and it is blinding.
I cannot stay here. The water, the open space, it is not safe.
