“What?”
“You’ll have years left to live when I’m old and frail!”
“The heartbinding will extend your life.”
What would it be like to swim in the ocean? She’s splashed in the Waters of Pendarra outside Windhaven, but that river isn’t deep. Not like this.
When Rominy remains silent and his heart starts to pound, Elowyn glances at him again. “What’s wrong?”
“Am I going to live for five hundred years?”
She shrugs and looks back over the water. “No one knows for sure. There’s never been a heartbinding between an elf and a human. But when an older elf heartbinds with a younger one, the older one often has an unusually long life.”
Then there’s a splash, and Elowyn looks on in horror as Rominy slips over the edge of the deck into the water.
Whistling wind. Did he faint?
Without stopping to think, she jumps in after him just as he surfaces, sputtering and gasping for air.
Wrapping her arms around him from behind, she buoys them both with her water magic to give him a chance to catch his breath.
“It’s all right,” she says softly. “I’ve got you.”
He coughs a few times and takes a series of deep, wheezy breaths.
When he seems to be breathing all right, she directs the water to guide them back to the boat, which has drifted away. They both grab hold of the ropes crossing the side of the hull, and she turns to face him as he looks sheepishly at her.
“Can we pretend that didn’t just happen?” he asks.
She tries not to laugh, but her mirth bubbles from her despite her best efforts to stop it. “I wanted to go for a swim today, anyway.”
“Not in our clothes, though,” he jokes alongside her. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
“Of course. It was my turn to be heroic.”
“I’m just glad you didn’t die.” He glances at her, and the warmth in his eyes tightens something in her stomach before he clears his throat and looks away. “Do you want to stay in the water or get out?”
“I love water. It’s soothing to my magic. We’re not really dressed for sea-bathing, though.”
“I’ll try to remember to change into a bathing costume before I faint into the ocean next time.”
Laughing, she flicks water at him, and his eyes grow large.
Then he splashes her back, and she instinctively reaches out with her magic to protect herself. The seawater freezes in a wall of water droplets between them.
She releases the water back to the sea as she nervously searches his face. Hopefully, she didn’t frighten him.
“That was amazing,” he breathes, and her heart warms. “What else can you do?”
“You really want to know?”
“Of course I do. I want to know everything about you.”
Their eyes meet briefly before Rominy looks away, awkwardly scratching his brow where seawater glistens on his smooth skin in the bright sun. Did he mean to say that? And does he really feel that way?
“So...water magic.” His words pull her out of her thoughts.
“Right.”
