Tension pulled me taut as the string of a bow. I opened my mouth, then shut it.
What did I think I was going to do—warnher? I wasn’t even supposed to be here.
More movement beside her. A slender set of fins broke the surface, hung in the air, then slapped down with a sound like the crack of a whip.
The black water churned with chaos—a tumult of flicking fins and spangled scales and pale teeth. Webbed hands grasped the maiden’s limbs and dragged her beneath the surface. My heart lurched to a stop. I held my breath, my eyes riveted on the turbulent water.
She surfaced with a gasp, kicking at the hands reaching for her legs and slithering tight over her torso. She fought herself free. But there weremoreof them—too many. And she was still too far from the shore. Those cold white hands were closing over her mouth and dragging at her hair and—
They were drowning her. And I was standing here doingnothing.
My fingers itched with the promise of a hundred quiet growing things. But how would that help a girl being drowned by aquatic Folk?
Morrigan bedamned.
I pelted out from between the trees. My heavy boots dragged at my feet, but I didn’t have time to unlace them. I shrugged off my fur-lined overcloak as I ran, then ripped off the softer woolen mantle beneath it. Frigid air stung my neck and face. The water was going to be worse.Muchworse.
Fragments of ice at the water’s edge gleamed silver, flashing a memory in my mind’s eye.
I’d been twelve, and winter had arrived in Fódla with precarious and unusual cold. Cathair had dragged me out of bed beforedawn and frog-marched me past Rath na Mara’s palisade, out into the frost-webbed fields beyond. I’d begged him to tell me where we were going, but he’d shaken his head. The pond at the edge of the forest—where Rogan and I often swam—had been iced over. White lace embroidered its darkness and made strange shapes out of the leaves frozen below the surface. When I’d looked up at him in question, Cathair had waved me out onto the ice. I’d balked—the pond never froze solid. But he’d insisted. I’d inched out, the ice groaning at my weight.
Still the druid had waved me onward.
The ice had shattered without warning. Biting water closed over my head, and the world became darkness and panic. I’d gasped, inhaling frigid water before sinking like a stone.
Cathair had hauled me out by my cloak in the moment before I blacked out. And as I’d lain shivering and spewing pond water, he’d told me, “The Eleventh Gate led to Tír fo Thuinn—the Land Under the Sea. The towering waters were like ice, and those who could not swim in the cold drowned before we even met our foe.” His face had been frozen, but his eyes had burned. “You must learn. You must learn to be strong, little witch, because the world is full of Folk who would exploit your every weakness.”
So I’d learned. Cathair had made me plunge into the icy water again and again, until I no longer gave in to the gasp reflex. Until my muscles no longer seized up and made me sink. Until I could hold still long enough to remember which way was up—and which way was death.
After, I’d been in bed for two months with a bad bout of winter fever not even Cathair’s potions could cure. But I’d learned how to be strong.
Now I took a deep breath, prayed I still remembered the druid’s unpleasant lessons, and dived headfirst into the freezing lough.
Chapter Eleven
The frigid water tried to pummel the air out of my lungs. I clamped my mouth shut, and after a moment the instinct to gasp passed. My limbs twitched with cold as I cut through the frothing black water toward where the girl struggled against her attackers. She was still fighting, even as the creatures yanked her head viciously back and dragged her down by the hair.
This time, she didn’t rise. A stream of pale bubbles popped quietly atop the settling water.
I kicked faster, slid one of the skeans from my belt, and dived.
Moonlight barely pierced the black surface of the lough, but the scales of the watery predators were iridescent, their slithering bodies casting a luminous trail. They werefast. Even hauling the unwilling body of the girl between them, the three—no,four—creatures were descending into the depths of the lough too quickly for me to follow. One of them looked up at me with a wide, eerie face ringed with fins, hair waving like pondweed.
Pondweed.
Inspiration struck, warming my sluggish blood. Instead of chasing after the Folk, I closed my eyes and sent my awareness sprintingpast them. My Greenmark traveled where I couldn’t. Through cold water, past floating blooms of algae. Into darkness—was it too dark? If sunlight did not reach this deep, nothing could grow…
There.
Embedded in the rich sludge of the lough floor was a submerged meadow of pondweed. Gentle fronds waved at me like friendly hands, edged in the barest sliver of moonlight. I poured my waning strength into my Greenmark, sending pulses of life into the cold, sleeping vegetation. The pondweed woke at my command, suddenly less gentle. And much less friendly.
In their haste to drown the maiden and avoid me, the watery Folk had descended nearly to the bottom of the lough. Their iridescent fins brushed through the tendrils of new growth billowing from the tips of the weeds. The plants wandered over their muscular limbs and silky tails. If an unexpected thorn scratched against their gleaming scales, they didn’t notice.
Until it was too late.
I clenched my fists, turning the pondweed predatory. Soft weeds drew tight as nooses, wrapping around narrow waists and writhing fins. The fronds grew serrated edges, slashing skin and shredding the hands trying to unknot them. Vicious thorns sprouted, burrowing into tender flesh. Fear washed over the Folk like an invisible current. They began to struggle in earnest, fighting the animated pondweed as if their lives were at stake.
Which they were.
