"It's too deep. Twenty feet down at least, maybe thirty if the springs run that far." Her breath came shallow and quick, each inhale sending fresh agony through torn ribs. "And the locket won't just let you take it. It's awake now. Aware. It'll fight you."
The ice cracked wider, the sound like breaking bones. The light pulsed brighter, revealing the locket in sharper detail. Maren could see the doppelgänger's form inside it now, half-solid already, taking shape like a moth in a cocoon that was almost ready to split open.
"This is my fault," Maren said, the admission torn from somewhere deep and painful. "My bloodline created that thing. My mother hid it here instead of destroying it. My magic fed the construct every time I tried to fight it." She forced herself to meet his eyes, to hold his gaze despite how much it hurt to see him standing there ready to throw himself into freezing water forher. "Leave me. Get off the ice before it breaks completely. Let the lake take me and the locket both. End this."
"No."
"Tristan, please. I'm already dying. The doppelgänger took too much and there's nothing left to?—"
"No." He crouched beside her, one hand cupping her face with a gentleness that contradicted the steel in his voice. "I'm not leaving you. Not now. Not ever. So stop asking me to."
"You'll die trying to save me. The water's too cold, the locket's too deep, and even if you reach it, touching the thing might kill you outright." Her voice broke. "I can't watch you die for me. I can't carry that."
"Better than living after failing to save you." His thumb brushed her cheekbone, wiping away blood or tears or both. "I've done that already. Watched someone I loved die while I was too far away to help. I won't do it again."
Maren saw it in his eyes then, the ghost of his first mate rising like smoke. The fear that he'd lose someone again to violence and hatred and his own inability to protect what mattered most. The certainty that if he didn't act now, immediately, he'd spend the rest of his life reliving this moment and wishing he'd been braver.
"I'm not her," Maren whispered, understanding flooding through her despite the pain and exhaustion. "I'm not your wife. You don't owe me the same protection."
"I know you're not her." His voice roughened, emotion bleeding through the controlled exterior he'd maintained since finding her. "You're worse. You're stubborn and infuriating and you make me want things I swore I'd never let myself want again." He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching hers. "And I'm not watching you die just to save me the trouble of admitting that out loud."
The ice buckled again, violently enough to shift them both. Water seeped through fresh cracks, pooling around them in spreading darkness. The temperature had dropped further, cold that went beyond winter into something supernatural and malicious.
The doppelgänger's face formed inside the locket, features coalescing from smoke and shadow. Eyes opening with terrible awareness. Mouth curving into a smile that held nothing human, nothing kind, nothing except hunger and triumph.
"Sweet," it said, voice muffled by ice and water but still perfectly audible. "But pointless. The locket is mine. I am the locket. You can't separate us without killing her too."
"You're lying," Tristan said flatly, his hand still cradling Maren's face.
"Am I?" The construct's smile widened, showing too many teeth. "We're bound by blood magic. Blood to silver. Shadow to stone. Destroy the locket and the backlash kills her instantly. Rips her shadow-core right out of her chest." Its eyes gleamed with malicious delight. "That's how blood magic works, tiger. That's why her mother hid the locket instead of destroying it herself. She knew breaking the binding would kill every Pitch witch who carried the bloodline."
Maren's chest tightened. She didn't know if the construct was telling the truth or spinning lies meant to paralyze them with fear. Her mother had never explained the specifics, had only whispered about hiding something dangerous where water remembered.
"Maren?" Tristan's voice pulled her back. "Is that true?"
"I don't know." The words came forth, barely above a whisper. "My mother never said. But blood magic does create feedback loops. If the binding is strong enough, breaking it could?—"
The ice gave way beneath Tristan suddenly. Not cracking slowly like the earlier fractures. Shattering. One moment he was crouched on solid surface, the next there was just open water and fragments of ice spinning in dark current.
Tristan went under without a sound, his hand torn from her face by the violent displacement of water rushing to fill the void.
"No!" Maren lunged forward, ignoring the white-hot agony that tore through her ribs. Her fingers caught nothing but freezing spray as the water closed over him. Dark and terrible and absolute, swallowing him like the lake had been waiting for exactly this opportunity.
32
TRISTAN
The cold took Tristan’s breath away with a gasp.
Not regular winter cold. This went deeper, cutting through skin and muscle straight into bone. The lake swallowed him completely, dragging him down into darkness that pressed from all sides.
His tiger roared to the surface immediately, flooding his system with heat and strength and the desperate instinct to survive. But even shifter metabolism had limits, and water this cold didn't care about supernatural advantages.
He kicked hard, orienting himself by the glow below. The locket pulsed like a diseased heart, silver-white light cutting through murk that should've been completely black. Twenty feet down, maybe twenty-five. The current pulled at him, trying to drag him away from the light, away from the only thing that mattered.
His lungs already burned. The shock of cold water had stolen his breath on impact, left him with maybe thirty seconds of air before his body started shutting down.
He dove deeper.
