“Zara, we’re out of time?—”
“Exactly. So we have nothing to lose.” I find his face in the dark, press my forehead to his. “Trust me. Trust us. Trust what we’ve become.”
“I don’t understand?—”
“The door. The stone seal. Water flows through, but we can’t break it because it’s enchanted.” My words come fast now, urgent. “But we’re not just water or lightning anymore. We’re both. We’re the storm. And storms don’t ask permission—they break what’s in their way.”
Understanding dawns through the bond. “You want to combine our magic. Here. Now.”
“It’s the only chance we have.”
“It could kill us.”
“We’re already dying.” I kiss him hard, desperate. “But maybe—just maybe—we can die fighting. Together.”
He holds me for one more heartbeat. Then: “Together.”
And in the darkness, in the water, with death seconds away, we reach for the power that made us more than we were.
The bond ignites.
13
TORIN
She loves me. The most impossible woman in the world loves me. And I’m going to watch her die.
The water is at our noses. I’m treading as hard as I can, holding Zara’s weight above mine, giving her every inch of air I can create. But physics doesn’t care about desperation. The tide is still rising. The ceiling is three inches above our heads. Soon, two inches. Then one.
Then nothing.
“I think I love you,” she said. The words echo through the bond, pulsing with her heartbeat, her fear, her absolute truth. She loves me. This fierce, brilliant woman who came seeking peace and found war, who fell from the sky and learned to breathe water, who challenged everything I thought I knew about my world—she loves me.
And I’m going to lose her.
No. I refuse. There has to be another way. Has to be something we haven’t tried, some angle we haven’t explored, some?—
“Torin.” Her voice is strained, muffled by water lapping at her lips. “The wind. I can use wind to create bubbles. Buy us time.”
I feel it through the bond—her reaching for her magic despite the dampening kelp-rope. Tiny bursts of air current, gathering what little oxygen remains in this shrinking pocket and concentrating it around our faces. It’s not much. Minutes, maybe. But it’s something.
“Save your strength,” I tell her.
“For what? There’s no point in saving strength if we’re dead.” She manages a weak laugh. “Let me help. Let me do something other than drown slowly.”
Her pride. Even now, even facing death, she needs to contribute. Needs to be more than the person being saved.
Gods, I love her for it.
The truth of that hits me like a physical blow. Not the bond telling me what I should feel. Not obligation or gratitude or the desperation of facing death together. Just—love. Pure, simple, impossible love for this woman who refuses to give up even when giving up is the only rational choice.
“You want to help?” I pull her closer, treading harder to keep us both above the water. “Then tell me what you meant. About combining our magic. About the storm breaking what’s in the way.”
“The door.” She gasps as water splashes into her mouth. Spits it out. “It’s enchanted against individual magic. But we’re not individuals anymore. The bond made us?—”
“One.” Understanding crystallizes. “Two elements that should destroy each other, creating something new.”
“Liquid lightning,” she whispers. “That’s what we made in the reed bed. Not water. Not electricity. Both. Neither. Something that shouldn’t exist but does.”
