CHAPTER 19
Honest Tides
~CASSIUS~
Fuck.
The curse erupts from somewhere deep in my consciousness the moment I see it happen—the moment Gwenievere's feet slip against scales that were never designed to accommodate passengers during emergency aerial maneuvers.
Her bare feet.
Why the fuck is she barefoot?
The question surfaces with the particular hysteria of someone watching disaster unfold in slow motion, each microsecond stretching into eternity as gravity claims the woman I would burn the world to protect.
She loses balance completely.
Her body tilts, shifts, passes the point of no return with the particular inevitability of physics that doesn't care about bonds or love or the fact that her survival matters more to me than my own continued existence. One moment she's standing on Mortimer's scaled surface, the next she's falling away from it with velocity that makes my chest constrict with fear I refuse to name.
I don't think.
Thinking takes too long.
Thinking means hesitation.
Hesitation means watching her die.
I dive.
My body follows hers over Mortimer's edge before conscious decision can intervene—Duskwalker instincts overriding any consideration of my own safety in favor of reaching her. The wind tears at my clothes, at my hair, at exposed skin that registers nothing beyond the single-minded imperative tocatch her.
My tendrils reach further than they've ever reached before.
The shadow appendages that are as much a part of me as my own arms stretch outward with desperation that grants them length I didn't know I possessed. They lance through the air toward her falling form, void-black extensions of my will racing against gravity that doesn't care about intentions or love or the particular terror that has replaced every other emotion in my consciousness.
Not fast enough.
She's falling too fast.
I need?—
The thought barely forms before the shadows respond to need rather than command.
Darkness erupts beneath me—pooling, solidifying, forming structure where no structure should exist. A platform materializes from the void of my own power, shadows weaving themselves into something solid enough to support weight, stable enough to break my fall without breaking me.
My feet hit the shadow surface with impact that sends shock through my legs.
The platform holds.
And my tendrils finally—finally—reach her.
They wrap around her transformed body with grip that's probably too tight but I can't find the capacity to care aboutcomfort when the alternative is watching her plummet into the lava that still erupts below us. The void-black appendages pull her toward me with force that contradicts the gentleness I usually employ, urgency overwhelming everything else.
I let go.
Time it perfectly.
Release the tendrils at exactly the moment that will drop her into my arms rather than continuing her fall.
