Stop it, Evianne. This is exactly the kind of nonsense you’re supposed to be avoiding.
The boy in the green scarf loops past the roped-off area again, faster this time, and something in my stomach tightens. The ropes are there for a reason. The far end of the lake, where the ice is thinner, where the spring thaw has already started to—
A crack.
Like a gunshot.
Then a scream.
Everything stops. The music, the applause, the chatter. All of it, gone in a single breath, replaced by a sound that will live in my nightmares for years.
A child screaming for help.
The ice beneath the boy gave way, and he’s gone. Just gone. One second he was there, skating in his green scarf, and the next there’s nothing but dark water and jagged ice and that terrible, terrible screaming.
People are running. Not toward him. Away. Panic spreading through the crowd like a shockwave, everyone stumbling back from the edges, security shouting into radios.
“Someone call emergency!”
“Get back from the edge!”
“Where’s the rescue equipment?”
I’m moving before I realize I’m moving.
My clipboard hits the ground. My coat comes off. I’m running across the ice, and I can hear someone shouting my name behind me, Veil’s voice maybe, but it doesn’t register, nothing registers except the boy, the water, the seconds ticking away.
My boots slip. I keep going.
The hole is right there. Jagged edges. Dark water. No sign of the green scarf.
I dive in.
The cold is a fist. It hits me everywhere at once, stealing my breath, stealing my thoughts, stealing everything except the animal need to find him, grab him, get him out. My lungs seize. My muscles scream. The water is so dark I can barely see, but I reach, I kick, I search—
There.
A shape. Small. Sinking.
I grab his coat, his arm, anything I can reach, and I’m kicking upward, fighting the water, fighting the cold, fighting my own body as it tries to shut down. My lungs are burning and my fingers feel like they belong to someone else, but I can feel his weight in my arms, and that’s enough. That has to be enough.
The surface.
Light.
Air.
I gasp, shoving the boy upward toward the hands reaching down from the edge, and someone grabs him, hauls him out, and the relief is so sharp it almost takes me under.
He’s out.
He’s safe.
Okay.
Now just get yourself out, Evianne.
Except my arms won’t work.
