Rain glanced down and then wished she hadn’t.“Half is still more than enough to shatter our bones.”
“Would youpleasestop talking about dying?”
“How can I? It’s all I can think about!” Rain shouted back.
“I’ll wait here then.” Daric beckoned her upward with a tilt of his head. “You go before me.”
He’d thought to show her the best path for climbing, but maybe it was better to know he was behind her. He could never catch her if she fell,but it might still be reassuring.
Rain nodded, saving her breath for climbing. Once she was past him, Daric began barking out directions, pointing out places for her to grip the cliff, which became more slippery the higher they ascended.
Rain finally threw a tired and heavy arm over the lip of the cavern. She struggled to pull herself up, her muscles quaking. She suddenly went nearly weightlessas Daric gave her a hard shove on her bottom. She was too exhausted to care—or enjoy—that he had just firmly gripped her backside as he tumbled her shoulder-first into the cavern. She pivoted on her stomach, ready to reach out a hand to him.
Their eyes met as her head popped out of the cavern. Then something crumbled. Daric’s eyes widened, and he started falling.
Rain’s heart bucked violently.“Daric!”
His hands scraped over stone, all of him sliding until he flailed and lost his grip entirely. He soared backward, shouting her name.
Instinct grabbed her. Rain threw out vines from both hands to catch him. They wrapped around him, stopping his fall. He banged against the cliffside. Rain slid forward, nearly yanked from the cavern. She made the vines sink roots into the rock wall, workingthem hard and growing a hundred years’ worth of grip in a second.
Her vision swam. Her whole body went dry, her mouth suddenly parched and dusty.
“Daric!” The vines had circled him unevenly from shoulders to thighs, and he bumped against the cliffside, one arm free and the other pinned to his side.
He groaned in response. She thought perhaps he was only half conscious, but then he shouted up,“Have you been keeping secrets from me, Raindrop?”
She made a strangled sound, neither a sob nor a laugh. If he could jest, he was fine, thank Braylian.
Rain detached herself from the vines that were now firmly anchored and summoned the reserves beneath her skin to grow a sturdy new shoot for Daric to grip. “Can you cut free from the ones around you and climb this?” she called down.
“I thinkI can reach my knife.” He began to wriggle and twist.
Rain directed the new vine down to him, making it thick and branchy, and all the while anchoring it with thousands of small roots that cracked the stone. Her thirst turned desperate, her tongue sticking to her mouth. She’d never been able to produce water, and now the vines were taking all the moisture she had left.
Daric gave a triumphantshout when he managed to free his dagger. He wrapped the new vine around his arm for safety and began sawing his way out. Rain shook free of the greenery she’d made and stumbled to the side of the cavern to drink from the water sliding down the wall, lapping it up like an animal until her throat no longer burned.
As soon as she felt steady again, she watched Daric climb, nerves sinking littlearrows into her abdomen. Her anxiety wasn’t only for him as he worked to extricate himself from such a perilous situation. Sorcery frightened people, and anyone using magic regularly was known to go mad before they’d lived even half a normal lifespan. But she didn’t utter chants or brew potions, and she didn’t even know the language of sorcerers. Rain’s magic was different, part of her very naturerather than fabricated by using outside forces. But would it still scare Daric?
She didn’t know whether to reach for him as he climbed into the cavern, scraped and bloody in places, but whole. Alive. Her Daric. As he stood, relief overwhelmed her fears, and she strode forward.
Daric met her halfway and crushed her against him. “I thought I’d lost you,” he said into her hair, his grip like avice around her.
“Me?” She held him back with greedy arms. “I thought I’d lostyou!”
His grip only tightened. “I would have haunted you.”
Tears shuddered in Rain’s throat. He haunted her already.
Daric loosened his embrace enough to look at her. “Why have you hidden this?”
She glanced at the vines around them. “Are you angry?”
“What’s to be angry about?” He seemed genuinely perplexed shewould think that.
“I-I never told you I regained some of my powers.”
Daric looked at her oddly, as though his surprise were minimal. “Can you make it rain?”
She shook her head. “I’ve tried so hard. It never works. I’m sorry.”
Rain had tried especially hard since negotiations had begun to marry her prince off to Astraea, but the results had been no better than in the past—or ever.
Daric liftedboth hands and cupped her cheeks, his fingers raw and unsteady. “My life didn’t flash before my eyes as I fell.” His gaze roamed her face with an intensity that ravaged her heart and took her breath away. “I had only one thought. One regret.”
“What?” Rain’s pulse pounded like a tempest. Human bodies were so fragile. She remembered not having one, and now the one she did have felt as though itmight shatter from heat and pressure.
“That I didn’t kiss you when I still could.”
