My breaths come in shuddering waves, propelled by fear, disbelief, and awe. The sky is everywhere, but so is the sea, each one endless and dark, each one sparkling with silver light.
When the Collector turns us back toward the mainland, I steal a peek at the coast. The sea is wild tonight, white crests breaking on golden sand and rocky cliffs beneath the moonlight. The white stone of Starworth Tor glows in the distance. It seems impossibly far away, but we get closer and closer. I think we’re actually going to make it.
But the air beneath us stutters, and we free fall.
The Collector slings his arm toward the water, that hand still clawed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, hold on!”
I clasp my arms and thighs tighter as we plunge toward the sea before a rushing wind returns and carries us upward again, arcing us toward the tor’s beach once more.
I swear I can feel the Collector’s heartbeat pounding into me, feel it in the air, like the wind and night have a pulse.
“Just a little closer,” the Collector says as we near the shoreline. “We’re almost there.”
But we aren’t.
Because the power in the air stutters again, then it vanishes completely.
And we plummet.
The impact is so hard and cold I stop breathing.
There’s nothing but darkness and aloneness, even once I break the surface and gasp for air. The Collector is nowhere.
The abyss in my mind seethes, calling to me. This time I might have no other choice but to surrender. I’m too weak, the water too heavy, the shore too far. My dress is tangled around my legs, and my side and chest burn with pain. Though I do my best to stay afloat, choking on the salty water, I know I won’t last for long.
Several yards away, the Collector bursts from the sea, sucking in the night air. When he spots me, he swims toward me.
“I need you to hold on again.” He treads close as my bottom lip quivers from the cold and snakes his arm around my waist. “Raina. Hold on to me.”
The demand in his words feels familiar. So familiar that I instinctively fold my arms around his neck.
The water eddies, like his power is stirring it, but before he can command an upsurge, a wave crashes over us, dragging us under, separating us.
Beneath the crush of the sea, the Collector grabs onto me, his arm around my shoulders as he swims for the water’s surface. We barely make it before another wave hits, pressing us down, down, down.
I’m sinking. I’m so tired, so weak, my muscles burning. I want to swim—I can envision the shore—but I can’t fight anymore. I’m being buried by water.
The Collector dives toward me. He’s surrounded by pale orbs of welcoming light. But my abyss awaits, a deeper kind of darkness than the sea, churning with the promise of safety if I will only surrender.
I edge my consciousness toward that eerie cliff, thinking of the beach and soft sand under my feet and the comfort I found at Starworth Tor, even if it feels unreal—like a fever dream. And finally—finally—I let myself fall.
Just as the Witch Collector reaches me.
And takes my hand.
38
ALEXUS
For several moments, I think we’re dead.
There’s nothing except me and Raina. Not water. Not darkness. Not even air.
We’re suspended in a place of boldest light, strange and comforting. A place where time seems unmade. Where it doesn’t exist.
Raina looks so peaceful hovering before me, as though weightless and sleeping. Her silky, dark hair billows above her head, the skirt of her gray dress floating like we’re still within the depths of the Malorian Sea.
With her hand in mine, I draw her to me. She moves as if through water into my arms. I want to stay right here in this place that time forgot, where she might wake and know me.
