Cold spray slapped my face as wood scraped beneath my palms—And then there was nothing between me and open air.
The sea swallowed me whole, the chain dragging me into the deep. Cold tore across my skin, pressure crushing into my ears. My chest clenched, lungs already screaming, salt burning my throat as the dark folded around me.
Darkness pressed in from all sides. Silt and torn weed swirled where the battle above had shredded the water, clouding my vision until even the moonlight was gone.
Nothing.
I kicked harder, angling down, then up again when the pressure burned behind my eyes. Shapes slid past—wreckage, drifting rope, a body tumbling slow as a dream—
But never her.
Every second stretched thin, elastic, as the sea pulled at me, greedy and unrelenting.
I’d never pushed this far. Never forced myself this deep. The curse coiled tighter with every stroke, dragging pain through my veins, reminding me how close I was to the edge of what it would allow.
I felt her—an ember beneath my skin, a wrongness in the current, burning in my veins and hauling me lower like a second curse twined through the first.
I followed it blindly, lungs screaming, vision narrowing to pinpricks as the water grew colder, heavier. The sea closed around me, impatient, testing whether I would break.
I kicked anyway. I would find her.
Another convulsion tore through my chest, my throat spasming around nothing, salt stinging my tongue. Blackness licked the edges of my sight. My body thrashed in revolt, every muscle screaming to give up, to surrender.
The deeper I went, the darker it became—until even the moonlight above vanished.
I forced my eyes wide, scanning the black. I expected a glimmer. A flicker. Something—anything—to show me where she was.
No shimmer of starlight. No glowing crescents.
Just cold and silence.
The tether that had always tugged at my veins—the pull I’d cursed and fought—fell silent.
My chest felt carved hollow, ribs straining against the weight of the deep.
No Nerina. No light. No voice.
Only the press of the ocean, heavy and merciless, and the slow, creeping horror that I had been wrong—that this time I wouldn’t find her.
Couldn’t save her.
My lungs convulsed, a violent spasm ripping through me as salt stung my throat.
Panic flared bright. I’d pushed too far. Stayed too long. My body revolted.
I kicked, turning toward the surface, muscles burning as I forced myself back the way I’d come. The water resisted, heavy andpunishing, each stroke slower than the last. My vision pulsed, narrowing, dark spots bursting behind my eyes.
I hadn’t found her.
The thought struck harder than the lack of air. I clawed upward anyway, driven by raw survival now instead of instinct or magic. The moon was somewhere above me—a pale promise through tons of water and shadow.
I was almost there.
That was when something between me and the surface moved first. It split around me, sudden and violent.
An iron grip seized my wrist. Another crushed my shoulder, yanking me sideways.
I slashed blind, a snarl ripping out of me—
