Then, softer—like a confession meant for only the sea. “Please… don’t leave me.”
It hollowed me out. Tore me open. My body shook around it, but I held him tighter, burying my face against his neck like I could breathe life back into him.
But the silence didn’t break. His body stayed cold. No matter how tightly I held on, I could feel the ocean trying to take him—relentless, merciless.
I forced my thoughts into motion before grief could swallow me whole.
Eira.
The name hit like a lifeline. She could heal him. She had to. I’d heard stories—how she could pull life back from the edge with bloodied hands and iron will.
This wasn’t over. It couldn’t be. Not like this. Not when the truth had finally been placed in my hands.
I gathered him against me, wrapping my arms around his weight as the bag at my hip flared hot—like the shards themselves refused to accept this ending.
I turned toward open water—Toward the battle above.
Before I could move, the current stuttered—then vanished entirely, leaving me suspended in a silence so complete it rang.
Shadows surged from the ruins. Robes billowed like ink in the tide. Hands seized my wrists, my shoulders, yanking me back.
“No!” I thrashed, my scream shredding through the water. “Let me go! He needs me—he needs—”
They wrenched me away. Ripped him from my embrace.
My nails scraped across his skin as my grip was torn loose. “Alaric!”
He drifted as my arms were pinned, his body rocking once before slipping lower—further from reach. The light from my mark flared across him, silver staining his face—
But it wasn’t enough. He sank out of the glow. Out of my reach.
Something inside me fractured. My limbs felt distant, heavy, as if the sea had poured stone into my veins. I watched him sink. Watched the dark close over his shoulders. My hands were useless.
I kicked then—too late—twisting in their hold, strength returning only once the space where he had been was empty. Their grips were iron now, unyielding as law itself. They dragged me backward into the ruins as I screamed for him, my throat shredding around his name—
“ALARIC!”
But he was gone—pulled into the dark, swallowed by it, beyond my sight.
Calder drifted forward from the shadows, contempt curdling into something cruel as he took me in. I spat at him, the glob of salt and rage disappearing into the water.
My vision flashed white-hot. I strained against the Sentinels’ holds until my shoulders screamed. “Let me go!”
Calder’s hand slid into his robe. He withdrew a syringe. He grabbed me, the needle pierced my arm.
“No—get off of me!”
Something sharp and searing flooded my veins like molten chains. My body convulsed, a scream ripping out of me raw enough to shake the ruins. Fire crackled under my skin, rushing through every vein, burning me alive from the inside out.
Calder’s laugh slithered close. “See how easily you break? All that defiance—and one drop of what I carry reduces you to this.”
I gasped, body trembling, vision fracturing. I didn’t know what he’d put in me—only that it scorched, clawed, hollowed me out until I thought it would strip me down to nothing.
Still, beneath the agony, something inside me clawed back. With a strength born of fury and grief, I tore my arm free long enough to wrench the bag from my hip.
61
Nerina
