My eyes squeeze shut. The water surges around us, and I give Salvatore another push to keep his head above it.
I’ve tried to be better in this reality. Tried to do things differently, to avoid harming the people who matter most.
Why did I bother if I’m not going to use the knowledge I have to save a life rather than taking it?
A twinge ripples through my back. A ghost of an impression trails through my flesh: Asher’s hands settling against my flayed skin.
I squeeze my eyes tighter against the memory.
He isn’t here. I’m not dying. Salvatore will be any minute now.
This man showed up for me like he never did in my world before our match sparked. Maybe it was fate pulling a few strings… but doesn’t that mean fate is giving me a second chance?
A chance to do right by the mates who are mine, one way or another, no matter what reality I’m in.
When I open my eyes again, another high bridge looms up ahead with more streams of headlights. The lake isn’t far beyond it.
If I’m going to flap my wings and change the course of our lives, it has to be now.
I open my mouth again, and a sob hitches out of me. Tears are welling behind my eyes.
I can let myself grieve. I still know what I have to do.
Releasing Salvatore’s hip, I jam one hand between my elbow and my ribs. With a few jerks, I loosen my glove enough that I can wiggle my fingers the rest of the way free.
As the leather garment sinks into the water, I reach out as if trying to steady Salvatore’s head with both hands.
In the moment before my bare skin grazes his, my chest constricts so tight I forget how to breathe. My arm stiffens.
Before I can chicken out and snatch it back, I touch his jaw just below his ear.
The flare of our bond sparking blazes up my arm and rolls through my body.
A gasp lurches from my throat. Salvatore’s eyes jolt open, his gaze snapping to mine.
Every inch of my skin tingles with the sparking sensation. An inferno of magic rumbles up inside me, resonating through my very cells. Converging every place I’m scratched and sore.
That magic hurtles out of me, toward the only nearby target.
I gasp for breath and tamp down on the blare of my emerging glim with every shred of the control I’ve cultivated over the past three years. My ears ring, and my limbs shake.
I forgot just how overwhelming it is. Maybe I assumed it was only so all-encompassing because I was almost dead when it hit me the first time.
My power latches on to Salvatore and pulls fragments of his life energy and the ephemera tangled up with it toward me. The scratch on my wrist and the deeper cut on my arm tickle as the skin melds back together. The budding bruises fade away.
I manage to clamp the flow down to a trickle the moment my literal injuries are dealt with. I’ve never been able to resist myglim’s demand to heal what’s outright wrong, but I can muzzle it a little.
I don’t need every part of me to be in the absolute healthiest state any human being can be.
Thankfully, I wasn’t almost dead this time. Salvatore’s arm twitches with the wounds my power has transferred onto his own flesh, but he doesn’t appear to notice. His eyes have widened with the resonance of his own awoken glim, humming through the air around us.
He doesn’t know how to wield his innate talent yet, probably can’t even tell exactly what it is, but that shouldn’t matter. In the initial onslaught of power, instinct should be enough to guide it, even if it goes overboard.
His arm swings around. Magic warbles across the river’s surface.
Over by the nearer bank, trees lurch out of the earth and topple over. Grass and clumps of soil tumble after them. They crumble together into a lumpy mass.
A wall of the loamy clay-like substance slices through the water ahead of us like a soaring sea serpent. It rises up through the current and curves around as if to meet us in an embrace.
