The current was stronger than it looked, tugging at my limbs with greedy fingers, trying to pull me under again. Each stroke felt like fighting against hands that sought to drag me down. The vine around my waist grew taut as I neared the limit of its length, the rough fibers digging into my skin through the thin fabric of my dress.
“Alain!” I called, my voice barely carrying over the rush of water. “Alain, hold on!”
No answer came. No sign of him. Just the endless flow of the river, indifferent to human desperation. The water grew deeper as I followed the bend, the bottom dropping away beneath my kicking feet. If I lost him here, in this deeper channel, he’d sink beyond reach.
The claiming mark on my shoulder burned suddenly, a flare of heat that had nothing to do with exertion. The amber stone in my handmade pocket pulsed in response, warming against my hip even through the soaked fabric. Magic stirred in my blood, resonating with something in the water around me.
Then I saw him. A flash of dark clothing, a pale hand breaking the surface before disappearing again. He was sinking. Dying. Perhaps already dead.
“No,” I gasped, pushing myself harder, swimming with desperate strokes toward where I’d seen him last.
The vine jerked tight, stopping me just short of where he’d gone under. I stretched out, my fingers grasping at water, finding nothing. Not close enough. I needed more length.
Without thinking, I untied the vine from my waist. The current immediately seized me, pulling me farther downstream, but I fought against it, keeping my head above water as I searched frantically for any sign of the prince.
There. A flicker of movement below the surface. I dove, eyes stinging in the murky water as I reached toward the darker shadow that had to be him. My lungs burned, my dress tangled around my legs, but I pushed deeper, arms outstretched. My fingers brushed against cloth, then closed around what felt like a wrist.
I had him.
But as I tried to pull him up, a strange thing happened. The water around us seemed to... shift. To lighten, just for a moment, with a glow that reminded me of the amber stone. And in that brief illumination, I felt something or someone push Alain’s body toward me, as if invisible hands were helping guide him into my grasp.
The sensation was warm, comforting. Familiar in a way that made my chest ache with sudden longing.Papa?The thought came unbidden, a child’s wishful thinking. Yet the presencefelt like his. That same steady strength, that same unwavering support that had defined my childhood before the sacrifice.
There was no time to dwell on it. Alain’s weight was dragging us both down, and my lungs screamed for air. I kicked hard, one arm wrapped around his chest, fighting against the current and his waterlogged clothes and my own exhaustion.
We broke the surface together, and I gasped in sweet air, turning Alain’s face upward to keep it above water. He wasn’t breathing. His skin was pale as moonlight, lips tinged with blue, eyes closed. But I had him. I wouldn’t let him go.
Swimming one-handed while supporting a man’s deadweight was nearly impossible. The current continued pulling us downstream, away from where I’d left the gryphon and my safety line. I had no idea how I’d get us to shore with only one free arm and rapidly fading strength.
A screech from above answered my unspoken question. The gryphon circled overhead, then dove low, talons extended. For a terrifying moment, I thought it meant to attack, to finish what it had started on the riverbank. Instead, it seized Alain’s tunic in those massive claws and began to lift, taking some of his weight from me.
Together, we fought the river’s pull. The gryphon couldn’t fully lift him. The corruption seemed to have weakened it, shadows interfering with its natural strength, but it could help guide us toward the shore. I kicked and paddled with my free arm, letting the creature’s flight path direct me.
When my feet finally touched the rocky bottom, relief nearly dropped me to my knees. But I couldn’t falter. Not yet. Alain still wasn’t breathing, his body a deadweight in my arms as I dragged him onto the shore and collapsed beside him.
“Please,” I gasped, rolling him onto his side. “Please don’t be dead.”
Water gushed from his mouth in a torrent, his body convulsing under my hands. I held him steady, keeping his airway clear as more river water emptied from his lungs. The gryphon landed nearby, watching with those eerie, clouded eyes, its massive form hunched as if in pain.
“Breathe,” I ordered, pounding Alain’s stomach with more force than gentleness. “Breathe, you royal idiot. Breathe.”
As if obeying my command, he coughed violently, his whole body shuddering with the force of it. More water spilled from his lips, followed by a desperate, ragged inhalation that was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. He was alive.
But for how long? The gryphon’s attack had opened his side in a vicious tear from ribs to hip. Blood still seeped from the wound, staining the rocks beneath him in an ever-widening circle. If I didn’t stop the bleeding soon, I’d have saved him from drowning only to watch him bleed to death on the riverbank.
I glanced around frantically, my healer’s instincts kicking in despite my exhaustion. The forest here was different from the woods near Thorndale, darker, twisted by whatever corruption was spreading from the Dark Lord’s curse. But plants were plants, and some medicines were universal.
“Stay with him,” I told the gryphon as I staggered to my feet. “Don’t let anything near him.”
The creature settled beside Alain’s unconscious form, its massive body curled protectively around him like a cat with a kitten. The sight was so incongruous. This half-corrupted beast guarding the prince it had nearly killed, a hysterical laughter bubbled in my throat. I swallowed it down and focused on my search.
There! Yarrow for bleeding. And comfrey for knitting flesh. Wild garlic to fight infection. My fingers worked quickly, gathering what I needed from the riverside growth, my mind cataloging each plant’s properties with the certainty my motherhad instilled in me before her death. This was my heritage. This knowledge was in my blood, long before magic had awakened there.
I crushed the herbs between river-smoothed stones, working them into a poultice as I knelt beside Alain. His breathing was shallow, his skin clammy to the touch. Too much blood lost. Too much river water in his lungs. I cut away his ruined tunic with the dagger Brigida had supplied, revealing the full extent of the gryphon’s damage.
The wound was ugly. Deep punctures where teeth had sunk into flesh, ragged tears where the creature had pulled back. I cleaned it as best I could with river water, then packed it with the herbal mixture, applying pressure until the bleeding slowed.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, not sure if I was apologizing for the branch my magic had called, for the gryphon’s attack, or for something larger. The complex web of choices and circumstances that had brought us both to this moment. “I’m so sorry.”
