She rumbles and collapses onto the pebbly shore. I slip from her back and thud into the loose, rounded, dark rocks, lying there like a waterlogged corpse and relishing the sweet, sweet solidity of the ground.
I’m gasping for breath, and my entire body is trembling, but without the waves attacking me, I can focus enough to sort through the communication bonds in my head. All four of us are alive.
Exhausted, but alive.
Through salt-stung eyes, I see the others struggling to shore. Venna’s wolf is barely swimming, but Cratos is there, lending his strength, pushing him along. Stark is already on shore. He has Noemi under his arm.
She’s bleeding still, but she’s conscious again, retching sea water onto the stones. Ephyse finally reaches her, bending down to focus on healing her arm.
“Come closer,” Anassa urges, concerned.
She nudges me with her nose and licks me, and I understand why she’s afraid. My body is turning blue, and I can’t stop violently shaking. I’m fairly certain I’m on the verge of hypothermia.
I cough and groan as I try to crawl closer to Anassa, hoping her body will lend me some warmth. She attempts to pull me in with her paw and shifts to reach me better. But I just sort of collapse onto the stone, pulled down under the weight of my soaked clothes, face buried in her briny fur.
When she licks her tongue over my head again, warmth settles over me as if she just laid a blanket over me.
I open my eyes, surprised. Immediately, the bite in the air around me lessens.Heat suffuses my blood. The stones under my hands warm as if they’ve been sitting in the sun for hours despite the dense fog.
The water dragging me down evaporates, hissing and drifting from my skin in steam. Within moments, I’m entirely dry, as if I were never in the water at all.
I look around, baffled. The same thing is happening to the others. Their clothes and hair dry in seconds.
The wolves shake themselves as they withdraw from the sea, sending water spraying everywhere, but when they fall still, their fur is light and fluffy. Dry.
Stark meets my eyes, looking just as bewildered as I am. He smooths a hand down his dry clothes and shakes his head.
It shouldn’t be possible. Things like this don’t just happen. It’s magic like I’ve never seen.
It takes us all several minutes to recover from the shock of the swim and the subsequent magical recovery. Clearly, we’re in the right place. The island seems to be testing us, and when we pass the test, it rewards us. That much is clear.
But as I stand on the beach and look up at the tower, a gut-wrenching sense of danger settles over me.
This island isold, and it’s alive enough to recognize us as Bonded, to push back against us, to dry us off like a parent ruffling a towel over their children.
The others gather around me. I reach up to cup Stark’s neck.
“Thank you,” I tell him. He rests his hand over mine briefly, and I release him to turn to the others. “Move carefully,” I tell them. “There’s no way that was all this island has in store for us. I’m guessing it’s just beginning.”
The island is smaller than it appeared from the ship, but it’s no less ominous. It’s dominated by a rocky central hill upon which stands the tower. Up close, it looks less like a natural formation and more like it was intentionally carved from gray stone by a masterly hand. Steep stairs cut into the rocky hill leading up to a door.
The tower itself is weather-beaten, with slimy stains clinging to it where the sea spray meets its exposed walls. Yet its surface is remarkably intact, despite itsobvious age. It rises at least twenty stories, like a lighthouse without a light, lost in the fog.
Lonely.
That’s what this is, sinking deep into my bones. Loneliness.
An ancient echo of the goddess, maybe, if our crazy theories are right and she really was here long ago.
As we climb the slippery steps toward the entrance, my eyes start to play more tricks on me. There’s movement.
It isn’t like my shadows, which are easy to track when one knows where to look for them. Here, my mind keeps registering motion, but when I turn to look at it, everything is utterly still.
I realize, gradually, that the stonesthemselvesare shifting. I can’t catch the motion with my eyes. I’m not fast enough. But when I’m not looking directly at the tower, the patterns in the stonework slide and shift in my peripheral vision.
It makes me dizzy, and it makes me feel like we’re being watched. Followed.
“Just keep walking,” I advise the others, and they do. Our wolves move with care, their massive footfalls quiet.
