Panic and agony take turns stabbing my chest. I could’ve saved her. I didn’t. I failed again.
I slap my hand to her back, trying to do something. Anything.
“Aeri! Breathe. Breathe.”
But there’s nothing. She’s not moving at all.
Tears sting my eyes, and I scream. The sound shatters the twilight, echoing all around. I don’t care if there are predators. Let them come for me.
She drowned. And I did nothing.
All of a sudden, a strange calm takes hold, and it’s like I can see the Sol River in front of me. Then I see the bodies pulled from it. They look terrible—pale and bloated. Living on the river, I also saw half-drowned people pulled from the water. Ones who fell or jumped or whatever and people got to them quickly. They looked like this—like they were sleeping—like how my mother did when they found her.
There was one day she and I were going to the market, and we saw someone brought back to life. The memory plays out before my eyes. A woman in a gray dress knelt on the stones of the dirty riverbank. Her husband lay dead in front of her. People in hats and scarves crowded in around them, pulled toward death the way moths want to explore a flame. Then she did something weird. She held his nose and breathed into his mouth. She pressed on his chest, and it brought him back. He sat up, sputtering.
It was called a miracle.
I shake off the memory and decide to try it. I’ll try anything.
I roll Aeri over and open her mouth. The mouth with the plump lower lip I just kissed last night. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I hold her nose. I blow two hard breaths in her mouth, like I’m breathing for her. Then I push on her chest, trying to pump the water out. She’s so slight I have to be careful not to break her. But I push again. And again.
Tears well in my eyes. Frost nips at my skin, but I’m sweating.
“Come on, Aeri,” I say. “Stay with me.”
I push and I push.
“Stay,” I beg as I reach for her nose again.
Suddenly, she moves. She comes to, coughing. Then she leans to the side and pukes up water.
I sit back on my knees. Ten Hells. Praise to the gods!
My hands shake as I run them down my face. My whole body’s quaking, and I can’t seem to catch my breath.
Aeri is trembling and throwing up on the snow. But she’s alive. Her heart is beating and she’s breathing.
It’s a miracle.
She gasps, her eyes wide, and then she stares at me. I can’t believe that worked. But also, it had to work because I wasn’t gonna lose her.
“You saved me.” She blinks, bewildered. “I… I drowned. I know I did. How did you save me?”
I don’t know. I really don’t. That memory of the woman saving the man on the Sol has gotta be twenty years old, but it rushed back like it happened yesterday.
“I wasn’t gonna let death take you from me,” I say.
She stares at me with those big brown eyes, tears swimming in them. “Royo…you say something like that, but then you wonder why I’ve fallen for you.”
“Aeri…” I shake my head. She can’t fall for me. It’s a bad mistake. But my heart swells all the same. It’s everything—all I’ve ever wanted to hear my whole life.
“I know,” she says. “You weren’t going to let death take me from you but in ajust friendssort of way.”
I stare at her, suppressing a laugh. “Drowning looks better by the second.”
She smiles, but then she shivers, shuddering hard as she rubs her own arms. Because she’s wet and nearly naked on the snow. Her undergarments are soaked and see-through. Fuck, she’s freezing. Of course she is.
I don’t look. Okay, yeah, I saw, but I stare down at the snow. “I can sit you back in the water to get warm, then I—”
