It just is. The way living things simply are.
Finnian is barely with me by the time we get there.
His weight has been increasing for the last twenty minutes, the body’s honesty asserting itself, the venom doing what it does. He’s still upright. Still moving. But his eyes have that waterlogged quality of someone fighting to stay present while something pulls them under.
“Into the water.” Kestra is already moving. “As cold as he can stand.”
I get him to the edge. His hands find my arms, and grip without looking.
“I’ve got you.” Same words as before. I mean them the same.
We go in together.
The cold hits like a verdict, immediate, total, pulling a sharp sound from somewhere in Finnian’s chest that’s equal parts pain and relief. The púca scratch on my arm screams at the temperature change, then settles into something almost numb.
I’ll take numb.
He goes under for one second. Two. I haul him back to the surface and he comes up gasping, hands finding me, eyes finally there again instead of the fever-distance they’ve had for the last hour.
The water is chest-deep where we’re standing. The bioluminescent moss reflects off the surface, casting everything in shifting blue-green, and Finnian’s face in this light is?—
I look at the waterfall.
Not because I don’t know what his face is. Because I know exactly what it is and finishing that sentence means admitting something I’m not ready to say out loud yet. The waterfall is easier. The waterfall doesn’t look back.
“The venom’s flushing.” Kestra, from the rocks above. Her voice carries the particular careful neutrality of someone who has been listening to things people would not have said with their walls up and is choosing not to make it a thing. “Keep him in as long as he can stand it. The cold does the work.”
Finnian’s hands are still on my arms. The grip loosening now as the cold does its job, the fever breaking in increments, his breathing steadying from the ragged quality it’s had.
“Kestra.” Tiana’s voice, quiet.
A pause.
Then footsteps moving away from the rocks.
I don’t look up to catch whatever look Kestra gives me on her way past. I feel it anyway.Don’t waste this.
We’re alone.
The waterfall is loud enough to swallow anything we say. The bioluminescence pulses slow and steady. The forest breathes around the grotto the way it’s been breathing around us since the root hollow, with the patient recognition of something ancient that has been waiting for this specific moment for longer than either of us has been alive.
Finnian’s fever breaks, one final shudder moving through him from shoulders to spine, and then the heat against my hands drops to something almost normal and he exhales.
Just exhales.
His forehead drops to my shoulder.
I hold him there.
My hands find his back without deciding to. He’s still warm underneath the cold water, that steady specific warmth that hasn’t left even through the fever, even through everything the last hour tried to strip away. The warmth that stays. I don’t know when I learned to identify it as his specifically.
His breathing against my neck slows. Steadies. Becomes the breathing of someone who is finally, finally just present.
I don’t move.
“I remember.”
Two words. Very quiet.
