I wait it out for a while before I can even manage stumbling to my feet.
My boots are unsteady beneath me—and I stagger right into a tree.
Thick moss pads the trunk.
I sag against it, my eyes only half open in the dark. Bare patches of bark scratch my cheek, but I hardly feel it, not through the raggedness of my insides.
My legs tremble under me.
They give out, and I sink down the tree to the shrub at its roots, my weight striking down on my knees.
The pool of water climbs up to my hips.
I kneel in it.
It should feel ice-cold, but I’m already soaked through—and I don’t feel much more than the static humming in my ear and head pulsating.
It’s dizzying, and it takes all my strength just to stop myself from crumpling into the water.
But I have to get up.
I’ve got to gather enough strength to shout out for Samick. I know he was calling for me—before the waves pushed me out.
Now, there’s too much distance.
I don’t hear anything but the water settling and trees groaning.
My heart stills.
A breath pins to my throat—
And I listen.
The silence of the blackout is disturbed. Water sloshes not far from where I kneel, and it sounds like legs wading through the flood.
Someone is moving around in the forest. Someone caught in the tidal wave—but in thick blackness, I can’t see who.
Samick flashes in my mind, and my insides flip with hope.
But then, that’s just a guess.
Less than that, it’s just hope. Delusion, maybe.
It might not be him.
He’d be calling out for me.
So it could be another fae, or a human captive, or a stray, or someone who just happens to be near the camp.
My throat thrums, ragged. It burns with the urge to call out his name.
It’s a risk. One that quietens me.
Then I hear it.
A whisper, a very human voice, muttering—
“Fuck—ow. Goddammit.”
