My cry breaks free when ice that honestly feels like fire shoots through my legs. I slam my mouth shut as Starza drags me under.
It wouldn’t matter that I couldn’t breathe. My lungs and every muscle in my body lock up the second she starts soaring back through the water.
I try to count the seconds but lose track of time as my mind grows fuzzy. My chest pulls tight as my soul stretches out and receives four caresses in return.
Please. Just get me back to them.
Air rushes across my skin again and water drips from me as I breach the surface. My lids crack open, although their weight continues to force them back down, but they’re peeled enough to see the black deck grow closer.
With ease that you wouldn’t expect from a creature of her size, she lays me on the wooden floor and gently uncoils her tentacle from around my body.
“Good luck to you and your Valtrue, Thayla.”
“Thank you.”
My name echoes around me less than a second before I’m lifted. I can’t bring myself to wrap my arms around Riven’s neck, but I tuck my face into the corner of his neck as someone else rearranges me.
“Y-you’re so cold,” I stutter.
“No shit, little burden. The sea is fucking freezing.”
He starts speed walking the second my limbs are laid limply around him.
“Why were you in the sea?”
“That’s a stupid-ass question. We jumped in after you, of course, and those slimy, one-hundred-arm fucking creatures kept putting us back on the ship. You’re in so much trouble.”
He bursts through the carriage doors and practically runs to our room.
“Riven, you can’t—”
Amick’s shout is cut off as a scream belts out of me the moment Riven steps us into the hot spring in our bathroom.
His hand grips the back of my neck and his harmony floods me, soothing away the pain shooting through every cell in my body.
“You can’t heat her back up that fast.”
“Just shut the fuck up, Amick, and let me do what I’m doing.”
Tremors still wreck me, and small whimpers continue to slip past my lips as I let his power and the hot water settle over me.
“Lean up,” he commands, but he’s already snatching my shirt off me before I can do anything myself.
A body behind me wraps their arm around my waist as Riven peels his off as well, then he immediately pulls me back to him. Creed doesn’t remove his hand from me, though. He just slides it around to my back.
Both their fingers trace up and down my spine, and I burrow myself deeper as I chase the warmth and comfort.
“Are you okay?” Kyzen asks as he comes to the side I’m facing and sinks in beside us.
I shake my head.
“Did you all really jump in after me?”
His gaze turns furious. “Multiple times. It didn’t matter how much I slowed down time or sped it up, they’d catch us and put us back on the boat.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
