Page 125 of Immortal Rose

I broke through the surface of it, gasping and choking on the water, my body contorting with such force I was sure my spine had snapped. The fires flared, raging at the attempt to smother them. A sopping-wet cloth wiped at my face, my lips, my nose—inside of it. I craned my face away, straining against the arm banded around my shoulders.

“Please, sweetheart,” a voice rasped. “You have to let me—”

I knew that voice. That was . . .

I felt blindly, gripping the wet fabric of his shirt again. Twisting it, clutching it like an anchor, refusing to let the pain drown me again. If I could just hold on to him—

“Viola. Viola. Viola.” He was chanting my name. “Take a deep breath—you must—”

I gasped in the cool air, letting it burn my abraded throat. Slowly, the darkness in my sight lightened to a blurred gray. Through the haze of pain, his beautiful face took shape, rigid with terror.

Remembered terror.

“Look at me,” he ordered, a sharp distress edging the command. “Viola, look at me.”

I did. Tried. Each agonized breath wheezing. The darkness threatened to sweep down over my sight again, but I wanted to see him. Needed to. He was so frightened.

“What do you smell?” he asked, insistent. “Focus on that. Tell me what you smell.”

I gasped for breath as my body was racked with spasms. The notes drifted around me, burning to ash as soon as my mind gripped them. Damp earth . . . the mineral essence of water . . . greenery . . . coming rain . . . the cloying sweetness. Sweetness like . . .

A hand stroked my cheek, leaving a blistering trail behind. I whimpered, holding his gaze with every dimming ounce of strength I had.

He will help me, my mind whispered. He will not let me go.

My body convulsed as an arrow of fresh pain lanced it.

He drew in a sharp breath, lifting my upper body out of the water, reaching into the open neck of his shirt, tearing at something I couldn’t see, flinging it away as he drew me to his chest.

An unfamiliar scent exploded across my senses, and I gasped as though taking my very first breath of life. The warm essence enveloped me as I strained toward it, my face pressed to the hollow of his throat. My lips moved against that smooth, heated skin with each shuddering breath. Nothing existed beyond it.

Honey soap, leather, the metal of blades . . . birchwood . . . a deep, heavy snow . . . something thorned . . . wet fur, but an earthy sweetness, too, like vanilla, like . . .

I shivered, and his arms tightened around me. My mind grasped for what he was murmuring into my wet hair. “You’re all right, just breathe, let it pass, sweetheart . . .”

I closed my eyes, my body quaking with each hard kick of my heart. I breathed him in, only him, until the flames in my blood banked to embers and the sensation of his hand smoothing down my back no longer sparked a new blaze of pain.

My soaked shift clung to me like a second skin, and I was sure it was as translucent as his own shirt. The chill of a soft breeze easing over my wet skin felt good. Soothing. I could no longer tell who was shaking, sending waves through the water. The water . . .

My shattered mind took in the world, passing it through that lingering veil of pain.

We were outside, in the back garden. In the pond.

Foxcourt knelt in the waist-deep water. I was draped across his legs, one hand still clutching his shirt, the other caught between our panting bodies.

He pressed his face to my wet hair, his arms unyielding, as if afraid I might drift away. Lily pads bobbed on the pond’s gleaming surface, the trailing tendrils of the willow tree acting as a shield against the day’s light, the whole of the world. Nearby, the whimsical statue of the two frogs merrily rowing in their boat withstood the lapping water.

A soft whine drew my eyes toward the edge of the pond, where Brigadier sat at Mrs. Keyes’s feet, her ears flattened against her skull.

“Is she all right?” Mrs. Keyes asked softly, a folded blanket between her hands. Several strands of hair had escaped her usual crown braid. A gauzy film coated my eyes, and as she moved, the sun caught the gold pins in her hair, making it glow like an angel’s corona.

Foxcourt only nodded, as if he couldn’t quite speak himself. After a moment, he lifted me carefully, sending only a murmur of pain through my weak body as he adjusted his grip.

A lick of fear brushed my too-quick heart. One of his sleeves was stained with bright poppy-red splotches. Blood. His? Mine?

Exhaustion weighed my body and mind down like bricks. I tried to lift my head to help Mrs. Keyes wrap the blanket around me, but even that proved impossible.

Foxcourt turned us back toward the house, where a line of pale, stricken faces awaited us like a funeral party. Felicity wept quietly in the circle of Mrs. Silver’s arms.