Page 18 of Innocent Until Proven Witch

"The same thing you've been sensing near the damaged wards?" he asks, his eyes sharpening.

"Stronger," I say immediately. "Much stronger."

Gideon follows my gaze toward the sea, though the harbor appears calm enough, nothing about the horizon suggesting danger. That only makes me more uneasy, because magic rarely announces itself before it strikes.

"You shouldn't go alone," he says.

"I don't have time to organize a search."

"Reina."

"If I'm wrong, I'll come back embarrassed," I say, my voice hardening. "If I'm right, somebody dies while we're standing here talking."

Gideon stares at me, and the argument lasts only a moment before he exhales.

"Take a flare crystal, at least."

Relief flashes through me, and I reach for the offered crystal immediately.

"Thank you."

He grabs my arm before I can leave.

"Be careful."

The concern in his voice reaches me off guard, though I only nod once before turning and running toward the dock.

The sea welcomes me with resistance. Wind tears through my hair as I guide my small vessel away from the harbor, and the farther I travel, the stronger the disturbance becomes, pressing against my senses, heavy, corrupted, and wrong.

Storm witches don't command weather, not the way people imagine. We listen. We guide. We influence. We become part of it.

I hone my focus, and the wind responds immediately, magic flowing beneath my skin as light flickers along my hands. The current shifts, the vessel accelerates, and spray crashes against the hull as clouds gather overhead and the sea grows rougher beneath me.

I lean into the movement, following the distortion, following the pull in my chest, following the invisible thread dragging me farther from shore. The sensation strengthens again and again until it becomes impossible to ignore.

"There," I mutter, spotting movement ahead as the ocean twists unnaturally and my breath catches in my throat.

The waves are circling—not crashing, not rolling, but circling, a massive whirl of dark water rotating around a single point. The sight sends a chill through me. At the center floats wreckage, a shattered boat with wood fragments drifting through the current, the remains of a vessel destroyed by something far more violent than ordinary weather.

My pulse spikes, and the feeling in my chest erupts, heat flooding through me, sudden, powerful, and impossible. I gasp, the sensation nearly driving me to my knees.

What is⁠—

Movement.

Something beneath the water. A shape.

My body reacts before my thoughts can catch up, and I dive without hesitation. The ocean closes around me instantly, freezing darkness swallowing everything as I push deeper against the distorted current fighting me from every direction. The pressure pounds against my body, and still I swim, the heat in my chest growing stronger, guiding me, pulling me, demanding.

A figure emerges through the darkness, and my heart slams against my ribs at the sight of him. A man. Unconscious.

The current drags him lower with every passing second.

No.

I surge forward, my hand closing around his arm, and the moment I touch him, the heat explodes through me. A shock tears through my entire body—not pain, but something else entirely. Something brighter. Stronger. The sensation steals my breath, and for one impossible moment, every nerve in my body comes alive before survival takes over completely.

I wrap an arm around him and kick upward, fighting the current and the darkness and the sea itself, which seems unwilling to surrender him without a fight. I refuse to let go.