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He wasn’t fighting the tide. He wasn’t kicking toward the surface. Caspian floated motionless, his broad arms lying limp at his sides, his dark head tilted back, suspended in the liquid like a king in a glass tomb. The Mani Vatn had purged his body, but the cost had stolen every last drop of his consciousness.

I kicked through the heavy silver, my newly knitted ribs holding firm, Soren’s black handprint burning with a protective stillness across my stomach. I reached out with both arms, my blood-slicked fingers clawing through the liquid until my hands clamped around the collar of Caspian’s leather jacket.

I hauled him close, wrapping one arm tightly around his chest, and kicked for the surface with everything I had left.

We broke the surface together, bursting into the freezing subterranean air of the lower cavern.

“HAH—!”

I choked, sputtering out a mouthful of bitter silver brine as my lungs opened, pulling in a frantic, desperate gasp. The sound echoed off the high-arched basalt walls of the ancient cavern.

“I’ve got you,” I wheezed, my voice raspy and raw as I kicked toward the slick stone ledge lining the pool. “I’ve got you, Caspian... wake up...”

He didn’t move. His broad frame was an agonizing dead weight against my side, his chest rising and falling in shallow, faint hitches.

I dragged us both to the water’s edge, my fingers clawing at the wet, moss-covered basalt. I hauled my upper body onto the stone, pulling Caspian’s head and shoulders out of the silver pool, shivering violently as the draft off the valley hit my wet skin.

A sharp, collective gasp shattered the quiet of the cavern.

“TAURIEL!”

Dax’s frantic voice boomed off the basalt arches, followed by the rapid crunch of heavy boots sprinting across the wet gravel.

I raised my head, my vision clearing through the silver spray.

Aerynn and Dax were standing on the stone ledge, their faces pale, their clothes torn and soaked. They had watched us plunge from the high roost, tracking our fall into the hidden depths beneath the mountain.

Aerynn dropped to his knees beside me, his hands trembling as he grabbed me beneath my arms, hauling my waterlogged body completely out of the pool and onto the dry stone.

“By the gods... by the gods, you’re breathing,” Aerynn choked out, his voice cracking into a ragged sob as he pulled me into his arms, his hands frantically checking my face, my neck, my chest. “I thought you were dead... Tauriel, we saw you fall...”

“Caspian...” I rasped, my weak, trembling hand reaching back toward the water. “Pull him out... Dax, help him!”

Dax didn’t hesitate. The wolfish grin was gone, replaced by an intense panic as he leaned over the edge, wrapping his long arms around Caspian’s leather shoulders and hauling the High Captain’s massive frame out of the Mani Vatn, laying him flat on the basalt floor.

“Cas!” Dax yelled, slamming his hand against Caspian’s chest. “Cas, breathe, damn you!”

A sudden, sharp intake of air hitched in Aerynn’s throat. He froze, his hands dropping from my shoulders as his eyes widened in shock. Beside him, Dax backed away half a pace, his breath catching in his chest as he stared down at the male lying on the stone.

“Moons above...” Dax whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying, reverent awe. “Look at him...”

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, turning my head to look at Caspian.

The gasp that tore from my lips was silent.

Caspian had not merely survived the Mani Vatn. The sacred pool had reshaped his very existence.

He lay on the stone looking like darkness incarnate—a dark god forged from the primordial void of the First Era.

His dark chestnut hair, once veined with delicate threads of liquid midnight, had transformed completely. It raged now with a deep, starless midnight—black as the void, drinking the faint light of the cavern like shadow made physical. His jaw set like iron, and across his golden skin, a terrifying transformation danced before our eyes.

Etched across his broad chest, curling over his shoulders, and spiraling down his muscular arms were intricate, writhing black swirls—the exact, terrifying patterns of my own Remnikai tattoos. They danced across his flesh with a living, celestial energy, pulsed through with the smallest, brilliant hint of solar gold beneath the ink.

The mark had bound us. In taking the lethal weight of the pool onto myself to shield him, my soul had bled into his, lacing the Captain with the very shadow magic that had once threatened to consume me.

As I stared in awe, Caspian’s heavy eyelids fluttered open.

His eyes were no longer just royal blue. They were deep, glowing orbs of cosmic midnight blue, burning through the dim light of the cavern with a devastating and terrifying power that made the air in the chamber hum.