Page 99

The pool. She is in the pool.

She feels it now – the way the magic insists she should not breathe while it prods, pokes, calls her very soul from her body.

Give it to me, it whispers gently.

Dawsyn flails. She is reticent to breathe. To inhale would be to tip a cup of poison to her lips.

Still your lips, the magic agrees.Sleep.

But she mustn’t. Her lips sting as they part. The taste of metal finds her tongue. Nausea fills her stomach as the magic, struggling to escape, begins to seep into her mouth. With one last sluggish thud of her heart, Dawsyn breathes in, and the magic of the pool funnels into her nose and mouth, collecting in her lungs.

It is as easy as breathing air.

She inhales again and feels strength return to her weary bones, her muscles. A glow fills her chests, radiates through her. It is tangible, this magic, something more than blood, imbuing her with life, fortifying each cell. The more she breathes, the more she feels it changing her, armoring her.

Ryon.

She pushes through the folds, the magic now obeying her. It slides away as she writhes through it, searching desperately. There he is.

His eyes are closed, his mouth sealed in a hard line. He floats along with the current of the pool, letting it guide him.

Already, he seems gone from here.

She pushes into him, moves her hands through the stubble on his cheeks. She tries to shout, to scream, but although she can breathe, no sound can leave her, and Ryon is gone.

She tries to pry open his lips, his eyes, to no avail. They are no longer under Ryon’s command. His face – the only face in Dawsyn’s world that feels familiar, that feels like home – is fading by inches.

And she’ll be alone again.

Like none of it happened.

Desperately, she slams her mouth to his, gripping the back of his head, curling her fingers into the short hairs. His lips are warm but still lifeless. Her tongue hurries over his bottom lip, coaxing, pushing him, like she did in the inn, like she did in the abandoned cabin.

A tremor. Faint but real. She presses harder, forcing his lips to respond. She feels them open to her a degree. It is all she needs.

She seals her mouth over his, and with a gust as forceful as she can manage, she breathes magic into his lungs.

A violent jerk parts Dawsyn and Ryon. Both are forced in opposite ways. Something snags Dawsyn’s clothes, and she is wrenched in an impossible direction – downward, into the pool’s depths.

Her head breaks the surface of the pool. Not downward then. Up.

There is no need to gasp for breath, no need to blink away rivulets of liquid. The pool’s substance does not cling to the parts of her that do not touch it. Rough and unforgiving hands take hold beneath her shoulders and yank her out. Across the pool, she sees Ryon being hauled out and made to stand. He looks unharmed, but his eyes… they are blank.

She suddenly remembers that she should look the same. It is a titanic effort to loosen her jaw, to let her eyelids droop. She tries in earnest to school her expression into that of a sleepwalker, and all the while, her pulse pounds, her throat tightens, and her chest threatens to cave.

Did it work?

Certainly, it did for her.

But Ryon… he is vacant, utterly empty.

“Shall we send them to the pits of the Chasm, my friends?” comes Vasteel’s voice.

An exultant cheer emanates around the hall, yet Dawsyn does not react. She works to keep her shoulders relaxed, her breaths sluggish.

A hand harshly prods her.

“Walk,” says an icy voice in her ear, and as the soulless humans did, she obeys.