Page 49 of Lore of the Tides

But no, if she was dying, then so was he. He was dying.

Finndryl would die!

Lore extricated herself from his arms and pressed her hands on either side of his face, caressing his cheekbones with her thumbs for the briefest of moments before pushing down on his shoulders. The momentum propelled her up toward the chandelier of glowing shells. She closed one hand upon an arm of the chandelier, the rough coral making her shiver, and pulled theSourcefrom one of the shells.

She did not take the magic for herself, though. Instead, shereached out her hand. Finndryl pushed off the ground himself and clasped her extended hand, threading his fingers through hers.

She funneled theSourcefrom the shell lights into him.

His face was twisted into a pained grimace. Not just from the pain of being crushed under the weight of the ocean—she knew his lungs must be like hers, aching for air—but from sorrow, sorrow that they were out of their element here.

She pushed the magic from the chandelier into him, and his eyes widened in shock, his pained features softening a fraction. She would give them as much time as she could. Though whatever magic flowed through this chandelier was weak to begin with, the light emitted from the shells barely enough to see by. The first shell winked out, and she pulled from another, giving more magic to Finn.

His dark, intelligent eyes roamed over the shells, counting—ten shells in total. They had eight shells left to share between the two of them. As she started to push the third shell’sSourceinto him, he shook his head fiercely, and pointed to her chest.

You, he mouthed.

Lore nodded, taking this shell for herself.

He reached up and gripped one arm of the chandelier, and slid his arm around her waist with the other. She glided through the water as he closed the distance between them. His waist-length locs floated in the water around them, curling around Lore’s shoulders as if they, too, wanted to be close. The dim light illuminated his face. His eyes roamed over her as if he would take in every inch of her, commit it to memory.

Sorrow reverberated within her.

She would lose him before she’d ever really had him, and she had nobody to blame but herself. There he had been in Tal Boro every day helping her with her grimoire, and all she would have had to do was reach out to him. Close the distance between them, like he had done now.

But she had been a coward.

And it had cost her everything.

And when he’d wanted to escape Syrelle’s ship with her, she’d said,Not yet... not yet, and now...

Finndryl leaned toward her, pressing his forehead to hers as two more shells winked out above them. The room was almost dark again, and Lore closed her eyes. She pressed her free hand to his cheek, running her thumb across his lower lip. She wasn’t going to die without feeling them, at least once. She leaned forward and closed that last bit of distance between them just as the last of the lights winked out.

His lips met hers, and fire ignited where they touched. They released the rungs of the chandelier in sync. Floating there, shrouded in darkness, Finndryl gripping her waist with one arm, pressing her to him, and sliding his fingers through her hair before gripping the back of her neck, she parted her lips, ignoring the water and deepening the kiss.

If the world hadn’t been dark from lack of light, she knew that it would be darkening regardless from her losing consciousness. She wondered who would find them in this room, intertwined.

Would they know that they had murdered two people before giving them a chance to know what love really was?

Lore was losing consciousness; her head drifted back, and Finn pulled her to him as they slowly sank to the sandy floor.

They were reunited at last, only for their final moments to be so brief.

Chapter 17

Acidic burning pain in Lore’s arm jolted her from the brink of death.

An agonized cry ripped from her chest as her back arched with torment, every single muscle in her body constricting and convulsing. Her skin was being flayed from her arm, the flesh bubbling and dissolving into pieces, as whatever was devouring her consumed her flesh down to the bone.

Her body jerked and shook. Beside her, through her suffering, she could feel Finndryl convulsing as well.

She screamed again, reaching out for him, wishing for this to stop, to make their agony end. She pleaded, begged the gods to let them go quietly as before, let this torture end. She would gladly choose death over this.

It took a moment to realize that the unintelligible babbling, the shrieks of pain she was emitting, were audible, and she was not pleading with the deity of death in her mind, but out loud. This shocked her so much that she opened her eyes from clenching them tightly against the pain.

Gone was the haze from being underwater where her eyes were not designed to see clearly. The aching, biting cold from the frigiddepths no longer bit into her muscles, and the weight from being in the deep ocean dissipated in sweet relief.

Lore stilled on the sandy bottom, her limbs light, as she took in a massive breath. The water around her was altered; it felt no different from air.