Page 25 of Beyond the Winter Kingdom (Faeted Seasons #2)

Meera

The river caught us like a fist.

Hard, fast, and mean.

It punched the breath from my lungs in a single brutal strike.

Darkness swallowed me whole, cold and thick, curling around my limbs like a vice.

I tumbled, spinning end over end in the churning current, disoriented and blind.

I couldn’t tell which way was up. Water roared in my ears, louder than my thoughts.

The river was a living thing; angry, wild, and intent on dragging me under.

My limbs flailed. I kicked out, reaching for anything—rock, root, a scrap of air—but all I caught were currents that twisted and spun me like a rag doll.

Panic bloomed in my sternum, cold and sharp.

My lungs screamed. My chest burned. Something brushed my arm—slick, soft, and moving upstream. Not a branch.

I twisted, clawing at the water. My fingers scraped stone, and I pushed, hard, muscles straining.

My head broke the surface. With a gasp, air filled my battered lungs like broken glass. Water streamed from my face, my ears ringing, vision blurred. “Sadie?” I choked, my voice rasping like someone took sandpaper to my throat.

“Best field trip ever!” Sadie whooped somewhere to my left, her voice echoing down the river.

I sputtered, vomiting a little bit of water and bile. “Are you actually insane?”

“Maybe?” she yelled, her laugh maniacal. Despite the significant danger we were still in, I found myself shaking my head and almost smiling at her absurdity. The moment was short-lived.

The current dragged us downstream. I twisted in the rapids, trying to orient myself, but the river had other plans.

Foamy water whipped around me, frothing over submerged stones and half-drowned tree limbs.

A thick, brackish scent filled my nose, a mixture of sulfur and crushed wildflowers, and the banks blurred past in streaks of dark green and violet.

Trees leaned over the water, their branches skeletal, like arms reaching for the riverbed.

Behind us, faint but distinct, I heard Vareck’s voice, rough and panicked.

“Meera!”

“Come on, boys, the water’s just fine!” Sadie called, letting out a cackle even as she dipped under the water before popping back up.

“Nope,” I muttered, coughing up more water, eyes stinging. “This is a terrible idea. This was never not a terrible idea.”

The current surged faster, frothing and snapping at us like it had something to prove. Whitecaps foamed around partially submerged boulders, spinning debris in dizzying eddies. The river narrowed and the banks rose on either side; steep, jagged, closing in like a throat about to swallow us whole.

Something roared up ahead.

It wasn’t the chatter of the baby bear murder cult, or even the wind.

This sound was deeper. Hungrier.

A low, guttural growl that rumbled through the water itself, shaking my body, reverberating through my ribs.

My heart stopped.

I turned, straining to see through the mist curling off the surface. The sound grew, swelling into something monstrous. I didn’t need to see it to know what it was.

Waterfall.

“Oh, shit,” I breathed.

And then the world dropped out from beneath me.

My stomach launched into my throat. For a heartbeat, I was weightless. Then we hit the plunge.

Twelve feet. Maybe, fifteen. Not high enough to kill us, but enough to make the world tilt sideways. Again.

With a massive splash, we crashed into the pool below, the impact jarring every bone as I went under. A deeper cold crawled into my muscles and clenched. I kicked hard, lungs screaming.

We surfaced in a deep, clear lagoon, the water glowing faintly with an eerie violet shimmer, like moonlight trapped beneath the surface. I swam to shore, limbs aching and heavy, then collapsed onto the hard sand, coughing and laughing all at once.

We were alive. Barely.

Sadie crawled up beside me, strings of red hair splayed across her cheeks, grinning like, well, a redcap high on adrenaline. “That was amazing.”

“You’re insane,” I wheezed, tasting river water on my lips.

“You keep saying that like it’s an insult.”

A moment later, Damon splashed onto the shore, dragging himself up like a half-drowned cat. He glared at us, his wet hair plastered to his face. “I regret every life choice that led me here. Next time, I’m letting the woodland creatures win.”

“You should be thanking us. That was character development.”

And their arguing commenced.

Vareck landed last, wings folding neatly behind him. His boots barely disturbed the sand.

Silently, he offered me a hand.

I hesitated, then met his eyes and took it. His palm was dry, warm, and grounding. His grip lingered just a second longer than necessary as he pulled me up without speaking a word.

Far away, but not far enough, the chitters started up again. Too close for comfort.

We didn’t talk about it.

We just moved.

The path beyond the lagoon, opposite the way we came, sloped upward. The air felt thicker here. Humid and somehow charged.

Vareck walked ahead, silent but tense, like he was holding back something sharp.

His wings had vanished again, tucked away.

Damon trailed behind, dripping and scowling, his soaked shirt clinging to his back.

Sadie strolled beside me like this was just another day in Seattle and not a hell realm where we were continuously sidestepping our impending doom.

“You know, this place isn’t so bad for the right kind of person. If there were a consistent portal in and out of here, I could see it becoming a popular vacation spot for adrenaline junkies.”

Damon’s voice broke the silence. “You are going to get us all killed.”

Sadie didn’t even look at him. “You’re just mad your dramatic belly flop didn’t earn you an applause.”

Damon made a noise that was half growl, half exhausted sigh. “I’ve been stabbed. I’ve been kidnapped. I’ve been tied up and dragged around against my will. But this? Being here with you? This takes the cake.”

“No one asked about your sex life,” Sadie quipped.

“I didn’t say—” he broke off, connecting the dots.

Sadie smirked. “Bit defensive there, princeling.”

“Do you ever shut up?” Damon asked, dragging a hand down his drenched face.

“Nope,” she said brightly. “It’s part of my charm. If anything, I get louder when I’m tired.”

I couldn’t help the snort that escaped. Gods, she was being obnoxious right now. They both were. I wondered if they had hate-fucked already or if this was still the lead up.

Up ahead, Vareck’s shoulders were bunched in a solid line of tension. He didn’t look back, didn’t say a word. Just kept walking like the ground had offended him personally.

I picked up my pace until I was beside him. “You going to talk to me and tell me what’s up, or ...”

A suspended moment passed before he ground out, “Or.”

“All right,” I drawled. “Just pretending I don’t exist?”

His jaw flexed. “Not possible, even when I wish it was.”

I blinked, reeling back. “What?”

“Nothing,” he replied all too quickly. Too stiff. The lie sat between us.

I frowned. “That was a hell of a thing to say.”

He didn’t respond, just kept walking, fists clenched at his sides.

“Seriously? After everything, that’s what you say to me?”

“I didn’t mean it,” he muttered. “This is why I was choosing silence.”

“Oh good,” I snapped. “You just said it, but you didn’t mean it, apparently. That makes it all better.”

He stopped again, turned toward me with stormy eyes.

“I can’t ignore you or pretend you don’t exist. Like my fury, you’re ingrained in me.

Even when I’m not with you, I’m thinking about you.

That’s not helpful in times, like now for example, when I want to shake you for jumping off a fucking cliff.

I should have just—” He broke off and exhaled harshly. “Never mind.”

My breath hitched.

There it was. A tender wound ripped open, ugly and bleeding.

“You should’ve what, Vareck? Compelled me?”

“I said never mind, Meera. Drop it.”

“So what, then? You’re mad because I made a choice you didn’t like? Because I didn’t wait for your approval before I chose to act quickly over getting eaten?”

“You jumped off a cliff ,” he growled, voice full of barely controlled rage. “With no idea what was below. You had no plan. You can’t fly. You just chose to throw yourself over the edge and say fuck it without considering the consequences.”

I stared at him, heart thudding. “Oh, I’m sorry. Because compelling me to run and hide like a damsel in distress would have been a better alternative, then, would it?”

“You’re putting words in my mouth now.”

Maybe I was. Or maybe I was saying the things he thought but couldn’t voice because he knew how it sounded. “Am I? Because for someone awfully obsessed with my safety, you are also the person that put a magic nullifying collar on me.”

His expression crumpled for just a second. “That was different.”

“Was it?” I demanded. “Because I was kidnapped by brownies, then robbed by a gang at knife point because of said necklace. That was before you found me at the brothel where I was going to be forced into prostitution, in case you forgot.”

He opened his mouth—then closed it again, jaw tightening. “This isn’t about the necklace. This is about you not thinking about your actions . ”

“That’s rich, coming from the guy who tried to fight a small army while bleeding out.”

“I knew what I was doing.”

“So did I.”

We stood there, breathing hard, neither of us moving.

Eventually Vareck’s jaw eased the slightest fraction, just enough for him to ground out, “I’m not doing this.” He walked ahead, moving faster than I could keep up with.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I shouted, throwing my hands out.

“Not now.” He growled his final two words, shook his head, and picked up his speed, his hands balled into trembling fists.

Damon appeared at my elbow, wiping drops of water from his face. “It means you jumped off a fucking cliff and he needs a minute to figure out how to say you’re stupid.”

Sadie rolled her eyes. “It worked out fine.”