Page 21 of Fate of Echoes and Embers (Heirs of Elydor #3)

MAREK

This was too deep, even for me.

The pressure crushed my chest, but that pink glow still beckoned.

Swimming toward it, I finally saw her. My mother’s hair flowing behind her like seaweed.

I couldn’t see her face but knew it was her.

Bubbles floated upward from her mouth. She was alive!

Just as I reached out to grab her, something pushed me down from above.

I struggled to break free, but an unseen force dragged me deeper into the darkness.

The harder I fought, the deeper I sank. The water around me like tar. My vision blurred and lungs burned. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

“Marek.”

A soft voice. Hand on my arm.

“Wake up.”

I woke with a gasp. Sweating, I looked around, orienting myself. I was not in the ocean’s depths but slumbering against a coil of rope.

Issa squatted down beside me.

Sitting up, I looked around. It was still dark, not yet morning.

I saw Issa but couldn’t fully appreciate her features. I still saw my mother’s hair, floating behind her. Felt the pressure of diving so deep against my chest.

“A nightmare?” she asked, sitting beside me, her back against the rope.

Looking at her, the terror of knowing I couldn’t save my mother still fresh, I couldn’t yet speak.

Issa lay her head on my shoulder, the small comfort enough to remind me to breathe. I wasn’t underwater. My mother, long gone.

It had been some time since that particular nightmare had plagued me.

The fog of my dream finally lifting, I was hesitant to move, wanting Issa to remain exactly where she was.

“It’s early for you to be awake.”

“You didn’t feel the ship lurch?” she asked, lifting her head, unfortunately.

“I didn’t,” I said, standing. Before I dozed off, the sea was eerily calm. If not for magic, we’d have struggled to travel north efficiently with the lack of strong winds on this journey. Looking out to the sea, assessing it, I sat back down. “All seems well enough. Although a storm is coming.”

We were so close, and yet, if I tried to touch her… it was too soon. Issa did not yet trust me, and perhaps that was a good thing. It would be wise to keep my distance, however…

“It wasn’t the waves, Marek. It was something else. Like a pull beneath us. And then it stopped.”

“Do you think it’s related to what happened earlier? With you and Mev?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice low and soft. “Do you have them often?”

I sighed, thinking to brush off her question and discuss what woke her instead. But the way she looked at me…

“It seems to come and go.”

“It? The same dream?”

“Every time. I’m underwater, deeper than is safe, but a pink light beckons me. That’s when I see my mother, floating, her body still and only her hair moving in the water. Before I can get to her, I’m pulled under by an unseen force. Unable to move, or even breathe.”

Without warning, she reached up, Issa’s hand cupping my cheek. I laid my own over hers, closing my eyes.

No words were needed.

Pulling her hand away, Issa laid her head against my shoulder again. The sound of her steady breathing, along with the feel of her so close beside me, lulled me back to sleep.

It wasn’t until the sun rose over the horizon that I woke once again with Issa slumbering in the same position she’d been in when we had fallen asleep.

I didn’t dare move, even as Kael’s head rose above the quarterdeck. I held a finger to my lips, and even though he didn’t speak, Issa woke, moving quickly away from me and stood up.

“There was a disturbance,” she said, speaking quickly. “I woke and came here to find Marek?—”

“You owe no explanation, Issa.”

Standing, I made my way to the ship’s wheel. The natural winds were picking up, our calm waters about to be at an end.

She sighed as I remembered Issa telling me once her father had told her not to explain, or apologize, when she had done nothing wrong, but that Issa found the directive difficult. I thought back to our time together, back to that conversation in particular, pulling the words from my memory.

“There is no need to explain yourself to anyone who truly knows you.” I adjusted the wheel, my gaze on the horizon. “And to those who don’t? No explanation will ever be enough.”

Watching her to see if I got the words right, as her eyes widened, I was fairly certain I was close.

“You remembered…”

As we stared at each other, Kael slipped back down, leaving us alone once again on the quarterdeck.

“I remember all of it, Issa.”

She turned away, moving toward the railing. As always, her hair was braided. Only once, at Hawthorne, had I seen her dress in a gown. More often, Issa was dressed as if prepared to ride, or hunt or… chase down Gyorian raiders.

I was still watching when she turned back to face me.

She was so beautiful.

Trained as a warrior, forced to become Lady of Hawthorne Manor too young, she had sacrificed everything—her life, her own happiness—for the sake of her people.

The ship lurched, the sky now darkened as if it was not morn.

Issa grabbed the railing to steady herself.

I reached out a hand. “Come. I’ll show you how to ride the storm.”

She took my hand, her grip just as firm as I remembered it. Pulling her in front of me as the deck pitched beneath our feet, I guided her hands to rest beside mine.

The sea roared around us, waves cresting high as the ship fought to stay its course.

Her fingers curled white-knuckled around the wood. “It feels alive,” she murmured.

“It is.” I reached over, adjusting her stance, steadying her hands. “You don’t fight the storm. You move with it. Feel the wind, the pull of the current.”

“It feels as if the sea will swallow us whole.”

I grinned. “Then we make it work for us.”

Another wave slammed into the hull, sending a spray of seawater over the deck. Issa gasped but held firm. She was a fighter. Always had been. And standing here while the storm raged around us, I realized she was meant for this life more than she knew.

The wind howled, tearing through the rigging as the ship surged forward. Lightning split the sky but Issa continued to stand her ground, hands firm on the wheel, her breath steady now.

Then, through the mist and driving rain, a break in the storm.

Beyond the endless waves, dark cliffs rose from the water, wreathed in mist. Issa stiffened beneath my touch.

“Welcome to Aetheria,” I murmured as another roll of thunder echoed behind us.