Page 46 of Four Ruined Realms (The Broken Blades #2)

Royo

The Northern Pass, Khitan

Where’d she go? Aeri was just standing there a second ago. I turned and made like I was going to walk back to Yusan, but now she’s gone.

I groan. She’s playing a game, hiding from me.

“Aeri,” I call out. I expect her voice, but there’s no answer. “Aeri, this ain’t funny. Come out.”

Still nothing. I hold my breath, listening, but everything is dead silent. A feeling of wrongness drapes over me. A creeping sensation up my back tells me I’m missing something.

It’s nearly dark out, but I spot bubbles rising to the top of the hot spring. That’s weird. Aeri had just said the spring wasn’t bubbling.

My stomach plummets. Oh fuck. Aeri! She’s in the water.

I jump right into the pool, and the hot water stings, but I barely notice because I’m swinging my arms wildly through the water below, my heart thundering in my chest.

“Aeri, Aeri, where are you?” I call out.

I scan the surface, but there are just the ripples I caused.

My breath lodges in my throat. Did she pass out? How could she have gone under so quickly? Then I realize: she can’t swim.

That was the face she made on the Sol when the pirates attacked—she can’t fucking swim. And I turned my back on her.

Frantic, I feel around the water. Nothing. I take a deep breath and dive under.

I don’t remember when or where I learned to swim—must’ve been when I was real young. It feels like I’ve always known.

It’s not until I’m a few feet down that I realize I don’t know what could be lurking in this dark spring. But it don’t matter. I’d fistfight Lord Yama to get Aeri back.

I keep reaching out, pushing deeper, and finally I feel something. It’s slight. I’m not sure what it is until I hit fingers. Aeri’s arm. My chest floods with relief as I pull her body to mine, then kick as hard as I can to reach the air.

We break the surface. I gasp, my lungs burning, but her eyes are closed and she’s not moving. I toss her onto the snow, and then I jump out, too.

I land almost on top of her. The cold air is shocking, but so is the fact that I found her. She’s okay. But she’s just lying there.

Fuck my life. She’s not breathing.

With my hands shaking like an earthquake, I turn her over my knee. I hit my palm on her back to try to force the water out. Nothing happens. I lean down and put my ear to her chest. I wait, hoping, holding my breath.

Silence. There’s no heartbeat. Not a single one.

Cold like I’ve never felt before seizes me and holds me in place.

She’s dead. She died while I fucking stood here.

Panic and agony take turns stabbing my chest. I could’ve saved her. I didn’t. I failed again.

I slap my hand to her back, trying to do something. Anything.

“Aeri! Breathe. Breathe.”

But there’s nothing. She’s not moving at all.

Tears sting my eyes, and I scream. The sound shatters the twilight, echoing all around. I don’t care if there are predators. Let them come for me.

She drowned. And I did nothing.

All of a sudden, a strange calm takes hold, and it’s like I can see the Sol River in front of me. Then I see the bodies pulled from it. They look terrible—pale and bloated. Living on the river, I also saw half-drowned people pulled from the water. Ones who fell or jumped or whatever and people got to them quickly. They looked like this—like they were sleeping—like how my mother did when they found her.

There was one day she and I were going to the market, and we saw someone brought back to life. The memory plays out before my eyes. A woman in a gray dress knelt on the stones of the dirty riverbank. Her husband lay dead in front of her. People in hats and scarves crowded in around them, pulled toward death the way moths want to explore a flame. Then she did something weird. She held his nose and breathed into his mouth. She pressed on his chest, and it brought him back. He sat up, sputtering.

It was called a miracle.

I shake off the memory and decide to try it. I’ll try anything.

I roll Aeri over and open her mouth. The mouth with the plump lower lip I just kissed last night. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I hold her nose. I blow two hard breaths in her mouth, like I’m breathing for her. Then I push on her chest, trying to pump the water out. She’s so slight I have to be careful not to break her. But I push again. And again.

Tears well in my eyes. Frost nips at my skin, but I’m sweating.

“Come on, Aeri,” I say. “Stay with me.”

I push and I push.

“Stay,” I beg as I reach for her nose again.

Suddenly, she moves. She comes to, coughing. Then she leans to the side and pukes up water.

I sit back on my knees. Ten Hells. Praise to the gods!

My hands shake as I run them down my face. My whole body’s quaking, and I can’t seem to catch my breath.

Aeri is trembling and throwing up on the snow. But she’s alive. Her heart is beating and she’s breathing.

It’s a miracle.

She gasps, her eyes wide, and then she stares at me. I can’t believe that worked. But also, it had to work because I wasn’t gonna lose her.

“You saved me.” She blinks, bewildered. “I… I drowned. I know I did. How did you save me?”

I don’t know. I really don’t. That memory of the woman saving the man on the Sol has gotta be twenty years old, but it rushed back like it happened yesterday.

“I wasn’t gonna let death take you from me,” I say.

She stares at me with those big brown eyes, tears swimming in them. “Royo…you say something like that, but then you wonder why I’ve fallen for you.”

“Aeri…” I shake my head. She can’t fall for me. It’s a bad mistake. But my heart swells all the same. It’s everything—all I’ve ever wanted to hear my whole life.

“I know,” she says. “You weren’t going to let death take me from you but in a just friends sort of way.”

I stare at her, suppressing a laugh. “Drowning looks better by the second.”

She smiles, but then she shivers, shuddering hard as she rubs her own arms. Because she’s wet and nearly naked on the snow. Her undergarments are soaked and see-through. Fuck, she’s freezing. Of course she is.

I don’t look. Okay, yeah, I saw, but I stare down at the snow. “I can sit you back in the water to get warm, then I—”

“I can’t.” She shakes her head, eyes wide.

Right, she doesn’t want to get back in the hot spring. I get it. But I don’t have a fire made yet. I run to my horse and grab our supplies. I pull the two blankets out, wrap them around her, and cover her tight. Then I go back to the hot spring and fetch her clothes. I climb up and hand her things to her.

She stares up at me, her hair dripping onto the fur. Her mouth is still half open as she breathes hard.

“You’re soaked, too,” she says.

I am, and I’m cold, but I barely feel it. I grab the dinner pot and toss in some fallen sticks. My teeth chatter as I reach in the bag for the fire starter. I need to change, but getting her warm is all that matters right now.

The twigs catch, making a small fire right in the pot. I put it on her lap. It’s not much, but I can’t make a campfire without a pit and wood.

I scramble back down to the hot spring, strip off my wet underwear, and throw on my dry clothes and boots. Now, warm enough, I grab some rocks. I get enough to make a fire pit up by Aeri, then I take out my axe. It’s a battle axe, not a wood axe, and I had to sharpen it after taking down the warming hut, but it’s fine to chop up a young tree.

There’s a five-year pine that fell, rotten, not far from the boulders. I start splitting it into logs and branch pieces. I work so quickly and get so hot that I have to take the jacket off again. I stop and drape my coat over Aeri’s shoulders, then rewrap her blanket. She looks up at me with those big, brown eyes. She’s okay. She’s alive and here with me.

I get back to work. The exertion feels good. Each swing back, each split calms me a little.

As soon as I have enough, I bring the wood over and arrange it in the pit. The fire in the dinner pot is almost out, but it’s enough to start the campfire. I toss in some dry hay, and it flames to life.

Finally, I take a breath and crouch down next to Aeri. She’s put on her dry clothes, but she’s still as white as the snow and shivering. The fire will help, though. She eyes me, her jaw shaking because her teeth are chattering. Still, she opens the blankets to wrap me as well.

I pick her up and put her on my lap to give her my body heat, then close the blanket around us. She melts, shaking into me, as cold as ice. But gradually, she warms.

She nuzzles against me, safe now.

As I look around, I realize this isn’t a bad place to make camp. We’d be protected by the hot spring, and we already have the fire going in the twilight.

“Are you okay with staying here tonight?” I ask.

She meets my eyes. “Yes, but no more dips in the pool.”

I snort, and she smiles.

When she’s warm enough, I leave her with the blanket and get to work on the tent. I lay some canvas on the ground. It won’t be as warm on the snow as it was on the bare earth last night, but we’ll manage. I’ll do whatever I have to.

It’s not until camp is done and Aeri hands me my jacket, insisting I put it on, that I let myself think about what happened. Aeri drowned. She died, and I lost her. I lost all of the tomorrows I want with her. But then I brought her back.

I don’t understand it. Maybe it really was the gods helping us. I can’t explain it any other way—how I remembered how to save someone or that it worked. A minute more and nothing would have helped. I know it in my soul. If I was just a little slower or if she’d fallen a little farther, I would’ve lost her for good. If there was one time for the gods to shine on me, I’m grateful it was this one.

After Lora, I swore I’d never let someone in again. I thought it was better to just be alone. So much for that.

Aeri is slowly sipping water from a canteen as I rinse out the dinner pot. I put fresh snow in and hang it above the fire on the metal stand. I can feel her staring at me, but for now she’s quiet. When I met her, all I wanted was for her to take a breath and not talk my ear off, and now her voice is what I want to hear the most.

“Don’t do that again,” I say.

She breathes out a laugh. “Believe me, Royo, it isn’t the plan.”

I pour some rice into the pot. While it cooks, I reach out and tuck her wet hair behind her ear.

“It really scared me,” I say.

Her eyes get glossy, and she nods. “Me too. I thought… I thought you wouldn’t come.”

“I’ll always find you.”

We stare at each other under the rising moon. I want to kiss her again, but I won’t. I won’t ruin this moment. She’s safe, and that’s enough.

Aeri gently smiles, and then she reaches into her pocket. She pulls out a napkin and unwraps the paper. Inside is a little cake. She holds it out to me.

I knit my eyebrows. The girl had cake in her pocket.

“For saving my life,” she says.

She’s so serious that I take half and fold the rest back into her hand. “You’ve saved mine.”

She smiles. “Twice, but who’s counting.”

I take a bite. Sugar, buttercream, and vanilla dance on my tongue. It’s good, really good.

“Three,” I say.

She doesn’t know it, but she saved me the day she planted her card in my jacket. I just hadn’t realized it at the time. I was alive but not living until I met Aeri at the Black Shoe Inn.