Page 52 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons (Empire of Vengeance #4)

T he sight of her disappearing beneath the churning water hit me like a physical blow, driving all thought from my mind except the primal need to reach her.

The leather cord snapped taut between us for one impossible moment—long enough for me to feel the jerk of her weight against my wrist, long enough to see the terror in her eyes before the current claimed her.

I released the cord without conscious thought, my body already moving toward the water's edge.

The rational part of my mind screamed warnings about the current's strength, about the futility of attempting a rescue in broad daylight when my shadow powers were weakest. But rationality had no place in the face of watching my mate swept away to her death.

The suggestion sent a surge of rage through me so pure it burned away every other consideration. There would be no other. There could be no other. She was mine in ways that transcended choice or convenience, bound to me by forces older than the Empire's wars or the Talfen's struggles for freedom.

I dove from the crumbling bridge without hesitation, the icy water closing over my head like a fist of winter.

The current seized me immediately, its power beyond anything I had anticipated.

In the mountains where I had been born, rivers were gentle things that sang through valleys and meadows.

This was something else entirely—a liquid avalanche that turned human bodies into debris.

The daylight rendered my shadow magic nearly useless, reducing my supernatural abilities to little more than enhanced reflexes and strength.

In the darkness I could have commanded the very water to release her, could have walked across its surface as easily as solid ground.

But under the harsh mountain daylight, I was merely a man fighting against forces that cared nothing for my desperation.

I caught a glimpse of her ahead, a flash of dark hair as she tumbled through the white water.

She was fighting the current with the same fierce determination she showed in everything else, refusing to surrender even when faced with impossible odds.

But I could see her strength failing, could see the way her movements were becoming more erratic as exhaustion and cold took their toll.

There, I thought, spotting the massive tree trunk that had become lodged across a narrow section of the gorge.

She had managed to catch hold of something—a branch, a root—and was clinging to it with desperate strength.

But even as I watched, I could see the current trying to tear her away, her grip slipping on the wet bark.

I struck out toward her with powerful strokes, fighting against the river's relentless pull. My enhanced strength served me well here, allowing me to make progress even when the current threatened to sweep me past her entirely. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.

That's when I saw the leather cord.

It had caught on a protruding branch of the fallen tree, the same cord that had connected us during our journey through the mountains.

Now it was wrapped around her throat like a noose, tightening with each surge of the current as her body weight pulled against it.

She was choking, drowning and strangling simultaneously, her face already beginning to turn blue as the leather cut off her air supply.

Five seconds, I calculated with cold precision. Maybe less before permanent damage.

I reached her just as her grip on the tree trunk failed completely.

My hands found the leather cord first, my fingers working frantically to loosen the slip knot that had become a death trap.

The wet leather was impossibly tight, swollen with water and pulled taut by the current's force.

I might as well have been trying to untie steel cables.

No time for finesse. I bit down on the cord with my teeth, using the sharp canines that marked my Talfen heritage to saw through the leather. The taste was bitter—mud and river water and the salt of her sweat—but I ground my teeth against the strands until they finally parted.

She gasped in a desperate breath as the pressure released, her hands flying to her throat where angry red marks showed where the cord had bitten deep. But we were still caught in the river's grip, still being swept downstream toward whatever obstacles lay ahead.

I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her tight against my chest as I tried to guide us toward the bank. But the current was too strong, the water too violent. We tumbled together through the rapids, my body taking the brunt of the impacts as we were slammed against rocks and debris.

I saw the boulder a fraction of a second before we hit it—a massive granite obstruction that split the current like the prow of a ship. I tried to twist, tried to take the impact on my shoulder, but the river's force was absolute.

My head struck stone with a sound like breaking pottery, and the world exploded into fragments of light and pain. The last thing I remembered was the sensation of falling, of water closing over my head as consciousness fled like smoke on the wind.

Darkness. Peace. The voices finally silent.

I woke to the sensation of being dragged across rough ground, my body a collection of aches and pains that suggested I had been used as a battering ram. Someone was pulling me by the shoulders, grunting with effort as they hauled my dead weight up what felt like a steep riverbank.

"Come on, you bastard," a familiar voice gasped, strained with exhaustion. "Don't you dare die on me now."

Livia. She was alive. The relief that flooded through me was so intense it was almost painful.

I forced my eyes open to find her crouched beside me on a muddy bank, her clothes soaked and torn, her hair plastered to her skull. But she was breathing, conscious, gloriously alive despite the angry red marks that circled her throat like a collar of bruises.

"Aeveth," I managed to croak, my voice rough with river water and concern.

"I'm fine," she said, though her shaking hands suggested otherwise. "You hit that rock hard. I thought..." She stopped, swallowing whatever she had been about to say. "Can you sit up?"

I could, though the effort sent spikes of pain through my skull that made my vision blur. The world tilted alarmingly for a moment before settling back into its proper orientation.

We had somehow been swept into a calmer stretch of water where the river widened into a series of pools. The banks here were lower, more accessible, lined with the smooth stones that spoke of regular flooding. It was a miracle either of us had survived.

"The cord," I said suddenly, my hand going to my throat in unconscious mimicry of her gesture.

"Gone," she confirmed. "You bit through it. Saved my life."

The simple words carried a weight that made my chest tight with emotions I couldn't name. For the first time since I had claimed her, she was looking at me without fear or resentment. There was something else in her eyes now—gratitude, perhaps, or the beginning of understanding.

I tried to sit up, but my vision swam and my head burst with pain. I groaned, and she leaned over me, brushing my hair away from the wound on my head.

“This doesn’t look good,” she murmured and there was definitely concern in her voice.

“I’m… good,” I said, trying again, this time with more success. I managed to stand for a few moments swaying, then took a step towards the treeline. The ground shifted under me and everything went black again.

I floated in a sea of quiet grey. There were no voices here, no whispers promising power or demanding blood.

There was only stillness, a profound and welcome silence that I sank into like a warm bath.

It was the peace I had craved for so long, a reprieve from the constant war inside my own skull.

But something kept pulling me back from that peaceful oblivion. A touch. A voice.

Her voice.

Fragments of reality pierced the grey fog. The rough texture of my cloak beneath my head. The metallic tang of blood in my mouth. The scent of her—rain and river and woman—overwhelming my senses.

Time had no meaning. There were moments of clarity, sharp as broken glass, where I was aware of her hands on me, her voice, a low and urgent murmur.

I felt the scrape of rock and wet leaves against my back as she dragged me, her grunts of effort a rhythm that anchored me to the living world.

She was impossibly strong, her small frame straining with the effort of moving a man my size.

I felt her fingers, gentle but firm, probing the gash on my scalp. The pain was distant, a dull throb that belonged to someone else. What I felt most keenly was the warmth of her hand on my skin, a searing point of contact in the encroaching cold.

"Stay with me," she murmured, her voice a thread of sound in the vast silence. "Don't you leave me alone out here, you hear me?"

I was drifting again, the grey tide pulling me under.

But this time, I fought it. I fought to stay with the sound of her voice, to cling to the feeling of her hand against my cheek.

The silence I had welcomed now felt like a threat, an empty void that would swallow me whole if I let it.

She was my anchor, the one solid thing in a world that had dissolved into pain and confusion.

I didn't want the quiet if it meant losing her. I wanted her. Only her.

Another fragment of awareness surfaced. Firelight.

The scent of damp earth and smoke. I was lying on something soft—her cloak, I realized—and she was leaning over me, her brow furrowed in concentration.

A wet cloth, cool against the burning heat of my forehead, brought a wave of relief so intense it was dizzying.

Her touch was gentle, clinical, as she cleaned the gash on my scalp.

There was no fear in it. No desire. Only a grim, focused determination to keep me alive.