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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I ’m six years old, and the water hurts so much as it fills my lungs. My mouth keeps opening and opening, like if I can get my jaw open wide enough I’ll find air, but there’s no air, there’s just sour salt water and it just keeps filling me and filling me and filling me, and I know it will kill me.

I am six years old and I’m going to die.

The man’s hands are firm at my throat, tangled in the back of my hair. I thrash against him but I can’t fight his grip. His fingers are so tight around my neck, they hurt almost as much as the salt in my lungs.

Almost.

I’m six years old and I’m going to die.

Water had filled my lungs by the time I was aware enough to realize what had happened. It poured into the tunnels with such force that it struck us like a giant open palm. My body hurt—something broke. I couldn’t orient myself. We were moving fast, so fast I struggled to grab hold of the threads around me. The moment my consciousness returned, I clawed at the stone wall, breaking fingernails but failing to?—

My body lurched as someone grabbed me—Atrius. I knew it was him immediately. But the water was so strong, and he was being swept away in it too. He held me for a moment and then I was pulled away from him again. My body crashed against what must have been Erekkus, who was forcing himself against the rock wall, trying to slow himself against the current.

Gods, what were we going to do? I reached for the threads, for something to root myself in. We were being swept through the tunnels, swept out to?—

Atrius grabbed at me again, and once again he failed. This time, though, he opened up a gash in my forearm. I barely noticed the pain, but I wanted to snap at him for the distraction.

But then a moment later, a strange sensation bubbled up inside me, slow, warm, burning. My muscles tensed, tightening and moving without my permission.

What the hell was?—

My body flew across the hall, fighting against the tide, and suddenly my head was above the water and a body was pressed to mine with a firm arm wrapped around my waist?—

—And Atrius’s very, very unhappy face was a few inches away from mine. One arm held onto me, and the other braced against a rocky enclave. Flecks of water showered against our faces, our heads barely above the rush. The tide was now ebbing and flowing, coming in bursts rather than constant force. I glanced behind me to see the flailing limbs of Atrius’s warriors fighting to make it through the tide. Reverberations of their fear, high and sharp, plucked through the threads.

Even vampires feared death. And I knew that a death by drowning was among the worst.

“You said you’d be useful, Arachessen,” Atrius spat, raising his voice over the roar of the water. “I saved your life. Now you save theirs.”

His eyes were fierce and steadfast, like this demand was completely reasonable. And yet, perhaps I sensed a glimmer of fear from him now—only now, when his people were in danger.

“How do you expect me to do that?” I asked, the rush swallowing my voice.

He leaned close, the water from his lips brushing the crest of my ear.

“You’re the witch,” he said. “Don’t your kind have their ways?”

Weaver damn him. I had no ways for this. Some of my Sisters were talented with water magic, but that was never my skill, and even then, I doubted any acolyte of Acaeja would have water magic powerful enough to stop this—maybe a follower of Zarux, the God of the Sea, but that certainly wasn’t my domain.

I looked around helplessly, reaching out to our surroundings. Stone. Water. Bodies. And fear—so much fear, growing more intense by the moment.

Terrible guilt, the weight of my responsibility in this mistake, swelled in my throat, burning. So many of these people were going to die.

Perhaps I should let them.

It was what a good saboteur would do. Let the conqueror’s army whittle away. I had every excuse for not being able to help. How could I help, anyway? What could I do?

I’m six years old and the salt water hurts and I’m going to die.

I shook away the past, my own thread tangling with theirs.

I couldn’t say why I made the decision, only that I was acting before it even consciously snapped into place. I reached above me, pressing my palm to the rough stone of the ceiling.

It was hard to focus on my magic with the water rushing around us. The bursts came harder now, sending Atrius and me under the water for seconds at a time, threatening to rip me from his grasp. But he held me tight, keeping my body pressed to his. I was grateful for that, an anchor, as I worked to find a connection strong enough to latch onto.

Against the tide, I kept my palm to the stone.

Stone was alive, in its way. Threads of life ran through it. It was stable and secure. Everything here was moving and changing. Not the stone. I could use that. There was space beyond this—more tunnels. We just needed to break through.

I’d never done something like this before. Weaver knew whether I was even capable of it. But it was my only idea. My only wild, stupid, ridiculous idea.

I drew a thread from myself to the stone, tightened it until it trembled between our souls. Another thread. Another. Three anchors, forcing my magic through it, and then half a dozen, and then more that I didn’t bother to count.

How many would be enough?

“ Sylina ,” Atrius ground out, between clenched teeth.

He didn’t need to say more. Time. We didn’t have any. His men were barely managing to cling to the walls of the cave. Some had been swept away.

It had to be enough. I threw all my magic into that connection between me and the stone, yanked as hard on those threads as if I was flinging myself across the room—but instead of moving myself, I was moving the stone.

CRACK!

Before I knew what was happening, Atrius cupped the back of my head, yanking me against him. It was only seconds later that I realized why: to protect me as the crumbling rock came crashing down into the water. The two of us tumbled as the current, interrupted by the change in terrain, sputtered and crashed against the walls.

Above us, a hole revealed the tunnel above.

I didn’t recognize the sound of my own laughter, frantic and manic, at first.

Weaver take me. My Sisters were never going to believe I’d just pulled that off.

For a moment, despite the circumstances, I was wildly proud of myself.

I glanced at Atrius, probably beaming, and something that almost resembled a smile flashed briefly across his face—and the sight of it sent a strange, satisfied thrill up my spine.

“Go,” he said, releasing me and half-pushing me up to the newly opened passage. Several others had managed to escape the current thanks to the partial dam of the rocks, and were already dragging themselves up too, coughing up water along the way.

But my attention was being pulled to the others—those who had been swept back further by the tide and couldn’t find their footing. Atrius’s eyes found them, too—though he pushed me up to the opening, he was ready to fling himself back down the hall.

He was devoted to those that followed him. I would give him credit for that.

“No,” I said. “I’ve got them.” I put a firm hand on his chest, stopping him. Then I turned, drew a thread between me and the nearest vampire, and pulled it taut before I had the chance to second guess myself.

“Wait—” Atrius started, but I was already gone.

The water was frigid. Despite the partial blockage of the stone I’d collapsed, the current was still strong here, flinging my body around like a rag doll. I grabbed Erekkus—a difficult feat, considering how much larger than me he was. I didn’t give him time to react before I forced my head above the water, forced myself to steady just long enough to look at the gap in the rocks, at Atrius on his hands and knees looking back at me?—

Draw the thread.

Step through.

I stumbled as my feet hit dry stone, staggering against Atrius and weighed down by Erekkus, who immediately went to his hands and knees and started hacking up water.

Atrius started to say something, but I snapped, “Get down there and be ready for them,” and was gone again before he had time to respond.

The next two were difficult. The third, nearly impossible. As the bodies grew further away from me, it grew more difficult for me to accurately reach them. I retrieved four more, all hoisted onto the rock landing panting and coughing, where Atrius dragged them up to safety. With each one, I was slower to return. Threadstepping took a significant amount of energy, and I was casting my net far. By the fourth trip, my heartbeat ached against the inside of my ribs.

Atrius caught my arm as I turned to go back for another.

“You’re shaking.”

My head was killing me. I had to sink all my energy into keeping my focus trained on the final presence I could still sense, though it was quickly drifting farther.

“I need to go.”

“If you can’t make it back?—”

“I can save the last one,” I snapped. “Do you want me to do it, or let them die?”

Atrius’s grip tightened around my arm, echoing the tightness of his jaw, then he released me. “Go. Fast.”

This one was hard. When the water hit me this time, it swallowed me whole. The warrior, a woman thankfully not much larger than I was, was unconscious. I grabbed her, but the rush of the water was unrelenting. For a moment, I was swallowed up in my own past, directions and senses erased.

I tried to turn to the shore. But I couldn’t find it—was it that way? Or had I gotten turned around?

The slow tide of panic rose in my chest. An abrupt surge of water caught me off guard, sending my back smacking against the stone. The explosion of pain had me gagging on salt water.

I’m six years old and I’m going to ? —

No.

I was not going to drown. I was not going to die. I was watched by the Weaver, the Lady of Fate, and I was a master of the threads, not another puppet to be manipulated by them.

I needed to sense the landscape of the threads. But to do that, I’d need to focus. And that meant letting go of the current. That meant letting myself get swept away.

Damn it. Sometimes, I did hate this job.

I let myself go limp.

Reached to the threads.

They spread out around me, shimmery and translucent and difficult to see with a mind still half-distracted by incoming death.

I fell further into the water. I barely felt it the next time the current sent me against the wall. I turned… reached… and…

There.

I felt him. Not just my target—not just the stone, but him . Atrius. A presence so unusual I felt it from even this far.

It was him I anchored myself to. I drew the thread tight, strong. I prayed it would hold enough to get us there.

And I stepped through it.

I collapsed against the damp stone. My sides and abdomen ached with violent coughs, lungful after lungful of briny water dripping to the rocks. Beside me, my rescuee did the same, and Erekkus helped her to her feet.

Someone touched me, and I jerked away.

“Stop,” Atrius growled.

Pain, as my arm was lifted. I cursed as something was drawn tight around it, trying to yank my arm away.

“Stop fighting,” he snapped. “You’re wounded. I’m stopping the bleeding.”

Bleeding.

My breaths slowed. My heart steadied. I felt my arm—the gash in it, now bandaged up tight.

Atrius regarded me like I was the subject of an assessment. “You can move?”

There was no concern in the question. Just pragmatism.

“Yes.”

He extended a hand, and I still felt unsteady enough that I allowed myself to take it. His grip was rough and scarred. Hands that carried lifetimes.

I swayed a little on my feet when he let me go. I was sore, but my injuries were surface-level. More disorienting was the exhaustion of my magic. The threads seemed intangible and distant now, hard to grasp. Wonderful. That would make it fun to navigate these tunnels.

“We need to go,” Atrius said. His gaze bored into me like a scalpel into flesh, trying to reveal what lay beneath.

“I’m ready,” I said. I took my blade from him, let him hoist me up to the next level of the tunnels, and we were off again.