Page 55 of Unveil

Just ahead, the water stops. There’s nothing on the horizon but dark, blue-gray clouds, sheets of rain, and surging brown and white waves.

“There’s a waterf?—”

“I know,” he grits out, huddling over me. “Close your eyes, hold your breath, and make a wish. Pretend it’s like the tunnel, okay?”

The water crests. I suck in my last breath as he one-arm hugs me to the point of pain and wraps the other around me to cover my nose and mouth with his hand.

Keep us alive.

Then we fall.

Protect her. Protect her. Protect her.

The mantra fills my mind, my veins, every fiber of my being as we careen over the edge of the waterfall. My stomach lurches into my throat at the weightlessness.

I.

Am.

Her.

Shield.

I squeeze Luna flush to me so hard it must be painful, but I won’t—Ican’t—let her go. My heart beats out of my chest harder the longer we’re mid-flight, until we plunge into churning water so unyielding it feels like breaking through concrete.

Water fills my ears, and Luna screams into my hand as we tumble around, but I don’t let her escape, keeping my palm against her mouth and nose so she doesn’t suck water into her lungs. We roll in the icy-cold depths, pinballing rocks along the way. I twist us to avoid impact, but I can’t see through the mud, silt, and debris displaced by the storm. Pointy, hard, objects ofall shapes and sizes collide into me, but it’s when Luna flinches from getting hit that I wince.

All the while I kick, trying to right us. When Luna tries to do the same, she cries out into my palm.

Fuck, she’s in pain.

I did this to her. I hurt her. If it wasn’t for me, she’d be safe?—

No. Can’t think about that now.

The water is equally violent the further up we go, but we finally break the surface with a heave, and I let go of her mouth. We both suck in huge breaths, our lungs desperate for air.

We sail in the rapids, and I grab every branch I can, cursing when they rip from their trees, until my shoulder smashes into a boulder. Air bursts from my lungs, but I claw for a crevice and keep Luna in the vise of my other arm.

Something tugs on the crossbow that’s still miraculously strapped to my back. The water pulls at Luna’s tulle skirt, trying to take her away from me. I squeeze harder around her waist and slingshot us from one boulder to the next, pushing off at an angle to use the water’s momentum to hurl us through a pitch-black fissure.

We’re shot out the other side on another waterfall, quickly plunging into a pool below. My feet touch the bottom this time, and I propel off, shooting us through the calmer water with my arm out to keep us from hitting anything else.

We splash through the surface, sucking in oxygen, but hearing heraliveis the sweetest sound. Catching my breath, I swim one-armed to the rocky riverbed and drag us into shallow water.

Luna slides out of my arms onto all fours, coughing and sputtering. Pain radiates over every inch of my body, but I’m behind her, gently pushing her forward to help her up as she crawls over pebbles and sharp stones.

Finally, the soft, silty bank dips under my hands. I grab a thick exposed root and wrap my arm around her waist to pull us both onto land, collapsing beside her on my back, not caring that my crossbow jams into my spine as I quickly check for paint on the trees. I don’t know where we are, my crossbow might be wrecked, and depending on the paint color, we’re either safe or we’re fucked.

I squint through the rain dripping from the canopy. A lightning bolt flashes, revealing a beat-up shack beyond and a splotch of paint on the closest oak.

Red.

Relief sags from my bones until lightning flashes and thunder claps a mere second later, the electricity in the air raising the hair on my arms. We need shelternow.

I shake out the water from my ears, and the first thing I register in the cacophony of the cascading waterfall, the rumbling storm, the roaring rain, is Luna hyperventilating.

“Luna?”