13. Zoey

Zoey

We’ve been walking for hours.

Well, Riven and Sapphire have. I’ve been riding Ghost because, let’s face it, there’s no way I’d keep up otherwise.

Not without slowing them down even more than I already do.

I hate this feeling. Helplessness. One I barely experienced back home, if I’m being honest.

Everyone in Presque Isle knows me as the girl who can do anything she tries. The one who excels at every hobby she picks up.

Now look at me. Being carried through a magical forest like an invalid.

A breeze swirls around us, and I glance at Sapphire, her white-blonde hair shimmering with streaks of silver and blue in the dim light as she gazes up at the stars. She’s like a celestial goddess, walking beside Riven as if she belongs in this magical, deadly wilderness.

Because she does belong here. She has magic—actual, real magic.

And what do I have?

Guilt about how I’m a burden weighing them down.

“My parents probably think I ran away and dragged you with me,” I say to Sapphire, since talking is the best way to get myself out of my head. “They must be calling everyone we know, putting up missing person posters...”

“The police are probably involved by now,” she agrees. “Aunt Martha’s probably made a home for herself at that station.”

“Patrick’s probably helping, too,” I say before I can stop myself. “He always said he’d be there if I needed him.”

“Patrick’s an idiot who didn’t deserve you the first time around.” She scoffs. “You can do so much better.”

Easy for you to say when you have an actual prince who can’t take his eyes off you, I think, although I stop myself from saying it.

No need to cause conflict. Not when I’m causing so much trouble for them already.

“Maybe.” I try to shrug it off, but the memory of Patrick’s smile—the way his eyes would crinkle at the corners when he laughed at my random stories—makes my chest ache. “But he was starting to come around again. The week before winter break, he asked about the pottery class I was taking.”

“Is this the same Patrick who dumped you because you ditched soccer for tennis?” Her voice hardens. “Who said he didn’t think you’d have enough in common if you didn’t play the same sport?”

“He wasn’t that bad,” I say, although it’s not totally true.

Good thing that unlike Sapphire, I can lie.

Bonus points for the human.

“There’s a waterfall up ahead,” Riven says, uninterested in my human relationship drama. “We should rest there for a moment. Hydrate. Get our bearings.”

The sound of rushing water grows louder as we approach, and soon we break through the trees into a clearing.

We’re at the top of gigantic falls—the water as black as ink in the night, glittering in the starlight as it crashes into a pool below. And something about the way the water moves… it’s soothing. Calming. Like a symphony played just for us, to help us unwind after a long day of trudging through a frozen forest.

Sapphire and Riven must hear it, too, because they relax, and quietly, we make our way to the riverbank.

Ghost lowers himself so I can slide off his back, and I try not to wince at how stiff my muscles feel.

Sapphire steadies me, her hand on my elbow.

“I’m fine. Just need to stretch my legs a bit. And refill my waterskin,” I say, shaking her off and taking out the leather pouch that passes as a water bottle around here. “Drinking from this river won’t bring me to another realm, right?”

Given how Sapphire and I got to this realm in the first place, I’m only half kidding.

“There’s no marker,” Riven says, which I assume is a reference to the silver tree. “But let me check it out first to make sure it’s safe.”

He walks over to a break in the rapids and kneels to take a closer look.

The water churns.

In seconds, waterlogged, humanoid, skeletal creatures rise from its depths, their bodies covered in slimy, moss-like tendrils.

There are so many of them.

And they’re coming at us from all directions.

“Nixies!” Riven shouts, which I figure is either a fae curse, or the name of these water creatures.

I’m guessing the second.

They’re surrounding us so quickly that I suddenly forget how to breathe.

“Get back on Ghost!” Riven tells me as he moves to the closest creature—well, nixie—easily managing to continue to talk as he kills it with his sword. “And whatever happens, don’t let them grab you.”

Heart pounding, I scramble onto Ghost’s back and reach for my dagger, which I’m only mildly capable of using, thanks to those years of wood whittling with my dad.

A nixie lunges at us, but Ghost pivots, letting me slash at it with my dagger.

The blade catches its shoulder, and muddy water sprays from the wound.

Another point for the human.

“Good hit!” Sapphire calls out, hurling her water magic like deadly spears at two more of them.

Her spears go right through them, not affecting them in the slightest.

Apparently, water zombies can’t be killed by their own element.

Riven swoops in, taking them down with his sword before they can get to her.

But I can’t celebrate. Because more of them are emerging from the falls, their bodies twisting unnaturally as they climb over the rocks, groaning like zombies.

“Stay close,” Riven says, and he, Sapphire, Ghost, and I keep our backs to each other, our formation tight, guarding ourselves against the nixies as they close in.

“What happens if they grab you?” I ask Riven, my dagger ready to strike.

“They’ll drag you into the river and drown you,” he says casually, killing two more of them with his sword.

My heart drops, and I scan the area, looking for a break in circle of them surrounding us.

Other than the space where the waterfall starts, there’s nothing.

And I’m not letting one of these nixies get me. They can grab me and drag me into the water over my dead body.

Ghost apparently feels the same way. Because he lets out a rumbling snarl, his massive paws striking out at an attacking nixie and tearing it to watery shreds.

Riven’s spinning, his sword flashing, sending three of their heads flying at once. Muddy water spurts out from their open necks, and they disintegrate into puddles on the ground.

Sapphire screams as one of them claws at her, but she stabs it in the head with her dagger before it can grab her.

Ghost and I work in sync, like we’ve been fighting together for years instead of hours. When he lunges, I strike. When he dodges, I duck.

I’m not useless.

I can do this.

Sapphire’s now pelting four of them with small rocks, muddy water spraying from the holes in their bodies as they drain out.

“They keep coming!” she shouts, not letting up.

“We need to—” Riven’s warning cuts off as a particularly large nixie bursts from the pool, sending a wave crashing over us that floods my mouth and my nose, making it impossible to breathe.

Terror squeezes my chest, and I sheathe my dagger, grabbing Ghost’s fur.

I have to hold on.

His growl rumbles through his body, fierce and protective.

But the water strikes again, harder this time, a wall of ice and fury that steals the air from my lungs.

My fingers slip.

“No!” I cry out as a slimy, skeletal hand wraps around my wrist, yanking me off Ghost’s back with so much force that my shoulder pops.

I kick and scream as it pulls me close, leveling its slimy, rotted, algae-covered face with mine.

Bile rises in my throat.

If vomit is able to kill this thing, then I’m about to slay it better than I ever could with my dagger.

I don’t get a chance. Because it snarls and hurls me over the edge of the waterfall—as if I’m a rotten apple it picked from a tree—and I’m soaring, screaming, my stomach lurching as the world twists around me in a blur of stars, water, and jagged cliffs.

Then, I’m plunging downward.

I need to grab something. Anything.

But there’s only open air and the endless, violent roar of the rushing water.

Time stills and speeds up all at once.

“Zoey!” Sapphire screams, but her voice is drowned out as I crash into the pool at the bottom of the falls.

Cold seeps into my bones as the current pulls me under, spinning me in every direction as I kick and thrash, my chest burning as my lungs beg for air.

Move! I scream at myself. Do something!

But I don’t know how to move.

I don’t know how to swim.

Every muscle locks up, memories of that icy lake when I was a kid flooding back. The way the cold shocked my system, how the darkness swallowed me whole, the absolute certainty that I was going to die.

Back then, Sapphire had pulled me out, her arms shaking as she saved my life.

But she’s not here now.

I’m alone, and I’m going to die. For real this time.

In the occasional moments when I break the surface, I hear Sapphire screaming my name and see flashes of Riven’s blade.

But I can never stay up for long.

Then, something tugs at me. Not the water, but arms wrapping around my waist and yanking me upward.

Air bursts across my face, and I gasp, choking as I’m pulled out of the water.

Not by a nixie.

By a dark angel.

His face is sharp and beautiful in a way that feels wrong—like it was carved from shadow—and his black wings look somehow darker in the night.

Terror floods back, just as paralyzing as my fear of drowning.

“Sapphire!” I try to scream, but my voice is too weak from all the water I inhaled.

She sees us anyway. Even from this distance, I can make out the horror on her face as the dark angel carries me higher, away from the battle still raging by the waterfall.

The world tilts as he ascends, the trees shrinking below us.

Sapphire’s screams are lost in the wind rushing around her, and Riven’s sword gleams, a blur of silver as he cuts through the nixies with brutal efficiency.

But they’re getting smaller, farther away.

“No!” I thrash against the dark angel, but his grip is iron strong. “Let me go!”

“Be still,” he commands, and I do.

Not because I want to stay with him. But because if I fall from here, it’ll be surer death than if I was still trying—and failing—to swim at the bottom of those falls.

Plus, there’s something about his voice that calms me. That helps me relax.

Now, all I can do is watch helplessly as we glide above the treetops, break through the canopy, and descend into a small clearing, where a massive black jaguar waits with eyes gleaming like golden coins in the darkness.

The dark angel lands smoothly, his wings folding behind him as his boots touch the ground. But he doesn’t release me. Instead, he carries me to the jaguar and sets me down, grabbing a length of rope from a satchel at the animal’s side.

I start to make a run for it—the burst of energy exploding inside me like a firework—but he easily yanks me back.

“Don’t struggle.” He shifts me onto the jaguar’s back and ties the rope around me with practiced efficiency, studying me with intense, midnight eyes. “It will only make this worse for you.”

“Make what worse for me?” I ask, desperation rising in my voice, knowing there’s nothing I can physically do to stop him. “Why did you save me? What do you want with me?”

He doesn’t answer my questions. He just adjusts the rope, tightening it, ensuring there’s no way I can fall—or escape.

Once he’s done, he jumps on in front of me, his wings retracting into his back so they don’t smack into my face.

“Hold tight,” he says, and the jaguar surges forward, faster than any horse I’ve ever ridden. Even faster than Ghost.

The forest blurs around us, and my mind races, panic clawing at my chest as I glance back over my shoulder.

No sign of Sapphire. No sign of Riven.

Only darkness and the pounding of the jaguar’s paws against the frozen earth.

I’m sorry, I think, tears freezing on my cheeks as I remember the devastation in Sapphire’s eyes as I was carried away, knowing she couldn’t reach me in time. I was too weak to protect myself. Again.

And unlike last time, saving me is going to be far more complicated than a single vial of healing potion.