25. Sapphire

Sapphire

“Sapphire!” Zoey is beside me in an instant, grabbing my arm and pulling back onto the ice. “Are you okay? Do you have the key?”

I can’t stop shaking, the cold burrowed so deep that it feels like it’s part of my bones now.

“No,” I choke out. “To both questions.”

“It’s okay.” She pulls me close to stop my shivering, although I can tell by the way her voice wavers that she doesn’t actually believe it’s going to be okay. “We’ll figure this out.”

“The lake’s too deep,” I explain, pulling away to look at her. “I can’t hold my breath long enough to get to the key. I couldn’t even see the key.”

Riven’s voice floats across the lake, calm and mocking. “Having trouble, Summer Fae?” he asks. “I figured you’d be a natural-born fish. ”

“Go to Hell, Riven,” I snap, glaring at him. “You wouldn’t last a second in the heat.”

“I’d survive better in the flames than you are in the water,” he replies without missing a beat. “Even though I don’t have a lick of fire magic.”

“Ignore him,” Zoey says, and I swear she’s shivering more than I am, even though I was just swimming in freezing water. “Maybe there’s another way. Like… maybe you can put your hand into the water and try calling the key toward you?”

“Maybe.”

Unable to think of a better option, I reach into the watery hole, put my hand in it, and “call” for the key.

It doesn’t work.

“Why don’t you just drown already?” Riven calls out again. “It’d be quicker. And easier.”

I reach into my pocket for the one stone I didn’t empty from it while swimming—the whisper stone—ready to hurl it at his face.

Shut up and let me help you, his voice whispers in my mind.

I freeze, startled, and look over to him.

Ready? he says again in my head.

His lips barely move, but they move enough that I can tell he’s speaking—well, whispering—what he’s saying through the stone .

Then, with one hand in his pocket, he walks over to one of his knights, Ghost staying by his side.

“What?” Zoey asks me.

I put the stone back in my pocket and keep my fingers wrapped around it, like I’m pretty sure Riven’s are right now.

I lean closer to Zoey to make it look like we’re brainstorming what to do next in the trial.

“When I touched the whisper stone, Riven talked to me through it,” I tell her, lowering my voice to make sure the knights can’t hear. “He said, ‘shut up and let me help you.’”

“So, let him help you,” she says, sitting back and waiting.

“How’s he supposed to help me?” I ask her. “He’s right next to that knight.”

“Maybe he has some type of plan,” she insists. “Give him a chance. He’s all we’ve got right now.”

I huff, knowing she’s right, and look back to Riven.

He’s watching me so closely that it’s like he’s trying to burn a hole through my forehead with his eyes.

“I’m ready,” I say through the stone, looking to Zoey as I do, who gives me a single nod of approval.

This is so pathetically entertaining, Riven says to his knight, in a conversational enough tone that if he wasn’t holding onto the stone, I wouldn’t be able to hear him from this far out in the lake. She’s so new to her magic that she has no idea she can just inhale the water and breathe like a fish.

There’s a pause.

From what I can see, the knight is saying something back. But I can only hear Riven—not the knight.

You never mastered filtering oxygen out of water? Riven says, and there’s another pause as the knight replies, before Riven continues. I suppose that makes sense. It’s an advanced skill for winter fae, since ice is our specialty. But since summer fae are most naturally in tune with water magic, I figured breathing underwater would be far easier for her than it is for us.

Zoey’s watching me eagerly. I can tell she wants to ask what’s going on, but she also knows not to distract me from what I’m hearing.

“He’s saying I can inhale water and breathe like a fish,” I share with her—quietly, of course. “That there’s oxygen in the water and I can filter it out.”

“So, there’s your answer,” she says. “You don’t have to hold your breath down there. You can just… breathe. In the water.”

I glance back down at the hole, which is slowly getting smaller as the water re-freezes.

My chest tightens at the thought of going back in there again.

Riven and the knight are now talking about how terrible the frost wine was from last year’s harvest, which I have a feeling means the help he was giving me is over.

Which means I either go back in there, or I admit defeat even though we’ve barely gotten started.

“Okay,” I decide. “I’ll try again.”

“You’ll be okay,” Zoey says, and I’m not sure if she’s trying to make me believe it, or herself. “I’m sorry I can’t help. Even if I was good at swimming, I’m just a human. I don’t have water magic. I don’t…” She pauses, looking around at the glistening forest with a strange sort of longing in her eyes. “I don’t belong in this realm.”

“Which is why you’re not staying here,” I say, more determined than ever at the reminder of how vulnerable Zoey is in this place. “Neither am I. We’re going to get home. And if that means jumping into that lake again… then I guess I’ll be jumping into that lake again.”

With that, I pull away from her, kneel by the hole, and put my hand on the ice.

Heat up, I think, and I push my magic through my hands, heating the ice and widening the opening once more. It’s easier this time than last. I suppose I’m getting the hang of it.

Then, I jump.

The freezing water slams into me again, stealing the breath from my lungs. My body locks up.

I should fight. Get back up to the surface before I drown .

What Riven told me to do is crazy. Breathing in water isn’t natural. It’ll kill me.

Except… I’m not natural. I’m not human. I’m super natural. And I have water magic.

Water can’t kill me. I won’t let it.

So, I don’t kick for the surface.

Instead, I open my mouth and let the lake rush in.

It hits my throat, my chest, and my lungs, filling them with freezing, suffocating water. It’s colder than anything I’ve ever felt in my life. Every nerve is on fire, my muscles locking as I thrash around, trying to fight it as the water crushes me from the inside out.

Black spots dance in my vision. I try to scream, but all that comes out is bubbles, rising in slow motion toward the surface.

Riven tricked me. I’m going to die at the bottom of this lake.

I doubt the fae will keep Zoey alive for long after I’m gone.

And it’s all his fault.

I reach for the whisper stone, wanting to curse him with my final dying breaths, even though I can’t speak underwater.

His voice comes through again, low and conversational, clearly still having a casual chat with his knight.

My mother’s the one who taught me how to do this, he says. I was barely old enough to use my magic properly. She brought me to the edge of the Glacial River. You know the place? The water there runs so cold it’s said to freeze even the heart of a winter fae if they stay in it for too long.

My lungs scream, my body fighting the water as I try clawing my way back to the surface.

When I first breathed in the water, I panicked. I thought I was going to die, Riven’s voice continues in my mind.

Something about the way he’s talking—so calm, so unguarded—makes me pause.

He’s holding onto the whisper stone as he speaks.

Which means he wants me to hear this story.

Technically, he’s talking to his knight, but because of the stone, he’s also talking to me.

She told me I wasn’t breathing right. That the water doesn’t move like air, he continues to recount the memory.

Another pause as the knight assumedly replies.

That was the big thing that made it click for me, Riven says. She told me it wasn’t about pulling the water into my lungs. You can’t treat it like air. It’s heavier, more resistant. You can’t force it. You have to let it flow.

He’s not just telling a story.

He’s coaching me.

I try to focus, even as the pain in my chest sharpens, threatening to make my lungs explode from the pressure.

The hardest part wasn’t learning to breathe, he continues. It was trusting that the water wouldn’t kill me. My mother said, “You’re fae. Ice and water are your allies. The more you resist, the more they’ll fight back. But if you let them in, they’ll help you.”

I want to scream.

Instead, I stop fighting and let the water fill me. Not as an enemy, but as something that can help. And, as I do, I allow my mind to relax into Riven’s words.

There’s something so melodic about his voice—almost hypnotic.

I’m positive you can learn how to do it if you try. It’s all about diffusion. You don’t inhale like you’re breathing air. You let the water bring the oxygen to you, like how a fish uses its gills. Stop resisting, and you’ll catch on in no time.

Slowly, the pressure in my lungs begins to ease.

The water isn’t crushing me anymore. It’s flowing through me, giving me what I need.

Air.

I can breathe.

My mother was smart, patient, and she loved fiercely, Riven says, with undeniable vulnerability in his tone. She was the best queen this realm has ever had. She was taken from us too soon.

Now that I can focus again, I remember what he told me in his room about his mother.

He said she’s the only person in this world who ever loved him.

And, judging by how he’s talking about her, she didn’t abandon him like my mom did to me .

She’s dead. Gone.

Forever.

And, in all the time I’ve known Riven—which, admittedly, hasn’t been long—I’ve never heard him sound so genuine. It’s like there’s actual warmth inside that heart of ice.

But now isn’t the time to contemplate this newfound depth of Riven’s personality.

Now’s the time to keep going with this trial.

So, with renewed strength, I kick downward, letting the water give me strength as I swim toward the glow of the key.