Chapter Twenty-Seven

The fog-laden air was eerily still. Even the sensation of it flowing over Darius' ink-black wings felt oddly muted, little beads of water collecting in miniscule droplets on his feathers. Though nearly blind in the fog, he flew forward, following his bond with Tanitha like a tether.

Mindful of Kai's advice, he'd used his hawk form initially, but the moment he'd reached the fog cover, he'd switched to his birth form. At the very least, he wouldn't be taken off his guard by a pulse from a device that could apparently force him to revert to it. And it wasn't as if any of his other usual forms would be any use against the crushing suffocation of watery depths, anyway. If he had to do this without any of his abilities, so be it. He was not going to lose Tanitha.

In that moment, his sense of her vanished.

Darius gritted his teeth, beating his wings to carry him faster. The first time this had happened, he had feared the worst. But then, moments later, the bond between them had returned, gentle but strong. The disappearance had happened several more times, and he'd realized what he was feeling was the device temporarily dampening the half soul bond between them, not Tanitha's life being extinguished. But nonetheless, each time it happened, his heart lurched anew. What if this time, his sense of her didn't return?

What if he was too late?

He summoned a fierce gust of wind, and the fog abruptly thinned below. The scene was suddenly visible, if muted. There was a large kaika anchored in the water, with three people aboard— Alethia and the other two arbiters, whom he could hear shouting at one another.

There was no sign of Tanitha.

Promising himself grimly that he'd deal with Alethia later, he tucked his wings into a dive.

The plunge into the water just over the central wreck sent a shock through his entire body. He was a creature of air and flight, and the pressure of the water on all sides was oppressive, suffocating. His wings, which could carry him to such heights, seemed to only drag at his downward progress now. In some ways, though, swimming wasn't so very different from flying, if slower. He swam grimly toward the wreck, ignoring how his lungs were already beginning to call out for air. He used his wings to power his strokes, increasing his speed.

His eyes, more suited to darkness than most humans, were soon able to pick out the gaping hole in the ship's hull, and he turned toward it. Then, abruptly, he realized something. He could feel the barest tendril of his connection to Tanitha. But it wasn't growing stronger as it had before. It was just barely there, and it was flickering.

She was drowning.

He redoubled his speed, heedless of the burning of his lungs, of how his limbs were becoming more sluggish to his commands. Because if he didn't reach her, if he didn't save her, what did his own survival matter?

He reached the top deck of the ship, and he seized the outer rail, about to push himself off it toward that gaping chasm of darkness where Tanitha had to be. At that moment, however, something washed over his senses. It was the barest prickle of elemental magic, a lance of energy that, while faint, still immediately caught his attention. Because he'd felt something very similar before, many times. He knew that strange sensation, that paradoxically subtle strength from the many times he'd witnessed Tanitha soul-speaking.

He seized the deck's railing, hauling himself over it against a sudden outward rushing current of water. The force of it pulled at his joints, and a snarl of determined effort escaped him as he clung to the railing that was his only anchor against the unnatural tide that tore outward from the wreck. The waters seethed and roiled around him.

And then, suddenly, impossibly, he was above them. Air flooded into his starved lungs as the waters flowed away from the wreck. He looked around in confused disbelief. The level of the sea itself had dropped somehow, huge amounts of water displaced as if a giant bowl had been laid atop the surface and forced down. The wrecked ships groaned, their timbers creaking, and a shuddering sensation tore through the deck beneath Darius' feet as the water continued to recede, forming an impossible valley between growing peaks of roiling water.

There was a sudden sound behind him, and he whirled back toward the center of the ship's deck, its timbers slick and shining in the hazy light of day. And there, to his astonishment, stumbling free from the hatch, was Tanitha.

An instant later, he was at her side, kneeling beside her crouched form. She was gasping, water pouring from her mouth as she coughed violently. Water streamed from her hair in ropes, her clothing clinging to her body. He wrapped an arm around her, his heart pounding as he looked around, as he saw the unnatural way so much of the water was being held away from them like looming cliffs.

A death surge. He'd often heard of them, but he'd never witnessed one. When someone elementally gifted walked too close to the brink of death, when the threads of their fate had drifted perilously close to being cut, they'd sometimes reach across the Rifts, seizing hold of the elements in a desperate last grasp at life.

Which meant that he had been bare seconds from losing her forever.

One wing spread protectively over her as he crouched at her side, he held her as she continued to expel water, keeping her in position. The danger wasn't over yet; she might be clear of the water, but people could still drown after that, from water that had settled in their lungs. He started to summon his small abilities with water to draw more from her, but in that second, Tanitha spoke.

"No," she gasped out. "No, don't help. Please, don't."

He almost ignored her, driven far more by his fear for her safety than any other thought, but something in her tone gave him pause. He kept his hands on her, though, holding her in the best position to continue expelling water. He looked around again in awe.

Slowly, the water began to flow down from the unnatural peaks it had formed. It began to pool around their ankles, rising higher by the second. He sent Tanitha an anxious look, helping her to her feet.

Finally, she looked at him. "You came," she whispered.

He didn't answer— he couldn't, too overwhelmed at the sight of her standing before him. Alive, well, and looking at him with a relief and love that he could scarcely believe he deserved.

"Come on," he said, drawing her close, though he was sending a wary look at the waters that still seethed around the unnatural valley Tanitha had formed. "I'll get you out of here."

"Wait," she said. She struggled loose of a sodden satchel that was looped crosswise over her chest. Then, expression grim, she began to twirl it over her head like a sling. The second it had adequate momentum, she released it, and it sailed away toward the boat the arbiters were occupying, its position elevated by the water that had risen beneath it. Darius couldn't make out details through the fog, couldn't see Alethia and the others, but nonetheless, he heard startled voices sound in the second when the satchel would have struck the kaika's deck.

"There," Tanitha said, a faint tremble in her voice, as if she didn't quite believe it herself. "It's retrieved." She took a shivering breath. "It's over. The Trials are over."

"Tanitha," he said, casting another anxious look at the waters around them. They probably only had moments before the surge of strength she'd shown faded back, no longer fed by her nearness to death. Still, he resisted his instinct to simply sweep her up in his arms and take her away from all of this, forcing back the remembered terror of the instant when he'd thought he'd lost her.

"What do you want to do?" he asked instead.

She shook her head, confused. "What?"

"I know what my mother offered you," he said. "That we could attempt a soul-binding. And we can. If you want to attempt it, I'll stand with you and ensure you're safe if it fails."

Her legs were shaking, and she made as if to sit. Darius caught her just as her legs gave way, holding her against himself. He trailed one hand along the side of her face to brush the damp strands of hair back from her cheek. She wrapped one slender hand around his wrist, strength and delicacy both present in the motion.

"But I want you to know that you have a choice," he said. "If you tell me you want to be free of all of this, after everything that's happened, if you tell me you never want to see Karazhen or any other demon again, I will leave with you." She was looking at him with tears in her eyes. She started to speak, then shook her head once, apparently overwhelmed. "What I mean is that you don't have to accept that kind of binding if you don't want it," he continued. "I'll stay with you regardless. I know you'd never abuse it. I was frightened before, and I'm sorry for that," he said. "So incredibly sorry. But… I'm not afraid now."

Tanitha looked at him, her eyes shining with tears. Gods, he didn't deserve her. How had he come to be with someone with that level of love and courage and determination? He'd known she had those traits, but in that moment, he felt as if he were truly seeing her, all of her, for the first time.

At that moment, something stirred in him, a faint but noticeable shift in the partial soul-binding between them. Tanitha gave a short intake of breath, her eyes widening.

"Darius…"

"I felt it," he said, awed. And suddenly, he understood. For a binding to take effect, a soul-speaker had to see the truth of another soul laid bare. And in that moment, seeing her for the first time after he'd released his fears and his need to try to guide her path, he'd finally been able to see the truth of hers.