25. In Hiding

25

In Hiding

Safira Chastain

I didn't leave the Spire after that. There was no reason to. Celyn was the only thing out there for me in the winter, and he'd shown me his true colors. He was the monster Marin had always been worried about, taking whatever he wanted, something far too inhuman to love.

Whenever I stopped telling myself that litany, though, guilt clawed at me, even while the bruises and broken skin healed. Even in the moonlight, I'd seen the pain of my accusations hitting their marks. Celyn's raw agony woke me screaming from nightmares and left me sobbing in corners, my heart unable to choose between anger and despair. He'd been my safe haven and sunlight until he'd held up a ring to me, and then I'd turned him into my nightmare.

Nobody said anything about me no longer going out to visit Celyn. Whether it was the blizzard that dumped three feet of snow on us the next day, or a particular reticence against telling someone "I told you so," I appreciated the restraint. I would never have been able to survive telling anyone about it—any of it. Not what he'd done, nor what I'd done.

Leyweaver left maybe three weeks after my confrontation with Celyn, telling us she likely wouldn't be back for a month or more. We all fell into our own little routines with her gone: Bashen doing his labor without interaction, Marin quietly tending the kitchen, and me all but living in the greenhouses. It was a stroke of luck, then, that I happened to be watching Bash out my bedroom window when the tree fell.

I hadn't been outside since that night, but Marin couldn't go out, and even a minotaur can't pick a tree up off himself. To my credit, I only hesitated for a moment before I threw on my coat and boot and raced out the door, and though the sunlight off the waves of Tsirisma Lake hit me like a volley of arrows, I didn't stop.

It took almost two hours for me to saw through the deadfall to get Bash up, and he was so much larger than me that he had to half-crawl to the door of the Spire, even with my help. Marin had summoned a healer via the Dragonvault in the meantime, and before we'd managed to get Bash to his room she arrived.

An hour later, she joined us in the kitchen, looking tired. "It's bad," she said without preamble. "He'd have been dead if he was human, but he wasn't and he's not. With the healing I put on him, he'll be alright in a week or so, but he'll need to be on bed rest until then."

Marin glanced at me, looking concerned, then looked back at the healer with a smile. "Thank you, Mistress Porter," she said quietly. "We'll take care of him. Is there anything else we need to do?"

She shook her head at that. "Nay, it's all cared for. I'll return in five days to check in if I don't hear from you, but until then just keep him fed and watered. A little extra sugar in his diet wouldn't go amiss."

"Thank you," she said again, and bowed.

I followed suit, relief making my hands tremble. I liked Bash. I was going to be here for years, and we were turning into friends. It would have been terrible to lose him.

The healer said her farewells, then broke the transport disc she'd been sent with, vanishing to regions unknown. Marin sat heavily in a kitchen chair, rubbing at her face; I followed suit.

"I'm so glad you saw him," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. Then she looked up, her clear green eyes catching mine. "Are you going to be able to go out again?" she asked, her gaze direct. She said it with knowledge in her voice, recognizing that I didn't want to be near Celyn without saying it aloud. "There's a mage coming to the Spire for research purposes, but Leyweaver locked down the portals while she's gone, and barred any major spells within ten miles, portalling included. Something about spell interference. He's supposed to arrive today, and someone needs to row out to meet him."

She left the obvious unsaid. With Bash injured, the only person in the Spire capable of fetching the mage was me.

I clenched my fists in my lap. Celyn couldn't reach me, I reminded myself. If I was careful, he wouldn't even know that I was the one in the rowboat. I wouldn't let him ruin the outdoors for me. "Okay," I said, my voice firmer than I felt. "I can do it."

The mage sent a small bird as a messenger to Barixeor in the early afternoon, noting the hour of his arrival on a narrow strip of parchment. I set out early for the shore, screwing up my courage and pretending to fortitude as I wrestled the rowboat off its rack and got in, using an oar to shove myself down the slope instead of standing. Celyn paid attention to his surface, and I didn't want to show him my reflection.

Pointing my boat at the dock on the opposite shore, I started to row. I was a strong woman, but rowing was a different sort of exercise than I usually did, and I worked up a sweat as I made my way across the lake. Despite the allure of the cold water of the lake, I didn't so much as look over the edge of the boat. Celyn was there. I wouldn't give him the chance to hurt me again.

The stone dock came into view in my periphery, and I angled the rowboat to come in smoothly, pleased with myself. I'd made good time, and had kept out of Celyn's sight. Now to do it one more time, and return to hiding in the greenhouses.

I reached out and grabbed hold of one of the stone, slowing the rowboat to a stop, then turned to look down the path.

A man stepped out from the shadows of the tree. He smiled.

I stared for one moment into the face of the wizard, then dove into the lake.

I didn't even have time to think about making the decision. I simply did it: made the choice between two deadly dangers, and picked Celyn without hesitation. There were reasons, of course, and they came to mind as I swam for the lake bottom with terror gripping my heart, but the truth of it was that in the depths of my heart I trusted the wizard to hurt me, and Celyn to protect me.

I found a stone and grabbed it, anchoring myself to the lake bottom. The fear left me panting, the cold water filling my lungs and nose. Celyn was stronger than the wizard. He had to be. He was a water-horse, and Tsirisma Lake wasn't small.

Celyn solidified in front of me, looking at me, his face drawn with longing and his dark hair floating in a halo around his beautiful face. But he didn't come near. He only looked for a moment, then went to the surface, stepping out of the water to stand on his waves.

Water carries sound just as well as air does. Despite the sounds inherent to the lake – the roll of waves, the shushing of the vegetation as the water moved – I could hear the wizard's voice with perfect clarity as he spoke.

"You have something of mine, water-horse," he said, a sharpness to his lilting tenor. "I want her back. Alive, if you please."

The sound, as familiar as my nightmares, cut me to the bone.

"Anything within my waters belongs to me, whether living or not," Celyn said.

I curled up tight into a ball around my stone, breathing water and weeping tears into the lake. I was terrified of what Celyn might demand of me for his protection, as I wept and shook, but I would do anything not to be possessed by the wizard again. I couldn't go back. I couldn't survive it.

I almost missed the wizard's response in my fear— "She can't live down there forever. Humans need to eat and drink more than raw fish and lake water."

I knew he was right. I couldn't stay in Celyn's waters forever. I could live for a little bit, days or maybe weeks, but eventually I'd have to surface, and Leyweaver wasn't here to drive him off.

All he had to do was wait for me to choose him, or death by starvation.

"You would sit here, waiting, for all that time?" Celyn asked. "She is no source of power or great curiosity, that someone like you might desire her for your pursuits. What is she to you, human?"

I could almost see the snarl on the wizard's face at those calm words. Celyn sounded almost bored, as if he didn't care either way. My body shook uncontrollably, only the need to know what was happening keeping me from falling into a complete blind panic.

"She's my wife ," the wizard hissed. "By the laws of Lestryn, she belongs to me."

"I do not care about human laws," Celyn replied dismissively.

"You may not, but mages do," he said, his voice sounding poisonous, even filtered through the water. "I don't even need to wait for Leyweaver to return. I merely have to report your theft of my property and the Mage-Senechal will send sorcerers to part your waters and give her back to me."

"This is your only claim on her?"

"It's enough."

I shuddered and clung harder to the rock. My chest ached from the effort of breathing water, so much heavier and denser than air.

You will never drown in me, Safira. No harm will ever come to you in my waters.

Dangerous and deadly he might be, but Celyn kept his promises. He held me safe, even after everything he'd said and done.

"Accept me in her place."

I froze with shock. What—

"She's mine, " the wizard snapped.

Celyn's shadow shifted across the lakebed as he stepped closer to the wizard. "Your claim means nothing to me, and you have no power over me," he crooned in his most beguiling voice. "Do you think I will allow you to steal what I have taken? I am a water-horse. Her bones are far more valuable to me than to you."

There was a long pause. I could almost see their expressions: Celyn implacable, the wizard with the coldness on his face that spoke to rage.

"You cannot have her," Celyn said, his voice deepening. "But you can have me."

"You would give yourself over for a nothing human?" Flat. Emotionless. The way the wizard always sounded when planning his worst cruelties.

"Yes. Swear on your power that you renounce all claims to Safira forever and will never interfere with, interact with, or seek her again, and I will bow my head for your bridle." Celyn's voice was as flat as the wizard's.

A different sort of terror seized me. He... he had been horrible to me, treated me like a thing, shown me the depth of his strength and danger, but he was innocent of this. Celyn couldn't— Couldn't— Why would he ever do such a thing? Why—

I almost didn't hear the wizard swear, the words barely registering for me. I saw the shape of Celyn change, and his shadow move. I stayed there, frozen in terror, until I saw him step onto the shore.

I— I couldn't—

Without thinking, my body moved. I let go of the rock and shot to the surface, clawing my way onto the shore. I vomited water, gasping in the air, shaking with fear and horror and cold as the frigid late autumn air hit me. Ice cracked under my hands, slicing at me like broken glass. I crawled up onto the rocky beach and heard the sound of hoofbeats.

I dragged my head up in time to see the wizard seated bareback on Celyn, an ornate bridle on the water-horse's head. The wizard didn't look at me. Celyn didn't look at me.

The wizard kicked Celyn and he leaped forwards, running across the surface of the lake without leaving a ripple on it. I watched them vanish into the trees, dazed and horrified and flooded with overwhelming relief. Then I staggered to my feet and up the hill to the Spire, turning my back on the blue waters of Tsirisma Lake.

Safe.

I was finally safe.