ELARA WAS SLAPPED AWAKE BY THE SURFACE OF THE RIVER SECONDS before she slid under. Water filled her mouth, her ears, her nostrils. Water shoved her upward or downward or forward or backward. Water would soon become her grave if she didn’t figure out which way the surface was.
Her head emptied of anything but the thought that she had to survive. Her weakened muscles burned as she tried to move her arms, her legs. Panic exploded in her chest. Her throat contracted as if it held a trapped scream. It wasn’t as though Elara couldn’t swim, but she didn’t know where to swim to. The last thing she remembered was blacking out inside Valor’s protective shell as they raced toward the Emerald Highlands, and now she was drowning. Had Valor sunk to the bottom of the Crown Sea? Was the battle still raging? How long had it been?
She slammed into a rock and almost didn’t feel it. Every nerve in her body was already alight with the painful realization that she was going to die. Worse, she was going to die for nothing. Buried in a watery grave because she had overshot her own capabilities.
And then the rock moved.
Elara was yanked to the side, and her head crested the water. She inhaled watery air and then promptly began to cough as her lungs rejected the liquid. The river—because it was a river she was in—rolled vigorously onward, but she was inching closer and closer to the bank, something firm against her back and gripping her stomach.
As soon as she hit dry land, she threw up. Then again. And again. And again. It still felt as if she couldn’t get enough air, and her chest burned. Adrenaline still made her pulse race as her body tried to adjust to the fact that she wasn’t going to die after all. It was far from the first time in her life that Elara had thought she was going to die, but it never got any easier to deal with her own mortality. She had yet to leave her teen years behind and she had already seen two wars.
When she had scraped her stomach and throat raw, she collapsed onto the grass. It felt like a thousand little needles against her shivering skin. She was so tired. War or not, she wanted to rest here. She wanted to rest.
“Elara!” She knew that voice. She knew it as well as she knew her own. Her thoughts were like tree sap, clinging together and moving sludge-like through her skull, but she knew that voice. “Elara, are you okay? Open your eyes!”
She didn’t realize she had closed them. They felt like weights, but she managed to lift her eyelids just enough for a rice-white face to swim into view. Red-brown hair clung to a pale forehead. Droplets of water slid down whitecap cheeks. Sea-glass eyes. Midnight clothes. Reeve. Reeve.
Elara reached weakly for him, and he scooped her up into his arms. She said his name again and again, like a prayer, and he whispered hers back, pressing his cold face against her cold shoulder and holding her as if he would never get the chance again.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you,” she said.
“Your drake crashed somewhere near here,” Reeve whispered against her shoulder. “My parents dragged you to Iya and then threw you in the river to distract Faron and Signey when they showed up. Although seeing Jesper was distraction enough.”
“Signey found Faron,” Elara said, her adrenaline rush shifting to powerful relief. “They’re together?”
“Together and angry.”
“And Iya—? He’s—?”
“He took Jesper’s body when he left mine.” Reeve pulled back just enough to look farther up the river, expression grim. “The water carried us a fair distance away, but we should be able to get back quickly. Can you walk?”
“Can I—?” Elara’s numb hands gripped his shoulders. She checked every inch of him for bruising, for scars, for even the slightest cosmetic difference. It was impossible to believe he was in such good health after being trapped in his own body, and yet he looked like her Reeve. Wet, but caring. “I can’t believe you’ve been trapped by the enemy for two months, and all you want to know is if I’m okay?”
“Well,” said Reeve, “you did almost drown.”
“You found out your parents traded your body to a trapped god for power. A god that killed our friends. A god that wore you like a coat for—”
“You almost drowned.” It was so unlike Reeve to talk over her that Elara’s mouth snapped shut. He seemed angry, an even rarer thing. “You’re my best friend. All of it—all of it—would have been worth it to know that you were safe. And you nearly drowned. There will be time for me to deal with what Iya did, but I would never, ever forgive myself for what my parents tried to do to you.”
Elara pressed her forehead against his. Reeve was breathing hard, but there was fear beneath the anger. She saw that now. Even before he’d found out what his parents had done, he’d been estranged from them. They had wanted him dead for treason—treason that turned out to have ruined their plans for him. Elara was the closest thing Reeve had to a family, and Reeve was one of the most important members of hers. He’d been just as afraid of losing her as she had of losing him, and he’d almost had to watch it with his own eyes.
“I know,” she murmured. “I’m sorry. I can walk.”
He helped her up, and, despite some trembling, her feet held her weight. She jogged in place for a few minutes, and when she didn’t collapse, she nodded at Reeve. Together, they raced along the riverbank, hoping they weren’t too late. She had promised Signey she would not be forced to face down her own brother, and Elara would keep that promise. If Iya had been able to leave Reeve’s body, there was a way to expel him from Jesper’s. She wanted the Sotos back together. She wanted Signey to survive this war without losing another member of her family. She wanted to stop Iya once and for all.
With Reeve by her side, it all felt possible.
There was still far too much distance between them and Iya when they heard the scream. Up the river, so distant that they looked like tiny figures, Signey and Faron were fighting Iya. Their hands flashed with the magic of astrals and dragon relics. They worked so well together that Elara was both thrilled and envious, terrified and sick. Signey moved like a tidal wave, giving Iya no quarter even though he looked like her brother. The few times she faltered, Faron was there to attack in her stead.
Without knowing it, Faron was upholding Elara’s promise for her. And Elara trusted her to do it.
“I don’t see my parents,” Reeve panted.
“There,” said Elara, pointing at the winding, rocky path that led into the mountains. Two figures hurried along it, disappearing around the bend of the high cliffs. “Signey knows how to break bonds. If she broke the one between them and Irontooth, they’d need to get somewhere high to catch their dragon’s attention.”
“I don’t know if that’s it.” Reeve’s eyes were cold as he stared up the mountain. “It’s more likely that they’re trying to escape. They’re leaving everyone here to die.”
“I wish I were surprised.…”
Reeve reached into his damp shirt, but he came up empty. He blinked down at his chest before making a sound of realization. “Right. I forgot that Iya got rid of it.”
Her eyebrows drew together. She hadn’t noticed the lack of that bump when they’d been hugging, but now it was obvious. Reeve had never taken off his dragon relic. She was used to feeling its weight. For it to be gone now was terrifying.
“Won’t you need it?” she asked. “What if your parents are—”
“I don’t need a dragon relic to deal with my parents.” Reeve smiled, and even though he looked like a drowned animal, there was something heroic about that smile. A confidence she hadn’t seen from him in a while. A confidence she could feel rising within her as well, now that she had been reunited with her best friend. “After all. I’m with the Maiden Empyrean.”