“Sylina,” Atrius ground out, between clenched teeth.
He didn’t need to say more. Time. We didn’t have any. His men were barely managing to cling to the walls of the cave. Some had been swept away.
It had to be enough. I threw all my magic into that connection between me and the stone, yanked as hard on those threads as if I was flinging myself across the room—but instead of moving myself, I was moving the stone.
CRACK!
Before I knew what was happening, Atrius cupped the back of my head, yanking me against him. It was only seconds later that I realized why: to protect me as the crumbling rock came crashing down into the water. The two of us tumbled as the current, interrupted by the change in terrain, sputtered and crashed against the walls.
Above us, a hole revealed the tunnel above.
I didn’t recognize the sound of my own laughter, frantic and manic, at first.
Weaver take me. My Sisters were never going to believe I’d just pulled that off.
For a moment, despite the circumstances, I was wildly proud of myself.
I glanced at Atrius, probably beaming, and something that almost resembled a smile flashed briefly across his face—and the sight of it sent a strange, satisfied thrill up my spine.
“Go,” he said, releasing me and half-pushing me up to the newly opened passage. Several others had managed to escape the current thanks to the partial dam of the rocks, and were already dragging themselves up too, coughing up water along the way.
But my attention was being pulled to the others—those who had been swept back further by the tide and couldn’t find their footing. Atrius’s eyes found them, too—though he pushed me up to the opening, he was ready to fling himself back down the hall.
He was devoted to those that followed him. I would give him credit for that.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got them.” I put a firm hand on his chest, stopping him. Then I turned, drew a thread between me and the nearest vampire, and pulled it taut before I had the chance to second guess myself.
“Wait—” Atrius started, but I was already gone.
The water was frigid. Despite the partial blockage of the stone I’d collapsed, the current was still strong here, flinging my body around like a rag doll. I grabbed Erekkus—a difficult feat, considering how much larger than me he was. I didn’t give him time to react before I forced my head above the water, forced myself to steady just long enough to look at the gap in the rocks, at Atrius on his hands and knees looking back at me—
Draw the thread.
Step through.
I stumbled as my feet hit dry stone, staggering against Atrius and weighed down by Erekkus, who immediately went to his hands and knees and started hacking up water.
Atrius started to say something, but I snapped, “Get down there and be ready for them,” and was gone again before he had time to respond.
The next two were difficult. The third, nearly impossible. As the bodies grew further away from me, it grew more difficult for me to accurately reach them. I retrieved four more, all hoisted onto the rock landing panting and coughing, where Atrius dragged them up to safety. With each one, I was slower to return. Threadstepping took a significant amount of energy, and I was casting my net far. By the fourth trip, my heartbeat ached against the inside of my ribs.
Atrius caught my arm as I turned to go back for another.
“You’re shaking.”
My head was killing me. I had to sink all my energy into keeping my focus trained on the final presence I could still sense, though it was quickly drifting farther.
“I need to go.”
“If you can’t make it back—”
“I can save the last one,” I snapped. “Do you want me to do it, or let them die?”
Atrius’s grip tightened around my arm, echoing the tightness of his jaw, then he released me. “Go. Fast.”
This one was hard. When the water hit me this time, it swallowed me whole. The warrior, a woman thankfully not much larger than I was, was unconscious. I grabbed her, but the rush of the water was unrelenting. For a moment, I was swallowed up in my own past, directions and senses erased.
I tried to turn to the shore. But I couldn’t find it—was it that way? Or had I gotten turned around?
The slow tide of panic rose in my chest. An abrupt surge of water caught me off guard, sending my back smacking against the stone. The explosion of pain had me gagging on salt water.
I’m six years old and I’m going to—
No.
I was not going to drown. I was not going to die. I was watched by the Weaver, the Lady of Fate, and I was a master of the threads, not another puppet to be manipulated by them.
I needed to sense the landscape of the threads. But to do that, I’d need to focus. And that meant letting go of the current. That meant letting myself get swept away.
Damn it. Sometimes, I did hate this job.
I let myself go limp.
Reached to the threads.
They spread out around me, shimmery and translucent and difficult to see with a mind still half-distracted by incoming death.
I fell further into the water. I barely felt it the next time the current sent me against the wall. I turned… reached… and…
There.
I felt him. Not just my target—not just the stone, but him. Atrius. A presence so unusual I felt it from even this far.
It was him I anchored myself to. I drew the thread tight, strong. I prayed it would hold enough to get us there.
And I stepped through it.
I collapsed against the damp stone. My sides and abdomen ached with violent coughs, lungful after lungful of briny water dripping to the rocks. Beside me, my rescuee did the same, and Erekkus helped her to her feet.
Someone touched me, and I jerked away.
“Stop,” Atrius growled.
Pain, as my arm was lifted. I cursed as something was drawn tight around it, trying to yank my arm away.
“Stop fighting,” he snapped. “You’re wounded. I’m stopping the bleeding.”
Bleeding.
My breaths slowed. My heart steadied. I felt my arm—the gash in it, now bandaged up tight.
Atrius regarded me like I was the subject of an assessment. “You can move?”
There was no concern in the question. Just pragmatism.
“Yes.”
He extended a hand, and I still felt unsteady enough that I allowed myself to take it. His grip was rough and scarred. Hands that carried lifetimes.
I swayed a little on my feet when he let me go. I was sore, but my injuries were surface-level. More disorienting was the exhaustion of my magic. The threads seemed intangible and distant now, hard to grasp. Wonderful. That would make it fun to navigate these tunnels.
“We need to go,” Atrius said. His gaze bored into me like a scalpel into flesh, trying to reveal what lay beneath.
“I’m ready,” I said. I took my blade from him, let him hoist me up to the next level of the tunnels, and we were off again.
15