Staring down at the waves crashing against the shore, I realized why it was open to the elements. Eventually, the tide would rise — filling this very chamber.
“Is your magic . . .” I began.
Kaden’s face tightened. “It’s gone.”
My heart sank, and I cast desperately around our cell for some other solution.
The small cave seemed to have been carved out of the cliff itself. The bars were too thick for even a supernatural to bend, and, since the Watchman had magicked us in here, there was no lock.
Hopelessness seeped into my bones as easily as the cold of the stone through my leathers, and I tucked my knees in tight to my chest.
Perhaps if I had learned of my witch heritage sooner, I could have honed enough magic to spirit us out of here. But Mankara’s text was gone, and the cipher was back in our realm. All I had were the daggers sheathed at my thighs, which now seemed as useless as I felt.
There was no way out. We were going to die in here — drowned by those icy waves.
“People don’t die in the in-between,” said Kaden, as though he’d read my thoughts.
“What?” I rasped.
“The body can die, but the soul . . .” He gave a hard swallow, staring down at his hands. “The soul remains trapped here, bound to serve the Watchman. Forever.”
A new kind of terror gripped me at his words. That was why the merpeople had all been undead. Their hearts had stopped beating, but the Watchman’s depraved magic kept their souls confined in the ruined husks of their bodies.
Kaden didn’t speak again, and I could tell from thestoop of his shoulders and the blue tinge to his lips that the poison was working its way through his system, robbing him of any strength he had left.
I began to shiver uncontrollably, partly from my wet leathers and partly from the knowledge that we would soon share the merpeople’s fate.
I didn’t know how long we sat there in silence.
After a while, Kaden’s head drooped back against the rough stone wall as he succumbed to a restless sleep. I just sat with my arms wrapped around my knees, watching his chest rise and fall.
I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to monitor his breathing. We were both going to die. It was only a matter of when.
And yet the dread I felt wasn’t only for my own demise. If Kaden succumbed to the poison before that icy water rose to claim us, I felt as though part of me might die right along with him.
So I stayed awake, back aching from the force of my shivers as I counted his uneven breaths. Every so often, I would allow my gaze to wander to Kaden’s handsome face, studying him in a way I never would have dared if he’d been conscious.
He looked so much younger in sleep — so much lessfaesomehow. The hard planes of his face were softer in sleep, and there was no hint of the dark power that swirled in those silver-gray eyes. His raven-black hair was mussed like a child’s, and his mouth hung open ever so slightly, filling our cave with the sound of his snores.
A smile tugged at the corners of my lips. Who would have thought that Kadensnored? I might have believed him if he’d told me he had no need for sleep at all.
Eventually, my fatigue overpowered my looming sense of dread. I fell into a restless slumber, jerking awake every few minutes to check that Kaden was still alive.
After what felt like an hour of this, I thought the cold might kill me before we drowned. I could no longer feel my hands or feet, and my movements were jerky and uncoordinated.
My eyelids drooped, and this time, I couldn’t fight the pull of sleep.
Perhaps it was better this way — to sleep these last fitful hours away rather than quiver in dread.
But then I felt a hum of familiar magic, soft enough that I wondered if I was imagining it.
Slowly, I opened my eyes. There, lying on the stone floor of our cell, was Mankara’s text.
I sucked in a ragged breath. Ithadto be a hallucination — one of the Watchman’s cruel tricks. But when my fingers brushed the frayed edge of the spine, that magic seemed to reach out to greet me.
It fused together with my own, and I felt an unexpected surge of strength.
Unable to resist, I picked up the book and cracked the black cover with shaking hands. The pages were yellowed and stained with age, and the text was inked in a tight, precise hand.
