Page 27 of The Crown's Awakening
Another splash reaches me, distant at first, then closer, followed by the low rush of water shifting around something that moves with purpose. A voice cuts through it, carried thin across the dark, my name pulled apart by wind and distance. I let it pass.
The water lifts and lowers me, pulling me farther from the ship in long, uneven swells, and I give myself to it, letting the motion carry me where it will without resistance, without thought. The cold settles deeper into my skin, into my limbs, dulling what remains until even that begins to fade.
Then something seizes me.
Teorin's hand closes around my arm and wrenches me sideways through the water, hard enough to rip me out of the numb calm I had slipped into. The surface breaks around us, the cold rushing back all at once as he drags me upright and into him, his grip locked in place, his body already braced against the pull of the current as though he intends to hold me there by force alone.
“Asharin—what the fuck are you doing?”
His voice carries, rough and raised in a way I have never heard from him, stripped of the control he holds over everything else.
I sag against him, my limbs slow to respond, the cold pressing deeper now that I’ve been pulled back into the current. My breath comes unevenly, my throat raw as I try to slow it.
“I told you,” I say, the words scraping on the way out. “I’m not going to Alarna with you at my side.”
His arm tightens around me as another body hits the water somewhere behind us, the sound cutting across the dark.
“This isn’t a choice you get to make.”
“It is the only one I have left.”
The water moves around us, gathering in a way that has nothing to do with the tide. I feel it press inward, tightening, and his attention leaves me, turning outward as something else draws closer.
Another splash follows. Then another.
Bodies break the surface and rise immediately, turning toward us with a certainty that leaves no question of what they are coming for. More drop in behind them, joining the mass, the distance between us collapsing faster than it should.
I lift my head just enough to see them properly. They stretch across the water in every direction, some already pushing forward, their upper bodies dragging through the surface, others still breaking through as they join the advance. The numbers build with every second, the movement direct, unbroken.
I close my eyes, unafraid. Waiting.
Teorin’s voice is edged with urgency, his focus locked on what’s coming. “Asharin, listen to me. They have been like this too long, and there are too many of them. We need to get back on the ship.”
“Don’t you control them?” My voice is calm.
The answer comes immediately. “Not these.”
One surges too close, rising within reach before it can fully drag itself through the water. The current breaks beside us as something unseen hits it and drives it backward, pulling it under in a single, violent sweep. Another takes its place immediately, then another behind it, their movements continuous, closing the distance without pause. The force he throws at them disrupts the front of it, but the mass does not falter, swallowing whatever opening he creates almost as quickly as it appears.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” I say, quieter now, the words worn down to what matters. “Let me go.”
His grip tightens, pulling me closer into him as the current shifts again, stronger now, pressing in from every direction. “Shut up.” The word comes out rough, immediate, carrying more strain than anything he has said so far.
The pressure builds around us, tightening through the water until it feels as though everything has been pulled inward and held there. The surface trembles under it, the bodies closest to us caught for a fraction of a second before everything gives.
The force drives outward all at once. The water surges forward in a wide, crushing sweep, dragging everything in its path with it. Bodies are thrown back and pulled under, scattered just long enough to leave an opening where there had been none.
He takes it immediately. His arm tightens around me as he drives us forward, pulling me through the churn of it, his breath rough against my shoulder now, the effort no longer concealed. The water resists him at every step, rising and falling in uneven swells as he forces us toward the ship.
Behind us, the surface breaks again as they return, more of them this time, filling the space as quickly as it was cleared, the distance closing with a certainty that gives us no time at all.
“I don’t want to be there with you,” I say, my voice fading thinner now, but still clear. “Do you understand that? I don’t want to be anywhere near you.”
His hold shifts, not loosening, but tightening in a way that feels almost instinctive, as though he’s bracing against something he cannot allow.
“You’re not dying out here.”
“I already decided?—”
