Page 90 of Innocent Until Proven Witch

"The bridge," Finn says, already moving, nodding toward the flooded crossing where several people are clinging to stone supports while the current drags at their legs. "We get them out." He glances at me then — just briefly, one full second of eye contact that holds everything neither of us has time to say. The concern that crosses his face is quiet and unmistakable.

I nod once and run.

The floodwater rises with every step I take. By the time the bridge comes into view through sheets of driving rain, the chaos there has already reached a point that makes my chest seize. People cling to every available surface, fighting the current with the desperate, graceless effort of the untrained. A young man slams hard into a stone wall. A woman loses her footing and the water catches her before she can cry out, sweeping her sideways. There are too many of them, and too much water, and not nearly enough time.

I stop at the center of the bridge and let the storm scream around me. The energy beneath my skin responds before I ask it to, rising like pressure behind a dam, sharp and violent and already edging toward pain. I have never attempted anything close to this scale. The sea is not simply flooding — it is pushing, relentless, as though something beyond the horizon is feeding it deliberately, driving it harder with every passing moment.

I raise both hands and scream.

The sound that tears from my throat is raw and unrecognizable, something beyond language, and the water answers. The flood hesitates — only slightly, only briefly — but it hesitates. The pressure nearly folds me at the knees. Pain explodes through my arms, my chest, behind my eyes. I scream again, louder, and the current slows. People along the bridge go still, their panic suspended in something closer to disbelief. The flood begins pushing backward — not gently, not naturally, but because I force it, pouring every fragment of strength I have into a fight that my body keeps insisting I cannot win.

I refuse to hear it. Not while people are still trapped.

"Go!" I yell across the bridge. "Move — now!" Several townspeople finally break from their shock and stumble toward safety, grabbing at one another, pulling people upright, moving with the desperate solidarity that catastrophe sometimes produces. The current fights me again and again, surging forward with the full weight of something ancient and enraged. I shove harder. The flood splits — the water parting around a narrow channel of exposed street, enough of an opening that it almost looks deliberate, almost looks like something a person in full control might do.

"Run!" The command cuts through the storm, and the remaining survivors move. One after another they stumble through the gap, falling and catching each other, doing whatever it takes to get clear before the sea reclaims the space. Blood has begun trickling from my nose. My hands shake visibly, my vision blurs at the edges, my body sending signals I am consciously choosing to ignore. I hold on.

Somewhere behind me, Finn and Row are waist-deep in floodwater, dragging survivors toward higher ground with the relentless efficiency of two people who do not know how to quit. A fisherman slips beneath the current, and Finn dives without hesitation. The crowd that has gathered at the edges goes breathless. Several agonizing moments pass before Finn surfaces, hauling the man upward by his collar while the fisherman coughs and sputters and remains, against all reasonable odds, alive. Row pulls a young girl from a floating crate with both arms, and the child wraps herself around his neck immediately, instinctively, the way children do when they recognize safety.

The sight of them strengthens something inside me. I scream again and force another surge of power through the flood. People along the shoreline are watching me openly now — not with accusation, not with the fear I have grown so accustomed to wearing like a second skin, but with something rawer and more disorienting than either. A woman clutches her child against her chest and stares. A fisherman I vaguely recognize stands at the shoreline with rain pouring down his face, his expression shifting through something slow and painful before it arrives at understanding.

"Why would she do this?" a merchant asks the man standing beside him, his voice carrying through the storm with the particular clarity that genuine bewilderment produces.

The man beside him says nothing, because there is no clean answer available to him, and they both know it. Others hear the question and carry it with them, passing it silently between themselves as the evidence continues standing before them — drenched, bleeding, shaking, and still fighting for lives that had spent months calling me a murderer.

A hand catches my arm, strong and steady, arriving before I hear him approach. Finn. Water drips from his hair and blood stains one sleeve, his chest rising heavily from exertion, but his eyes are fixed on mine with an attention that cuts through everything else. "You've done enough," he says, his tone low and deliberate beneath the roar of the storm.

"No," I reply, the word leaving between strained, shallow breaths. "Not yet."

His expression tightens, because he knows exactly what this is costing me and cannot argue with why I refuse to stop. I force another surge of power through the flood. The water retreats farther, and the sound that rises from the crowd is something I do not immediately recognize — cheering, open and unguarded, breaking through the chaos like the first light after a storm that was never supposed to end.

Finn hears it too. A slow smile crosses his face despite everything surrounding us. "About time," he says quietly.

A soft laughter escapes me — brief, breathless, real — and then another ward shatters somewhere beyond town, the sound slicing through the moment like a blade. The cheering dies. The reminder settles over everyone at once, heavy and absolute. The flood may be retreating. The townspeople may finally be seeing me clearly. But Aldric's plan is still unfolding somewhere beyond the chaos consuming Moonhaven, and the true battle has not yet started.

34

FINN

The storm has swallowed Moonhaven whole. Rain lashes against my face with the persistence of something personal, and the wind screams between buildings with a fury that makes it nearly impossible to hear anything beneath it. Floodwater races through streets that were never designed to hold it, and people are everywhere — some calling for loved ones, some simply standing frozen in the middle of the chaos as though the scale of it has short-circuited something essential in them.

A family huddles atop an overturned cart by the harbor street. The current slams against the wheels hard enough to shift it, and the mother clutches two children against her chest with the white-knuckled grip of one who has already decided she will not let go under any circumstances. Row reaches them before I do.

"Easy," Row calls out, already positioning himself against the current. "I've got you."

The woman shakes her head frantically, her eyes wild. "My son — "

"The little one clinging to your shoulder?" Row asks, following her gaze to the boy pressed against her. "Good. Makes my job considerably easier."

She stares at him, baffled that anyone could find space for humor inside a moment like this, but the cart lurches violently beneath them and that decides the matter entirely. She practically throws the boy toward Row, who catches him without effort and tucks him securely against his side as the child immediately buries his face into his shoulder.

"One brave sailor secured," Row announces with the quiet satisfaction of a man completing a task well done.

The boy peeks upward with one eye. "I'm not a sailor."

"Deeply disappointing," Row replies, shaking his head with theatrical gravity as he wades toward higher ground. "I was already planning your promotion."

Despite everything surrounding him — the wreckage, the noise, the cold weight of the floodwater — the child laughs, and the sound of it cuts through the destruction like something necessary and quietly astonishing.