In a flash, I am standing on the water-beaded rail. My boots slide against its beveled surface, but I grab the ratlines to steady myself before I pitch off-balance.
“What are you doing?” Penn yells, moving for me.
My eyes cut to his, the look in their depths stilling him in his tracks, then sweep down the line of faces turned up to me in shock.
“I’m going after Soren.”
“He’s at the bottom of the bloody ocean.” Penn’s face is a mask of dread. “Rhya, you cannot—”
“I can,” I hiss.“I must.”
His features contort—a flash of pure pain replacing the dread. Awareness floods his eyes as they hold mine for several long beats. For, in that moment, Penn knows. Irrefutably. As he feels my desperation for the man lost in the sea…as he sees my determination to save him from the depths, no matter the cost…
Heknows.
The tides of my affection have shifted beyond his grasp. My heart, which once beat solely for him, has somehow changed alliances, surely as the moon reverses the ocean’s steady course, irrevocably as a cresting waterfall over the face of a cliff.
I am Soren’s in a way I have never been Penn’s.
I know it.
I have, perhaps, always known it.
And now…so does he.
“Rhya,” Deke calls, shattering the moment. “The octopaeron is still out there.”
My eyes jerk to the captain’s ruddy face. My hand tightens on the rigging. “Yes, it is,” I agree in a low whisper. “And if that monster so much as touches Soren, there is no ocean deep enough where it will be able to hide from my retribution.”
With that, I jump off the railing.
Into the deep, dark sea.
Chapter
twenty-eight
I hit the water feetfirst, a breath-stealing plunge into the cold. Into the dark. I do not think about whatever monsters might be waiting for me as I begin to make my way down toward the bottom, kicking and clawing into the abyss.
The desert shoals ensure the sea here is shallow compared to some of the deeper stretches of ocean we have traversed on this voyage, but by no means is it a short swim. And by no means am I the strongest swimmer. The only thing I do have on my side is my maegic. A bubble of air surrounds my head, allowing me to breathe far beyond my lungs’ normal capacity. I use the bond like a tether, propelling myself along the current that connects me to Soren.
Deeper, deeper.
Darker, darker.
My head begins to ache from overexertion. I have used so much of my power already, my reserves feel thin indeed. But I cannot stop. I will not stop. Not until I’ve found him.
Emotions are not a liability; they are a limitless resource,Soren is whispering in my memory, a phantom spurring me on.You want to wield your power like me? You need to feel it. All of it.
Panic is my fuel, distress my propellant. I feed them into my wind like kindling to a fire, until my power swirls through my chest in an unstoppable squall. I push on. Past the point of reason, past the point of all endurance, to a place somewhere beyond any previous limit.
He is still alive. I can feel his life force, though it seems to flicker periodically as the moments pass. Diminishing, even as I grow nearer. I speak to him, knowing all the while he cannot hear me in his unconscious state.
“Hold on. Just hold on. I am coming for you.”
Only days ago, I asked him if he could drown. He laughed me off. Curse him for not giving me a straight answer. Curse him for his need to always turn things into a jest. Curse him for making me care about him if only to—
No.