No.
He will not die.
I swim harder, though my muscles scream for reprieve. The pressure at this depth is its own sort of entombment. Not quite as bad as being buried beneath the earth, but still distinctly unpleasant. My claustrophobia rears its ugly head, threatening to paralyze me before I make it another fathom.
Ignoring the buzzing at my temples, the thrumming of my heart, I press on. Passing schools of silver-scaled fish and drifting clouds of diaphanous algae.
Deeper, deeper.
Darker, darker.
Until, finally, my hand reaches forward in a blind stroke and strikes sand. At last, I’m at the bottom. I can see next to nothing at this depth. All is in shadow, a blue-green world leached of color. I feel my way to him, pulse roaring so loud inside my head I can hardly hear the ragged pants that come from my mouth oneach winded exhale. I shove aside a clump of thick seaweed, plunge past a cluster of debris from the shattered ship, and then—
There.
There he is, floating like a ghost. Limbs deadweight, dark hair drifting in the currents. His skin is so pale it nearly glows. My heart cries out at the sight of him as I swim closer. I claw my fingertips into his tunic and drag his limp body into my arms. It is a struggle. He’s heavy, even underwater. Waterlogged like…
A corpse.
His heart is not beating.
He is no longer breathing.
How long has he been without breath?
I cannot risk swimming back to the surface with him in this condition. He’ll never make it. With a great torrent of maegic, I expand the small bubble of air around my head until it is large enough to contain us both. The weight of the water pushes in from all sides, but I do not waver, shoving it back until we are encircled in a dry sphere on the seafloor.
I take a thin breath. “Soren?” I slap his cheek lightly. “Soren, can you hear me?”
My frantic eyes roam his features, looking for signs of life. There is nothing, not even a flicker. I bring my lips to his, ignoring their lifeless chill, and breathe, forcing air into his lungs. When that does not work on its own, I use my maegic to aid me—flooding his airways, attempting to expel the water he’s swallowed.
Still nothing.
His lungs remain unmoving, his heart with them. Our bond is eerily numb. And his life force…that remote flare I felt when I first found him here on the bottom…
It has sputtered out.
“Soren,” I plead, trying again. Tears track down my cheeks, a relentless stream. “Please do not do this.”
My maegic is waning, the effort of holding our air pocket intact taking every ounce of my energy. I am very near to passing out. And then where will we be?
Both dead.
“You cannot leave me,”I tell him through the bond, forcing more of my maegic into his deathly still lungs. Into the very fabric of his soul.“I will not let you flee to the skies. They are my domain, and they cannot have you. Do you hear me, Soren? I cannot let you go.”
But he does not hear me.
For he has gone.
Sobs tear at my chest, unchecked. The grief is impossible to swallow, impossible to breathe around. I ignore it, refusing to process the loss. Refusing to accept what it means. If I accept it, that means he is truly dead. Truly out of my reach. Never again to make me laugh or cook me dinner or look at me in that singular way of his that makes me feel as though no one else in the world has ever looked at me before and truly seen me. Never again to wrap me in his arms or press his mouth to my skin or rest his forehead against mine so we might share breaths. Never to be mine in anything but a memory.
No.
Pushing aside those morbid realities, I give more of my maegic. More of my very self. I feel my essence tearing away as I force it into him, feel my own life force rippling like I, too, might turn cold and blue, another corpse on the seafloor. It is not painful. It is something so far beyond pain, I have no words for it. An excruciating cleaving of the very soul.
I am shredding myself apart, bit by agonizing bit. Yet Icannot bring myself to stop. I will claw him back from the brink of death even if the effort takes me along with him.
“Take my breath, take my blood, take my beating heart. My very soul is yours, if only you come back to me.”