Page 47 of The Secret of the Three Fates
An odd streak of silver flashed through his green eyes, one of the few visible aftereffects from when he’d drawn upon his abilities. I doubted he was even aware that his eyes did that, but I was altogether too aware of him. The edge of his mouth curved up as a dark curl fell into his eyes.
“Thank you…” I murmured, stretching up, meaning to press a kiss to his cheek but accidentally brushing the corner of his mouth. His body tensed at the contact, not certain what to make of it. But he didn’t pull back and neither did I. The two of us remained there frozen in time, breathing in the other, not certain whether to give in to the growing attraction between us or to do the sensible thing and walk away.
“Of all the souls in this world for the old gods to bind meto…” Ruan murmured against my lips. But before I could respond to the very disturbing words he uttered, he crushed his mouth against mine, washing away any memory of what came before or after. The world narrowed to only Ruan. The green scent of him, the faintest bit of honey candy on his breath. I wasn’t at all prepared for this—for him.
I reached up, pulling him closer to me, and suddenly remembered… I rememberedeverything.
The sea of blood.
The mud.
The poppies blooming on his chest.
It had been Ruan I was looking for in that terrible dream and as soon as I’d found him, I’d lost him forever.
But before I could pull away to warn him that I’d seen his death, the sniper’s shot rang out—just as I’d foreseen—the force of the round piercing my body from the back and pushing us both over the granite railing.
Ruan’s eyes shot open, almost fully silver now with only the faintest hint of green, as a searing-hot pain burnt through my shoulder and the two of us went tumbling into the icy water beneath.
The White Witch was right when she’d warned us in Lothlel Green.
I’d killed him.
I’d killed us both.
ACOLD WHITEfire ran through my body as I sank deeper into the water. It started in my shoulder where Ruan’s hand held fast to me and ricocheted through my veins with a force I’d never felt before. He held impossibly tight against the part of me that hurt the worst, tugging me down to the lake bed with him, allowing the water to claim us both.
The sea will give and the sea will take.
An ancient warning echoed in my head, whispered by a voice long forgotten. Deeper and deeper until we lay together on the rocky floor. The silver had fled Ruan’s eyes at last, as he lay still beneath me. His lifeless green gaze staring right through me.
Not like this.We would not die like this.
The red blossoms spread across his chest, creating clouds in the water around us. I could scarcely see from all the blood. Mine or his, it did not matter.
I wriggled in the water to get a better position before I hooked my uninjured arm around his chest, in a mockery of our previous embrace. Struggling to find my feet, I kicked hard against the rocky bottom, sending up a cloud of water, mud, and blood. We couldn’t be more than fifteen feet from the surface, if that.
My sluggish muscles rebelled.
Struggling against the water and his considerable size, I clutched his chest against my own, yet Ruan remained eerily still against me.
Please don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.
Come on, Ruan. You great stubborn ox.
My lungs stung as I battled the water. I needed to surface. Needed to breathe.
I kicked harder.
My own pulse slowed as my body lost more and more of its strength to the icy water. At long last, I broke the surface with a gasp. Our mingled blood and muddy water flooded into my lungs. Salty and metallic as I coughed in the chilly October air.
My tenuous grip on him slipped and his head fell down into the water. I jerked him hard, pulling him farther up my body, keeping his face above the waterline. It would do no good to pull him up only to let him drown. With a pained grunt, I shoved us both onto the rocky shore, to the very spot he’d woken me from my nightmare.
It had been a warning then, or meant to be one.
Except I hadn’t remembered until it was too late.
Ruan was either dead or unconscious, but I was too exhausted to tell which. I reached up with my free hand, feeling for a pulse, but his heart had always been so eerily slow that I could not have been certain whether I felt it or not.
