The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(77)

“Rescuing you.”

He stared at her. “Blue.”

“You’re lucky I closed the shop early today because of the bounty hunters. And lucky that Dinah’s been gone all day, so I had the freedom to come home after visiting the docks. And especially lucky that I had already changed into my gathering clothes, or there would’ve been no one here to see you jump into the sea like a fool with a death wish.”

“And you jumped in after me?” His eyes found the cliff top, and his stomach dropped as he measured the distance between it and the water. What had felt like freedom, like daring death to take him so he could feel the rush of life when he survived, suddenly felt terrifying when he imagined Blue doing the same.

“Don’t be an idiot. I ran down the steps. It’s amazing that you didn’t break your neck with that dive. I wouldn’t have been any help if I’d broken mine.”

“But you swam out beyond the shelf. The current today . . .” The current was a death trap. He’d known it going in. He’d never planned for someone else to come in after him.

“I know what the current is like today.” Her voice was sharp. “I swim here often. Storm’s coming in, so it’s a dangerous time to swim. But I guess that’s why you went in, isn’t it?”

He couldn’t answer her. Couldn’t even look at her.

It was one thing to risk his own death. It was something else entirely to see the lengths someone who cared about him would go to save him from himself.

“You could’ve died,” he said quietly, clenching his fists to hide how badly they shook. “If I hadn’t been able to kick us free—”

“You would never have been able to free us both, Kellan. I fought for it too.” Her voice gentled. “We beat it together, because that’s what people do when they face trouble as a team. I’ve always known you were reckless, but I never realized you were dangerous to yourself. Why did you do it?” she asked, the softness of her voice whispering against a wound he’d never figured out how to close.

He closed his eyes, and for one long moment there was nothing but the crash of the waves hurling themselves against the shore and the faint call of a flock of seabirds overhead. He wanted to keep his eyes closed, keep the sound of the present firmly in his focus, but her words had already sent him spinning into the darkness of the memory that refused to let him go.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said quietly.

His heart clenched. He opened his eyes, but he couldn’t look at her. Instead, he stared at the sea as it tossed restlessly in its berth. At the seductive surge and retreat of the waves he’d been swimming in since he could walk.

“This was his favorite spot.” His throat closed, and he dug his fingers into the sand to ground him. To hold on to the faint trace of his father that he was convinced lingered here still. “We came here almost every morning unless it was storming. Usually we arrived after you and your family left for the shop, but sometimes you were here with Grand-mère, and you’d join us.”

“I remember.” She stretched her legs out beside his.

“Father would swim with me for an hour and then sit and watch me play for a bit on my own. There were others with us, of course. Our assigned guards and sometimes the castle steward or father’s secretary so he could work while I played, but I never saw them when I looked at the shore. I only saw him.”

“He was your hero.” Blue’s voice held everything he needed at that moment. Understanding. Grief. Permission to keep his memory a secret if that’s what he needed.

He wanted it kept a secret. He’d been guarding it for so long that letting the words out into the open felt like stripping bare in the dead of winter. But the secret was already bubbling up. Already scraping past his grief-closed throat and clawing for its freedom.

“There were dark clouds on the horizon. Heavy winds. He wanted me to get out of the sea when he did, but I begged him to let me swim just a bit longer. The waves were choppy, and I wanted to see how fast I could reach the edge of the shelf. I wanted to test myself.”

The pain in his heart shot through his veins as he remembered the slap of the waves against his skin, the thrill of pushing himself to beat the sea as it turned against him, and then the sharp surge of panic as a current—different from the normal rhythms of the sea and twice as strong—snatched him and flung him away from the shelf and deep into the bowels of the Chrysós.

Blue’s small hand wrapped around his, and he squeezed as if he were holding on to a lifeline.

“There was a crosscurrent, like there is today. It was moving away from the shore, and it caught me. It was so strong.” He blinked as tears burned his eyes, blurring the sea before him into a shimmering ribbon of gold. The numbness in his heart was gone, and in its place was a firestorm of grief and regret. “I couldn’t find the way up to the water’s surface. I couldn’t break free. I tried. I was a strong swimmer, but I was only eight, and there was no way out.”

“You were drowning.” She rubbed her thumb along the back of his hand, and he drew in a shaky breath, but the rest of the words were caught behind the terrible grief—fresh and jagged as the day he’d recklessly thought to challenge the sea and win—and he couldn’t find a way to give them life.

He met Blue’s brown eyes for a moment, and a tear slipped down her cheek. She whispered, “You were drowning, and he couldn’t let that happen. No father could.”