We keep going. I don’t dare slow down until I can see the portal in the distance, the ring of light calling us home. I can’t catch my breath, and I can’t stop.
The mist around us turns to rain, relentless, pounding rain that cuts into my cheeks and seeps its cold into my bones. The mountains quake. My boots are soaked through, and when I look down, rising water has reached my ankles.
Finn swallows and scans the mist. “My father’s here,” he whispers. “I feel him.”
I look all around us, but all I see is lashing rain, rising water, and dreary skies in all directions.
“I understand now,” he says, slowing to a stop. He’s not talking to me. He’s speaking to someone I can’t see.
The glow from the portal flickers, then dims.
“Finn,” I say, tugging on his hand. If I had a chance to speak with my mother again, I would take it a heartbeat, but we need to get out of here.
“Shit,” Finn shouts, his eyes on the water that’s now knee-deep. “Run!”
I don’t need to be told twice. I race toward the dimming light of the portal. My legs can’t move fast enough through water that’s surging up toward my thighs. Then I’m swimming.
I glance back to make sure Finn’s behind me, but he’s stopped again. His face is tilted up and his eyes shut. “Go!” His voice is strong, but his body . . . he’s fading away. Like a cloud that’s dissipating in the light of the sun.
“Not without you. Hurry!”
“I’m stuck. The rocks shifted. Go!”
I swim toward him, and he shouts at me. “Damn it, Abriella! You don’t have much time.”
The portal glows behind me, beckoning to me, but I can’t turn my back on Finn. I won’t. Mab’s taunting words echo in my head, but I ignore them. The girl who came to a new world to save her sister is the same one who won’t turn her back on the one she loves.
I take a deep breath and dive, swimming down to the rocks around Finn’s feet. The icy water rushes around me in a powerful current, and I have to swim hard to stay in place. One second of weakness, and it will tear me away from him.
I loop one arm around his thigh, then use my other hand to tug the rocks trapping his other leg.
They’re too big. Too heavy. I have to use both hands, kicking against the current the whole time. My fingers are numb and won’t work properly, but I keep pulling away the rocks that keep magically reappearing.
A keening cry rips through the water, and when I open my eyes to look, I see eerie white eyes coming straight for me. I pull and pull until this strange place recognizes my persistence, and the rubble trapping his legs falls away.
Hands slide under my arms and Finn’s yanking me to the surface. “Go!” he shouts, shoving me forward, toward the portal—toward the monster.
I gasp for breath, shaking my head. “Something’s coming from that way. We need to go around.”
“We don’t have time.” He wraps one arm around me and pulls through the water with one arm.
“I’m fine.” I wiggle free and swim beside him. My legs and arms are numb, and every instinct says we should be swimming away from those eyes, not toward them, but I force myself to keep moving toward that ever-dimming portal light.
“We’re almost there,” Finn says.
Pain slices through my thigh and I’m dragged under.
Deeper, deeper. Until the pressure’s building in my ears and my lungs burn.
Deeper.
I can’t see the creature that has me, but judging by the mouth around my leg, it’s massive. It weaves around rocks and into the current until we’re entering an underwater cavern. I search with my hands until I find a rock with sharp edges and I slam it right into one of those creepy white eyes.
The creature releases me, and I waste no time following our path back out of the cavern. Finn meets me halfway, wrapping an arm around me and dragging me toward the surface.
The air burns when I pull it into my lungs—burns like poison, burns badly enough that I can’t force myself to take another breath.
“I’ve got you!” Finn pulls me onto a rocky ledge above the churning water. He lays me down and stares into my eyes.
“Breathe, damn it!” he shouts, those silver eyes too full of anguish.
And I do. I breathe. And it’s utter agony. I want to sink back into the water and go to sleep. It hurts so much.
“Again!” Finn commands.
I obey, once, twice, three more times. Each breath hurts a little less.
Only then does he tear his gaze off me and look around.