Page 51 of The World Undone

I didn’t give up. My limbs worked through the water with a feverish strength, every muscle I had tearing and straining as I fought to get to her. The distance was closing, slowly but surely—a realization that only renewed the ferocity with which I tried to reach her.

Until she was nearly in my grasp, one more stroke away.

When my fingers should have closed around her, everything went black.

I pulled in a deep breath, coughing up a lung as my body regulated itself.

My fingers dug into the rocky ground beneath me as I sat up. It was dark and cold, but I was dry as I surveyed my surroundings. Trees cradled the rocky cliff as I tried to orient myself.

It was a dream. I knew these woods.

This was where I’d come when I left the cabin earlier. It was quiet, the only sounds those of the animals who called this forest home.

I dug my palm into my chest, breathing in and out, slowly now as I fought the cloying pain there.

Dream-walks always felt real, but I’d never had one take shape like that before, and I hadn’t had a dream I couldn’t shape or control at all in months. Even Serae had seemed powerless against the current.

Fuck, I hoped she was okay, that she woke up.

And Max?—

My breath caught again at the memory of her drowning. I closed my eyes, searching for that familiar link to her, expecting it to pull me towards the cabin. But something told me she was in the other direction.

Panicking, I ran, abandoning all reason and logic and following only the strange, unexplainable awareness I had of her. I stopped just at the edge of a small cliff, the rocks and twigs cascading into the lake below as I kept myself from following them over.

Fuck.

It was almost impossible to see—we were far from any lights, but when I focused on it, and let my eyes adjust, the lake below almost glistened with an ethereal light—I couldn’t make out much but for some reason, couldn’t look away. Until?—

“Max?”

There was a figure, just below the surface, hair fanned out like a painting, suspended in the greenish-blue water that was always so impossibly clear that seeing twenty feet down wasn’t unheard of.

She’d been sleepwalking out here, but never this far out in the lake, and never far from the main dock, where the water was shallower.

Without hesitation, I dove over the cliff. It was over thirty feet down, but the jump wouldn’t kill me.

I crashed into the icy-cold water, black as night as I fought to find her. For a moment, I was convinced I was back in my dream, like one of those nightmares where you wake up from a dream, only to realize you’ve woken up into another one.

There was no current this time, the lake as still as it always was. I couldn’t see, but I closed my eyes and let the bond guide my strokes. After a few minutes, my fingers brushed against something soft, solid.

I opened my eyes and saw her—eyes closed, suspended in the water like a girl in a snowglobe.

My hands closed around her arms and I swam, using the glow of the moon to guide us back to the surface. When we broke it, I cradled her head, trying with frantic movements to see if she was breathing, if she was awake.

Her body was cold as ice, and I prayed like hell it was because we were in a glacier lake and not because?—

I shook the thought away. “Max?”

Her head lolled to the side and I caught it before it sank back below the surface.

Fuck. I needed to get her to the shore.

With hurried, awkward movements, I brought her there, reminding myself over and over again that the daughter of Lucifer certainly couldn’t die from something as mundane as drowning.

As soon as it was shallow enough for my feet to touch the lake bed, I stood, cradling her in my arms, and ran the final twenty feet or so to the small beach. The water cascaded around us in loud sloshes as I fought to get us there quickly.

I set her down, gently as I could, and started to assess.

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