Page 17 of Captive

Just when she thought she couldn’t possibly go any longer without a breath, she surfaced again. She was somewhere downstream, and the water was gentler. She reached toward a passing rock, and her arms were so cold that they barely moved. She scrabbled at the slippery stone, and the water pushed her past before she could find a handhold. Her head went underwater again, and she fought against the water until she resurfaced.

Another rock loomed toward her in the dark and cold. This time, she grabbed onto it. She held herself there, choking and vomiting water as the freezing current pulled at her legs. It was only then that she realized her shoulder was alight with pain, shooting agony down her arm and into her back.

She squinted her eyes shut and clung to the rock, shivering and gasping. The Panic was creeping up on her—looking for her when she was at her lowest and weakest, as always, so it could make things even worse.

“No,” she murmured to the growing sense of unreality and terror encroaching on her thoughts. “Stop. Stop.” Her eyes were welling up with tears from the pain in her shoulder. She opened them and looked for the bank of the river. She had to get to shore before her limbs stopped working and she drowned or froze.

One thing at a time.

Push off.

Move your arms.

Kick.

Keep swimming.

She drifted farther down the river as she swam. Pain shot through her shoulder all the while.

She caught hold of a bunch of grass at the bank, and with a reserve of strength she hadn’t known she’d had, hauled herself onto the bank, limb by limb.

She fell to her hands and knees on the sand, still choking on water that had made its way into her lungs. Another spike of agony shot up her arm, and she gasped.

She couldn’t stop shaking. The Panic came back, eagerly latching onto her pain and misery.

A hundred paces downstream, a black shape had emerged from the water. It stumbled onto the beach and then stalked toward her, spattering river water in a trail as it went.

“Saava en alzair kuvu Ardani?” Aruna said. Novikke stared at him. His tone was sharp. Angry. She watched his approach with narrowed eyes.

He looked like a drowned cat, which somehow only made him more frightening. He looked at her with murder in his eyes, then started casting around for something on the ground. He was looking for something to write with, she realized.

He found a bit of driftwood and scribbled into the sand, “Who was that?”

Novikke stared blankly at him. Her shoulder hurt so much she could hardly think. He was writing again before she could respond.

“How many?”

He thought the attacker was someone she knew. An Ardanian scout or fighter. She gave a soft scoff. It occurred to her that he hadn’t been trying to pull her to safety when he’d grabbed her on the tree bridge. He had been trying to use her as a shield.

She wrote with her finger, her hand shaking with cold. “Don’t know.”

The answer did not please him. He scribbled again. “It was a human.”

“Ash and blood, I don’t know every human! I don’t know who it was,” she groaned, bowing her head in exhaustion. Her throat was so tight that her voice sounded strained. An uncontrollable sob was building up in her chest.

He snapped a string of words at her. When he grabbed her hand, she tried to jerk away. He shoved the driftwood into it and pointed at the sand.

She swallowed, forcing herself to think. She remembered a pale hand. It had not been a night elf. That much was true.

She didn’t know of any Ardanian patrols in the forest. But their attacker had thrown fire at them. Everyone knew which people were most likely to be found doing such a thing, though she didn’t know what they’d be doing inside Kuda Varai.

Human mages were rare, but all sun elves were born with the ability to summon fire.

“Ysurans?” she wrote.

He glared at the word, and then at her. He looked unconvinced. She reached up and underlined the phrase “don’t know”again. He started barking something at her again, and she flinched. She underlined it again and again, and he kept shouting.

The world crowded in around her. She couldn’t breathe. Everything was too close and too inescapable. He was still yelling.

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