Page 81 of Magick and Lead
It was a daunting mission, to say the least. A suicide mission, maybe.
I’d rather have been streaking through the sky at a hundred and twenty miles per hour any day.
I glanced over to find Essa looking at me. Something about her eyes, illuminated by the city lights, reminded me of galaxies. Deep. Complex. Infinite.
“Are you sure you can do this?” she asked, nodding toward the water. “Because I can go alone. In fact, maybe it would be better?—”
I cupped her face in my hands. “Essa. You know I wouldn’t let you go without me.”
She shook her head. “Right now, everyone in this city thinks you’re a hero, Charlie. But from this moment on, even if this works, you’ll be a criminal. You’ll be throwing away your life. And if itdoesn’twork…”
“It’ll work,” I said. That was the mindset I approached every mission with, a game I played with myself. Success was inevitable because I was the goddamned Silver Wraith.
“Still….” She looked away from me. And the dragon intuition twinged inside me, telling me what she wasn’t saying. She wasn’t just worried for me. She was worried about whether she could trust me. Still. Even after everything…
I bit back my frustration, and I followed her gaze to the dark water flowing past beneath us.
We had to put the relationship shit aside—for the next hour, at least. Mind on the mission…
“Is Othura on her way?” I asked.
She closed her eyes for a second, communicating, then nodded. “Yes. She should be here soon.”
“Good then,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Before she could object, I hopped up to sit on the railing and pitched myself backwards, going head-over heels into the river. The water was further down than I realized, and I hit awkwardly, getting a slap on the back and a nose full of water. I came up coughing, and Essa leaned over the rail and hissed down at me:
“Show off!”
With far more grace than I’d displayed, she vaulted the rail and entered the water with hardly a splash. She disappeared, and for an instant, it felt as if my heart stopped. But a secondlater, she broke the surface again, already swimming, long sidestrokes that utilized her one intact hand to great effect. I followed her, hardly able to keep up.
“Shh!” she admonished me in a whisper. “Quit slapping the water. You sound like a child in a bathtub.”
I readied a retort, but that would only have made more noise, so I contented myself with swimming along behind her as quietly as I could, distrustfully eyeing the dark water around us as I went. I realized, too late now, that we were swimming against a surprisingly strong current, something that would make the task twice as difficult as it would have otherwise been.
We’d have to swim for fifty yards underwater, against this current, and if we so much as popped our heads up for a breath, we were likely to take a headshot from one of the rooftop snipers who no doubt had their eyes glued to the river. To top it all off, the water was cold as hell. Already, I could feel my leg muscles cramping. Not ideal…
Ahead, a pale arc traced the surface of the river, the edge of the spotlight’s illumination. We’d be swimming underwater from here on out. Essa turned back to me, treading water.
“You ready?”
I wasn’t. Not remotely. I was out of breath. Waterlogged. Freaked out by the black water and skeptical of my ability to swim the necessary distance underwater.
But I was the goddamned Silver Wraith.
“Ready,” I said.
I expected more. A recap of the plan. A kiss for luck. But already the current was pushing us backward; there was no time for chatter. Essa took a breath and, as gracefully as an otter, ducked under the water and disappeared.
“Sophi, daughter of God…” I prayed. “Grow me some gills, would you?”
And I gulped a breath and ducked under the water, following Essa.
It was damned cold, and the water was murky and full of silt. I wouldn’t have been able to figure out where I was going at all, ironically, if it weren’t for the spotlight. I swam toward its glow like a flower turning toward the sun.
The current pushed against me. I pulled myself ahead. The current pushed against me. I pulled myself ahead—an endless tug of war. With each stroke, the burning in my lungs grew until it felt like I was holding a lungful of fire.
I had to breathe—had to breathe now. But if I did, the snipers would have me.
