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The house had been torn to pieces, my parents and Lily gone, but they had to be there somewhere. I searched the pitch, my heart screaming, lungs raging as they protested for want of air.
I would not go up. I knew I had more air in me. I had to find her. I could feel her down there. Feel that familiar thrum of her magic.
Then I saw it, the bright white of her nightgown, the fabric a phantom curl in the pitch. I kicked with all my strength, diving toward her even as she frantically kicked toward the surface. But she wasn’t moving right. Something was wrong.
The distant boom of another explosion far overhead rippled through the waves as I reached her, the comforting thrum of her magic pulsing through me the second I grabbed her hand. Her eyes darted to mine, wide for a second before she recognized me. She kicked and reached for me, wrapping her arms around me in a frantic grip. Lily’s magic poured into me in thready pulses so different than before.
I clung to her, my legs kicking frantically even as my lungs screamed for air. We were almost to the surface when the water and sky above us erupted in ribbons of gold and red. The echo of the blast ricocheted underwater, shards of whatever had been destroyed slicing through the depths like daggers.
I didn’t need to rise above the surface to know what had been destroyed. The Qit. The entire village… There was no way it could have survived that.
I clung to Lily’s hand, her grip having gone limp as I turned to her; turned to wide eyes and a panicked face, and a giant shard of wood that stuck out from her gut. Bubbles popped from her mouth in a slow pace, the red-tinted orbs of air taking what was left of her precious air supply.
Lily!
No! No!
I tried to scream, but it was only bubbles and air. It was only everything in the world exploding into nothing.
“Lily!” The sound was hollow as I clung to her hand, her eyes focused on mine in horror. In pain. Sadness. It took me too long to figure out what that look was.
Goodbye.
The ghost of a grin spread over her face sagging as our power surged together for the last time.
It wasn’t just magic, though. It was a warm heat and a tingle of knowing. It was the feeling of her, of every night we had giggled beneath the blanket when we should have been asleep, or when we would hide under the ridge of the Qit and carve our names and practice the magic we were supposed to be keeping hidden. It was learning to swim together. It was our mother’s hug every night. It was watching the light of her magic move over the surface of the water when we thought no one was looking.
It filled me, flooding me the same way the icy lightning of the Fae had. But this was different. This was powerful. The sensation whooshed through me, the intensity of her power settling in my heart as her eyes went dark and that beautiful blue was swallowed by the ocean.
Fire exploded overhead as pieces of our bed sunk through icy depths, knocking into us. Lily’s hand slipped from mine, her fingers limp. She didn’t even try to reach for me. She didn’t even kick.
Those eyes, now the color of night, stared at nothing as she followed the pieces of wood down.
Down.
Down.
“Lily!” I screamed her name, even though I knew no sound would escape, even though I knew I was giving up my air.
But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was Lily, and she was sinking. She was leaving me.
“Lily!” I screamed again, that phantom feel of her power moving deep into my soul as I tried to swim toward her. As I tried to reach her.
I was almost out of air. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
Nothing but her.
I screamed and screamed, all of the power bubbling and boiling and turning into a weight that pressed against my chest. A piece of darkness that I knew would take this all away. I don’t know how I knew, but I clung to it, letting it grow and swallow me whole.
Just like the black of the world as the last of my air turned to nothing.
—----
The familiar taste of salt and fish bit the air, the aroma ticking my face when I came to, the loud call of a gull overhead pulling me from sleep. I was floating on my back alongside a long stretch of sodden wood, the blazing sun burning into my forehead. I blinked twice, letting my eyes adjust before I sat in the waves, ready to grasp whatever floating remains of my home I had washed up against.
Except it wasn’t a piece of wood. It was a whole length of it.
Water splashed around me as I shifted, staring at the long buoyant side of the Qit, right by where the boats would take off in the morning. I had been there a thousand times. My father’s boat had docked not far from there.
