Page 55

My deaths keep diversifying, and apparently drowning is next on the schedule, because my lungs are burning, my chest is hitching with the demand to inhale, and everything in every direction is the same empty gray.

But I can’t just float here. The world needs me. Logan needs me. If I keep dying and he keeps bringing me back, he’ll eventually burn through his magic, and I’ll die for real. If I die for real, he might remove his ankar token, and then he won’t be Logan anymore, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to give up and let any of that happen.

So, I claw in the direction that might be up, kicking hard, and my fingers break through into air⁠—

No. It’s not the air. It’s more water. Colder water.

I went down instead of up.

I reverse direction and kick, and my lungs are screaming at me, the air I grabbed before going under stale in my chest. Water’s pressing against every inch of my skin, filling my ears with a muffled roar that blocks everything out except my heartbeat slamming faster and faster, louder and louder.

I kick again. My foot connects with nothing. My arms are pulling through thick, endless water, and I’m moving, but I don’t know where, and every second I spend swimming in the wrong direction is another second of air I’m burning.

My chest convulses. I need to breathe.

No. I can’t breathe, because I’m surrounded by water, and if I breathe it in, that’s the end. So, I clamp my mouth shut and fight it. But the reflex to inhale is getting stronger, because breathing is what bodies do, and mine doesn’t understand that breathing right now means dying.

Which way is up? I need to go up.

I fire my electricity outward, trying to find the surface, trying to find anything that isn’t gray water in every direction. The web of silver light travels outward and scatters, because apparently, I can’t control it when I’m running out of oxygen.

Air. I need air.

My mouth opens, and water rushes into my throat. It’s ice-cold as it hits my windpipe, and my body seizes, my chest locking. The coughing reflex tries to expel the water, but it pulls in more instead. Darkness creeps in through the sides of my vision, and my arms are reaching in a direction that might be up, or might be down, or might be sideways, but it doesn’t matter, because I don’t think I’m leaving this water at all.

The moment I stop fighting it, something wraps around my wrist, the water’s howling, and the darkness surrounding me is no longer imminent death, but black fire sucking me into a familiar, swirling vortex.

26

JADE

My fingers are curled over the sides of the boat, the dry wood solid and real. The lake is flat again, mist drifting over it in slow, heavy banks. My lungs are full of air, and I’m coughing so hard my body convulses, because the memory of water rushing in is still in my throat, and I think it’ll always be in my throat.

Logan’s hands find my face. His skin is colder than usual, and there’s a tremor in his fingers that wasn’t there after the first reset.

“Don’t tell me to build the glass sphere,” I manage between coughs that aren’t actually necessary, since this version of me was never in the water at all. “It didn’t hold. The electricity went straight through it and into the water and⁠—“

“I know.” His thumbs press against my cheekbones, his grip tighter than before. “I’m not going to say glass sphere.”

“Then what⁠—”

“I couldn’t find you.”

His words hit me mid-cough, and the coughing stops.

“The wave separated us, and I was underwater, and I was searching for you, and you weren’t there.” His fire is seeping into my cheeks, but it’s unsteady, flickering at the edges. “Then you blasted your electricity, and I swam for it like a lifeline. If you hadn’t sent that pulse, I wouldn’t have reached you in time. I would have been searching in the dark while you drowned, and⁠—”

“You didn’t have to bring me with you,” I cut him off, since it’s true, and one of us has to say it. “If I died, you could have come back to the boat on your own, and I’d be with you, the same as before. Every extra second you spent searching for me was another second you risked dying along with me. And if you die, that’s it. No more resets. Game over.”

His fire ignites without warning—blue flames rolling up his forearms, black at the edges, there and gone in a single breath before he forces it down. When he speaks, his voice is level, and the levelness is worse than shouting.

“If I let you die, you’d be the version of yourself that just came back from being crushed and doesn’t know that your leaked electricity got weaponized into a tidal wave. I’d have to explain everything we learned in the previous loop, and you’d have to trust me without having experienced it. We’d lose time we can’t afford.” He pauses, looking at me like he’s memorizing me, then continues. “Every loop, the drakon teaches us how it kills. But the lesson only counts if we both remember it.”

“So we have to die together.” I laugh softly, even though it’s far from funny. “Every time.”

“We have to survive together every time. If we can’t survive, I’ll bring us back so we can try again with everything we’ve learned.”

It’s the most twisted version of teamwork I’ve ever heard. It’s also the most Logan thing he’s ever said, because of course the man who’s been carrying memories of my deaths since the Hydra trial would design a system where we carry them together.