this mission are very slim. She almost believed he was a ghost, too, stalking her steps to pour hopelessness within her. But when she glanced over her shoulder, there was no ethereal commander. Only the stairs she had conquered.
They finally reached the second tier of the cistern.
Evadne’s legs trembled as she followed Damon into the knee-deep water. The cold was like a balm to her aches and pains; her ankles and feet soon went numb as she labored to cut through the currents.
Damon stopped abruptly, in movement and song. Evadne worried he was feeling another bout of pain until the tether between them went taut.
“Xander?” he cried, his voice rising in joy, in disbelief.
Evadne’s heart constricted. “No, Damon!”
“Xander, wait! Where are you going? Where have you been?” And just like that, Damon began to drag Evadne through the water.
“Damon!” she screamed, desperate for him to hear her, for him to slow. “Damon, he is not real! Stop!”
“Arcalos and I have been watching the door, waiting for you to return,” he said, charging onward as if the water were nothing, as if Evadne were weightless. “Yes, Arcalos is still alive! I have taken good care of him, as I vowed. Wait, slow down!”
The stars began to burn out, one by one. And the water began to deepen and pull harder. Soon, it was lapping at their waists, and Evadne’s pulse throbbed as she reached out to wrap her arms around Damon, frantic to stop him before he dragged them over the second waterfall.
“Damon, please,” she panted, her fingers curling into his chest, her heels trying to find purchase on the slick floor. She could feel his heart beating, a drum of doom.
He broke from her grip and Evadne momentarily went underwater, the tether yanking her in his wake. She broke the surface, gasping. The current was unyielding. Evadne could not have swum against it had she been alone.
They were almost to the falls. She could see the edge of it, the way Damon’s constellations glittered upon the water.
They were going to die here.
The panic stunned her, stole her breath.
And there was a moment when everything stilled, when it seemed as if the water eased and the stars gathered around her. She reached out to hold on to Damon, and she felt a shiver move through him as he realized Xander was a phantom, his senses finally returning to him.
A woman laughed in the distance, her amusement echoing off the rocks and water.
It was too late.
Damon’s fingers wove with Evadne’s as the water bore them over the edge, into a cold, endless plummet.
XXIII
Evadne
They fell together, entwined, stars dying in their hair. Evadne’s heart was pounding so fiercely she couldn’t think. Of all things, her mind clung to one image: the grove, home. She saw mighty Kirkos fall and break his wings, his body hanging limp in the branches of the olive tree.
Fly.
Evadne commanded her heart, and the screaming rush of air quieted, answering to her. Damon’s weight, though, was heavy, his face pressed against her neck, his hands clinging to her as she clung to him.
Fly, she breathed again, and while she could not hold them both suspended in the air, she brought them down gently, slowly, the cascading water roaring beside them.
They reached the bottom. It was slick bedrock, the water shallowly spilling over it to tumble into a deep pool. Evadne set Damon down on the rock first. Exhausted, she settled on his lap, gracelessly straddling him, the mist in her face and the water rushing about her knees. There were just enough stars remaining for her to behold Damon’s awestruck face as he gazed at her, his dark hair a shade of blue in the bewitching light.
He said nothing, but he reached around her, to lay his palms upon her back. Where her wings should be.
And a delicious shiver moved through her; she didn’t know if it was from his touch, his wonder, or the way her blood still hummed from the fall and the flight.
She pulled Kirkos’s relic out from beneath her drenched tunic, and the lapis lazuli wing rested against her chest, gleaming like a spoken secret. Damon’s gaze riveted to it, and he began to shake beneath her. She realized he was laughing—in relief, in amazement. It seemed ridiculous to laugh at such a dire moment, but she joined him, and it eased the knot of horror that had been winding tight within her.
“You never told me you possessed a relic, Evadne,” he said when his