violent this time. No more water came out, but no air came in either.
The iron bands around my torso released me, and then I was tossed onto my back.
Through my streaming eyes I saw Grim fall to his knees by my side and bend over me, pinching my nose shut. Soft, cold lips pressed against mine, and then… sweet, cool air rushed into my lungs, raising my chest. And again. And again.
My airways opened, and I coughed into Grim’s mouth.
He pulled back just enough to give me space to breathe, but left his hand resting against my breastbone.
I heaved in a deep lungful and groaned with relief when air filled them.
“Breathe, Annabel,” he said, his voice raspy and deep as he too inhaled. “Breathe.”
I stared up at him as my body obeyed his command, and that same sensation I’d had the first time I met him welled up—of recognition and a sucking undertow threatening to pull me under.
My dad had said those exact same words to me when he’d pulled me out of a frozen lake when I was a kid: “Breathe, Annabel. Breathe.”
I’d seen Grim then too, when I plummeted through the ice and fought against the freezing water pulling me down. Grim. He’d been there, as vividly as anything. Or his eyes had been there, to be exact—an image of one amber and one icy blue eye, watching me.
I didn’t know why the memory suddenly rushed back—perhaps it was the echo of my then-near-death experience now, the similarities in nearly drowning again—but I was sure.
“Grim—” I rasped, not sure what I was going to say, what I was going to ask.
The sound of my voice, weak as it was, made Grim jerk, his eyes moving from mine down to where his hand was resting against my chest. With another jerk, he pulled it away and sat all the way up on his knees to push his wet hair out of his eyes.
“I told you not to swallow any water,” he growled. Angry. Curt.
“Am I going to die?” I croaked. “I swallowed… a lot.”
“We got it all out. You’re breathing. Talking. You wouldn’t be if we didn’t.”
Only then did it dawn on me that he’d… Heimliched me? The rock that’d been punched against my sternum must have been his fists.
I rubbed my sore ribs. “Thank you. You… How did you know I was in trouble?”
“You let out a lot of bubbles, plum,” Mimir said, distinctly unconcerned. “You were either in need of saving, or on cutting down on the cabbage. And since you haven’t eaten since arriving in Hel…”
“Well… thank you,” I repeated, ignoring the prophet.
“I told you there is no safe place here,” Grim said, nostrils pulling up ever so slightly into his usual sneer. “Maybe now you’ll listen?”
“What was that thing?” I asked, choosing not to make any promises I couldn’t keep.
“A Sjörå, a type of Huldra who lives in lakes and ponds.” Grim flattened his lips into a line as he looked back over his shoulder at the once-again still water. “They don’t normally attack women.”
“Remind me what a Huldra is again?” I forced my muscles into action so I could sit up, grateful that they obeyed me this time, albeit with some protest.
“They dwell in the wilds and delight in luring men and boys into trouble,” Mimir said mildly.
“Why are all these nature-lurkers so gender-biased? And what happened with this one? Was she just progressive for her kind?” I muttered, rubbing at my ribs again.
“I’m going to ask her when I find her,” Grim said, the venom in his voice tensing my spine even though it wasn’t aimed at me this time. He turned back to me, mouth open as if he were going to speak again, but his eyes landed on my still-peaked nipples and no sound came out.
Heat scorched my cheeks, my body’s response to his attention as immediate as it was embarrassing.
If Grim noticed, he didn’t show it. Without a word he got to his feet, turned to the lake, and shrugged out of his already soaked tunic before he waded into the water. He dove under the surface, and I sat there in silent shock over the fact that Grim Lokisson, despite all evidence to the contrary, might have at least a single drop of hot blood in his otherwise frosty body.
“Well, that was comforting,” Mimir said from his perch on the rock. “I was beginning to worry that Verdandi chose the wrong life-thread to weave as your fifth. Don’t ever