His presence washed through Sora like an embrace encased in gold. She closed her eyes, and she could practically feel his arms around her, strong and unyielding, and his whisper in her ear that he was there, that he would never leave her. Sora sank into the feeling, letting him hold her from afar, just for a moment.

Just in case this was the last time.

Then she opened her eyes, cast a whale spell on herself, and dove into the lake.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was the middle of the night, but Daemon and Fairy sat wide awake. Sora’s message had told them to be ready to help her and Broomstick, and now Daemon knew she’d jumped into the Lake of Nightmares, because her shock chilled their gemina bond like a blizzard.

His entire body rattled, both her fear and his own engulfing him. Did Sora know what she was doing? She hardly had any information to go on. And while she was risking her life to swim through cursed waters, Daemon was hundreds of miles away, helpless to do anything for her.

What if he lost her?

And if he did, it would mean she was damned to the hells, because she had ryuu magic.

The thought was like swallowing a hundred swords all at once, and Daemon gasped.

Fairy reached for him and held his hand, even though she was focusing on her connection with Broomstick. “We have to be strong for them.”

It was as if Daemon didn’t hear her, though. He hardly felt Fairy’s fingers against his. The only thing that mattered was the throbbing cold of his gemina bond with Sora. And how to make it warmer.

He wrapped his cloak more tightly around himself, as if the heat would travel through their connection.

The first time he tried to protect her with their bond, Sora had been under the effects of genka, and Daemon had taken the hallucinations from her through their connection. But now he understood that he didn’t actually have to go so far in order to help her. What Sora needed most as she entered the lake was to remember the real world. Daemon was her tether to it. Instead of taking on the nightmares like he had the genka hallucinations, his job was to manipulate their gemina bond to keep a constant flow of reminders to Sora that the enchanted water wasn’t everything. His actual thoughts wouldn’t transfer through their connection, but the emotions associated with them would.

So Daemon began to think of the happiest memories he had of their lives together.

When he was first brought, snarling and biting, to the Citadel by the hunter who’d found him in the woods, and Sora had pushed her way through the crowd of scared tenderfoots, the only one of them who approached him and smiled.