The first splash was brutal—slicing through clothes and skin and bone down to her very marrow. The cold pierced like a thousand needles, making her limbs ache with pain and feel numb all at the same time. Despite Zephyr’s warning, panic overtook her, and she scrambled, her fingers clutching at whatever they could find, legs kicking, trying to find which way was up and which way was down. Then strong fingers found her jaw, pulling her face down until her forehead pressed against something warm. She opened her eyes, expecting to be bombarded with water, no matter what reason told her, but the floods never came. Instead, she found the deep brown irises of her hunter, staring back at her, urging calm in the only way he could. He pressed his face closer, his nose sliding down beside hers until they were so close that her lips touched his on the next exhale.

She watched him, breathing in and out, vaguely aware that they were moving in a way that was entirely unnatural. Neither of them was swimming nor kicking their legs to stay afloat, and with the weight of their clothes and supplies they should have been sinking down to the riverbed. Instead, she felt a gentle pressure beneath her, gliding them along some unknown current. She was not sure how long it went on, only that she lost herself looking at Kiran, because she could, and because what else was she to do?

He looked tired, though she guessed the same was true for her. Circles hung like dark half-moons beneath his eyes, and she wondered how long it had been since he had had a solid night’s sleep. The growth of hair along his jaw was the longest she had ever seen it—a true beard rather than the messy unshaven stubble to which she was accustomed. She took a risk, letting one of her hands slide up his back, over his shoulder, and to the back of his neck. His eyelids fluttered under the caress, but when her thumb found the corner of his jaw, between the lobe of his ear and the greater part of his beard, his gaze fixed on her with a sudden intensity.

She did not speak, though Zephyr had not said whether it was possible with the magic she worked. In truth, Aurora decided the silence had its own kind of magic.