The other rune skiffs have managed to soar back north and are crisscrossing the surrounding waters, their blue lights fogged by the lessening storm, but they do not land. And I realize, in another gut punch of sorrow, that anyone not pulled on board by now is likely dead.

Trystan’s head breaks through the water, a blond Keltish baby in his arms that sputters and then begins to cry at the top of their lungs. I rush to the skiff’s edge and take the baby, hand the child off to Min Lo, then grab firm hold of Trystan’s hand, lightning crackling through our arms as I hoist him on board.

Everyone on the skiff recoils.

“Crow!” the little boy cries, scuttling back against the boat’s side.

“Stay back!” the teenage boy warns, fists balled as he springs to his feet, his eyes wide with evident terror. “I’ll kill you if you hurt us!”

The sick woman slumped on the skiff’s floor cries out and raises her hands protectively in front of her, as if a monster has just come on board.

“Why are you working with a Crow?” the man cries to Min Lo as he pulls a knife and positions himself in front of his family, his wife hugging the baby now in her arms, fierce conflict in her gaze.

“You killed her!” the little girl screams as she clutches her dead mother, her face a mask of devastation as she levels her blue gaze at Trystan with blistering hate.

A piece of my own heart shatters for the child as I realize what’s happening. How she must imagine that this storm is Mage-wrought and that Trystan’s magery drowned her mother.

Trystan takes in the dead, blue-haired woman splayed out before the child and his internal power comes apart, his control breaking, a jagged blast of his lightning aura flashing through me. He steps backward near the skiff’s edge, drops his wand and raises his palms.

It happens so fast, I’m unable to prevent it.

The teenage Kelt growls as he surges forward and pushes Trystan clear off the boat.

Trystan

I hit the water, and everything comes crashing down on me with the force of a thousand storm bands—the look on the refugees’ faces, their justified hate, the drowned mother...the motherless child.

Crow. Roach.

Mage.

And suddenly, my magic comes untethered and I’m drowning in those words, my power churning with so much turmoil, I barely notice the river’s whirling chaos as it closes around me, the funneling undertow like some distant disturbance in the face of the riptide of anguish and magic lashing through my heart and my lines.

Vothendrile

Sweet Holy Vo, I think as Trystan disappears beneath the water’s surface, sucked down by the undertow.

I pull in my wings and dive after him.