Hitting the water like an arrow, I scythe down, sensing Trystan’s oceanic power through the funneling energy of the river, quickly spotting his long form being dragged rapidly into its depths.

I shoot toward him and throw my arms around his torso.

Trystan glares at me and struggles mightily against my grip, his power a fractured mess as air bubbles explode everywhere around us. And I know, in that instant as I sense his completely unstrung power, that Trystan has lost his way—fighting not against me saving him, but against all the pain of the world as well as all the pain he’s endured.

And I’ll be damned if I’ll let that pain destroy him.

You blazingly stupid idiot, I inwardly rage. I will not let you die!

I hold on relentlessly as our powers wage war and his lightning cracks violently against mine, visible bursts of it forking out through the water from us both.

Then, Trystan stops struggling, and there’s something devastating in that too. But there’s no time to feel it too deeply. I power up air behind us to propel us through the water’s surface, shield us both, and soar back east.

Trystan shatters.

I can feel his power coming untethered as Ung Li questions his unsanctioned use of wand magery and I stridently make a case for him. I brace myself for his immediate dismissal from the Wyvernguard, but Ung Li simply says she must “carefully consider the facts” and we’re miraculously allowed to leave without censure.

Trystan doesn’t speak to me as I bring him back to his barracks, his hair and clothing sodden, a dead look in his eyes that wrenches my heart.

“What happened?” Sylla Vuul asks from the hallway’s webs, concern in her voice. She quickly morphs from her giant spider form into that of a petite midnight-hued Death Fae girl and drops down from her webbing, her eight eyes pulling in to form two fully black ones.

Trystan opens his door, silently steps into his room, and shuts it.

For a moment I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can only stare after him.

“He scared the people we were trying to help,” I finally manage, feeling close to shattering myself. “And he was pushed into the Zonor. I think, for a moment, it all got to be too much for him, and the river...it pulled him under.” I’m suddenly not able to take an even breath and have to stop and fight the urge to break down myself.

I can’t get the image of the little girl hugging her dead mother out of my mind, one of so many drowned this day, four more bodies, recovered from the uncaring waters.