Hands. Hands grabbing her, and she hadn’t any fight left, couldn’t make her arms swing or her feet kick. Tas had always said she had salt water in her veins. She had it now in her throat, in her nose, in her belly. If it had always been a part of her, why did it burn like fire?

The water around her lightened, turned to air, but still it was black as tar and held her limbs no less captive. She couldn’t open her eyes, couldn’t draw breath. Couldn’t hear anything but the rushing in her ears.

Pressure on her chest. Heavy, too heavy. Forceful. It shoved down to her very soul. Past her heart and the island rock and all the way to the salt water beneath. It came surging up, bringing her surging with it. Coughing, spluttering, gasping.

Still dark as midnight, but she could blink against it now. Grab at the hands that grabbed at her head.

“Benna! Benna, speak to me. Are you all right, my love?” Those hands probed straight into the heart of pain, making the black flash to white again.

She screamed, or tried to, though it came out as a scratch in her throat more than sound. Tried to turn away from the hands. Casek’s hands.

Casek’s hands?

It took her a moment to piece together why that was wrong and what would have been right. What had come before the rock and the water and the black and the white and the certainty that it was her last minute to beg forgiveness from the Almighty.

The cave—she’d stalked into Piper’s Hole well ahead of Oliver and Libby and lowered herself down to the rocks and the pool, ready to get on with the night. Hoping to battle someone, truth be told, so she could expend some of this frustration that had built up inside like steam in a boiler. She’d been moving toward her prearranged position, had fished the electric torch from her pocket to aid her in the tricky maneuvering.

Then the hands, fast and hard. Grabbing, shoving, crashing. Water, swallowing her up. She coughed again now for good measure and tried to convince her eyes to see an outline of Casek instead of her own pain. “Caz?”

Her torch was still on, somewhere. Its light ricocheted off the cave’s walls until it found them, though he was still more silhouette against it than features. He was kneeling beside her, a great hulk of worry.

Then she was part of that hulk, as his arms closed around her and dragged her against his chest, still heaving from his dive into the water after her. Or maybe his fear of losing her?

“Mabena.” His one hand stroked her hair, avoiding now the place where pain lived, and the other held her pinned against him.