Her body buckled, like she was coughing, but still she didn’t release more than a few bubbles, knowing she couldn’t let more go, with nothing for her to inhale.

Fifteen minutes.

She had no idea how many had already passed. No idea how many she had left.

No idea how she was going to last much longer.

She couldn’t feel her fingers. Couldn’t feel her toes. She felt like she was burning, the cold so biting that her nerves were on fire.

Breathe! her body screamed at her. BREATHE.

She couldn’t.

There was no air.

There was no air.

Kiva buckled again, suffocation beginning to forfeit her control. This time she couldn’t stop the stream of air that fled her lungs, nor her natural reaction to try and inhale more.

No.

No.

She was choking now, water flooding down her windpipe in place of oxygen.

Coughing and choking and coughing and choking, water filling her lungs, filling her stomach as she accidentally swallowed it, all of the air that she’d carefully guarded now gone.

The numbness was spreading, her arms and legs like senseless weights.

And the darkness—it was growing, her vision blackening as her body buckled, buckled, buckled.

Torture, it was torture.

And then it was over.

The fight left her.

Oblivion took her.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“BREATHE, DAMN IT!”

Kiva bolted upright, water erupting from her mouth as she coughed, choking on air, gasping it down while simultaneously dispelling liquid from her lungs.

“That’s it, get it all out. I’ve got you.”

Kiva couldn’t think beyond the pain and the cold. She was shaking all over, her limbs numb, her chest and head aching, her lungs and throat burning, her ribs throbbing.

“I’ve got you,” said the voice again, and Kiva finally recognized it, and the arms that were holding her, the body she was pressed against.

“J-J-Jaren?” she tried to ask, but her lips could barely sound the word.

“I’m here,” he said, holding her tighter. “You’re alive. You’re alive.”

He said it like a prayer, as if he couldn’t believe it.

From the throbbing in her rib cage, Kiva wondered just how close she’d come to dying, wondered if she owed him her life.

But then she wondered why she was in his arms. Where was Rooke? Naari? The other guards?

Slowly, Kiva opened her eyes, the effort nearly impossible from the frozen, aching exhaustion that had overtaken her body. But when she saw where she was, where they were, renewed adrenaline surged through her, and she jerked in Jaren’s arms.

“What—”

Kiva couldn’t finish her sentence, struggling to comprehend what she was seeing.

They were still in the quarry.

Beneath the water.

The boulder was still tied to Kiva’s ankle.

But . . . they were breathing. They were talking. They weren’t drowning.