Yes, Vivia told it, and she released the young man. He lashed with his own power, tried to mark this river as his own. But these waters were too headstrong to be controlled. They preferred Vivia’s requests to his commands, and so her requests won. Ropes of current pulled him down. Chains of water held him there. Vivia felt him sink, sink, then hold fast within the silt. Her blood caressed him as she awkwardly turned her body toward the surface.

Carry me, she told the higher currents. Her strength was fading fast, and she still had one very important thing to do. One final request for the magic that lived inside her, around her, around the man now drowning in an ancient bottom below.

The water would release him eventually. Though if that happened before his last breaths faded into nothing …

Vivia had no energy, no mind left to care. There was only the boat approaching fast, and a Well that could fix the mess that her body had become. Vivia reached the boat, and a wave dumped her to its floor. Vaness stirred nearby.

“Vivia?” she seemed to say, though perhaps Vivia imagined that. The Empress never called her by her name.

“Hold … on,” Vivia told her, dragging herself around to face the tiny craft’s bow. Then she lifted her arms and asked the current to go.

It agreed, and soon, she and the Empress of Marstok were speeding toward the sea. Alone save for the stars and the forest, alive and unconcerned by the chaos that had come this way. The crickets still chirped. A raven chuckled. And soon enough, a roar built in Vivia’s ears, in her bones. It was not the roar of the ocean, rhythmic and reliable. This was a steady, endless crash from a waterfall toppling down.

A waterfall that had not moved in centuries and had been dead the last time Vivia had come here.

Please, she asked it as the river bent and the first white churn of rapids came into view. Please carry us to the Well. Her blood was draining too fast, and pain encroaching even faster.

But she couldn’t focus on anything that was not the water, not the falls. She had to reach the top. She had to reach the Well.

Then the water was carrying them, reversing course to allow this boat to rise and ascend and reach for a double-pointed plateau high above. It wobbled, it pushed. Vivia wanted it to lift, so lift it did.

Almost there. Vivia sensed the waterfall’s lip even if she could not see it. Even if her body was fading fast, the fire too much. The blood loss too much.

“Stay awake,” Vaness said from somewhere far away. “Please, Vivia, stay awake.”

Vivia. She’d said her name again and it pierced through the pain. Through even the water’s domineering will, trying to tip the boat in any direction it could. Vivia.