Chapter Three: The Waterfall
1019 Words
"There's a waterfall," Jace said, over the ruins of breakfast. "Twenty minutes from here. I found it when I was looking at the property."
Elara looked at him over her coffee.
"You've been very busy discovering things around this house," she said.
"I like to be thorough," he said.
"Show me," she said.
The path through the trees was narrow but well-worn, the specific quality of somewhere that had been visited enough to leave a mark but not enough to lose its privacy. She could hear the water before she saw it — a low constant roar that grew steadily as they walked, until the trees opened suddenly onto a wide pool fed by a waterfall cascading down moss-covered rock.
She stopped at the edge of the trees.
"Jace," she said. "This is incredible."
"I thought you'd like it," he said.
The water was clear enough to see the rocky bottom near the shallows, darkening toward the center where the falls crashed down in a constant white rush. The morning sun caught the spray in a fine mist that hung in the air, catching light in small rainbows that shifted whenever the wind moved.
"Is it cold," she said.
"Extremely," he said. "Wolves don't feel cold the way you'd expect. But it's cold."
"I don't feel it much either," she said.
"Then we have no excuses," he said, already pulling his shirt over his head.
The water was cold.
Cold enough that she gasped when she waded in, the shock of it running up through her legs before her body adjusted — and adjust it did, quickly, the specific resilience of a vampire's constitution shrugging off temperature that would have made a human's teeth chatter within seconds.
Jace waded in after her, entirely unbothered, and she watched droplets catch in his dark hair as he moved toward the deeper water near the falls.
"Race you," she said.
"To where," he said.
"The rocks," she said, already moving.
She beat him — barely, three centuries of speed against a thousand years of strength producing a contest closer than either of them expected — and turned to find him grinning at her from a few feet away, water running down his face, looking younger than she'd ever seen him look.
"You cheated," he said.
"I didn't," she said. "I'm just better."
"We'll discuss that," he said, and pulled her under.
They played the way people played when nothing was chasing them — splashing, laughing, the specific unguarded joy of two people who had spent so long fighting for their lives that simply being ridiculous together felt like its own kind of victory. He caught her around the waist and lifted her out of the water entirely, spinning once before setting her back down, both of them breathless and laughing at nothing in particular.
She pushed a wave of water at him.
He retaliated with considerably more force, and she came up sputtering, hair plastered to her face, laughing so hard she could barely stand.
"That was excessive," she said.
"You started it," he said.
"I did not start—"
He pulled her against him before she could finish the sentence.
The laughter faded slowly.
Not disappearing — just changing shape, the way it always did between them, warmth shifting into something deeper without either of them deciding to let it happen. He looked down at her, water running from his hair down his jaw, and something in his expression had gone quiet and certain in the way it always did right before he kissed her.
"Elara," he said.
"Mm," she said.
"Come here."
She was already there.
He kissed her under the spray of mist drifting off the falls, slow and deep, one hand at the small of her back holding her against him while the water moved around them both. The cold had stopped registering entirely — replaced by the warmth of the bond flooding through her, the specific heat that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with him.
"Jace," she breathed against his mouth.
"Right here," he said.
The water crashed against the rocks behind them, constant and loud, and neither of them heard it anymore. The world had narrowed to exactly the space between their bodies, his hands moving slowly up her spine, her fingers curled into his wet hair, both of them entirely lost in something that had no interest in the sound of falling water or the cold that should have mattered and didn't.
He walked her back toward the shallower rocks near the edge of the falls, never breaking the kiss, his mouth finding her jaw, her neck, the same places that always undid her completely.
"I love you," he said against her skin.
"I know," she said. "I love you too."
The bond burned bright between them, warm despite the cold water, alive despite the roar of the falls drowning out everything except the two of them— unhurried, consuming, the specific freedom of two people with nowhere to be and nothing left to prove to the world, only to each other, again and again, the way they always chose to.
Afterward they lay tangled on the flat sun-warmed rock at the water's edge, the falls still crashing steadily behind them, her head on his chest and his arms around her, both of them dripping and breathless and entirely at peace.
"We're going to smell like a waterfall for the rest of the day," she said.
"Worth it," he said.
"You keep saying that," she said.
"It keeps being true," he said.
She looked up at him.
At the silver eyes, soft in the morning light, water still caught in his lashes.
"I could stay here forever," she said.
"We have forever," he said. "We can come back."
She smiled.
Pressed her face into his chest.
Listened to his heartbeat under the sound of falling water, and thought that this — exactly this, nothing more complicated than a waterfall and her husband and a morning with nowhere to be — might be the truest happiness she had ever know.
- Writer
