Saving the Immortal

Chapter Seventeen: Pulled From The Cold

He did not return by midday, nor by the time the afternoon light had begun its slow retreat toward evening, and I found myself, by the time the sun hung low over the western towers, entirely unable to sit still within our quarters a moment longer.

I needed him to return.

Not simply for the sake of mending what I had broken between us with careless words — though that need pressed upon me heavily enough on its own — but for some quieter, more urgent reason I could not fully name, some instinct that had settled into my chest since Delia's warning that morning and had not once loosened its grip since.

I dismissed my guards some hour before, wishing for solitude rather than the particular scrutiny of attendants who had watched me pace our chambers with increasing agitation, and made my way instead toward the lake I had glimpsed once from the terrace — a body of water at the palace's far edge, still and dark beneath the deepening sky.

I do not know, precisely, what possessed me to consider swimming.

Perhaps it was simply the desire to feel something other than the particular ache still lodged in my chest since the previous night's quarrel. Perhaps it was some foolish hope that cold water might shock my thoughts into some clearer arrangement than the anxious circling they had maintained all day. Whatever the reason, I found myself at the water's edge as twilight deepened around me, and stepped in before any sensible caution could stop me.

The cold struck like a blow.

I had expected chill, given the season, but nothing had prepared me for the particular numbing violence of that water — a cold so complete it seemed to reach past my skin entirely and lodge itself directly against my bones, stealing the breath from my lungs before I had managed even a single proper stroke.

I gasped.

My limbs, already unfamiliar with the specific effort swimming required, grew heavier by the second, the cold sapping strength from them faster than I could account for, and I felt, with a rising horror, the current beneath the water's still surface pulling at me with considerably more force than its calm appearance had suggested.

"Help," I called, my voice already weaker than I intended, swallowed by the vast quiet of the grounds around me. "Someone, please—"

No one answered.

I had dismissed my guards. I had told no one where I intended to walk. The lake sat at the palace's far edge, distant enough from the household's usual traffic that even a full-throated scream might carry nowhere useful at all.

The cold bit deeper.

My limbs had begun to feel distant from me entirely, some strange numbness spreading through my chest that made even the simple effort of keeping my head above the surface feel increasingly impossible. My vision blurred at its edges. My thoughts, which had raced so frantically only moments earlier, began to slow into something dangerously calm.

I am not going to survive this, I thought, distantly, the realization arriving with far less panic than it perhaps should have. I am going to drown here, alone, and no one will even know to look for me until it is far too late.

I do not know how long I struggled before I heard his voice.

"Ivy."

My name, carried across the water with a force that cut through the fog claiming my thoughts, and I turned toward the sound with whatever strength remained to me.

"Ruselon," I managed, the word barely more than a gasp. "Ruselon, please—"

He was already moving.

I do not recall the specifics of what followed — only fragments, disjointed and blurred by the cold's relentless grip. His arms closing around me. The sensation of being pulled swiftly through water that had felt, only moments before, entirely too heavy to fight against. The shock of open air against my skin, colder still than the water but no longer swallowing me whole.

He carried me from the lake and laid me upon the bank, his hands moving quickly over me, checking, assessing, his own composure fractured in a manner I had rarely witnessed from him.

"You are freezing," he said, his voice tight with a fear I had not heard from him before. "Ivy, look at me. Stay with me."

I shivered violently, my teeth chattering too hard to properly answer him, my body finally registering, now that rescue had arrived, precisely how close I had come to losing this particular battle entirely.

He stripped his own coat free and wrapped it about me immediately, gathering me against his chest with a warmth that felt, in that moment, like the only true heat left in existence.

"Why were you here alone," he said, his voice rough now, some measure of the fear finally giving way to something closer to anger, though the anger, I understood immediately, was not truly directed at me. "Why did you dismiss your guards. Ivy, you could have died."

"I needed you," I managed, my voice still shaking with cold. "I did not know how to find you. I only knew I needed you to return."

Something in his expression broke entirely at that.

"I am here," he said, holding me tighter against him, his own voice thick now with something I could not fully name. "I am here. I have you."

We remained there a long moment, the last light fading fully from the sky above us, his arms holding me with a fierceness that spoke considerably more plainly than any words might have managed of everything neither of us had yet said aloud.

"I am sorry," I whispered eventually, my shivering finally beginning to ease within the warmth he provided. "For what I said last night. I did not mean it, Ruselon. I have never once believed you a monster."

"I know," he said quietly, pressing his lips briefly to my hair. "I know, Ivy. We will speak of it properly. But first — let us simply get you warm."

He lifted me carefully and carried me back toward the palace, and I pressed my face against his chest, grateful beyond any words I possessed for the particular sound of his heartbeat still steady beneath my ear, for the simple, overwhelming fact that he had heard me call his name across all that dark, indifferent water, and had come.