Seeker (Riders #2)(67)

I stop swimming and look up. I can't see the surface anymore.

I keep swimming down. I won't lose my horse this way.

But my lungs feel like they're filling with acid, and I can't hold back anymore.

I use the last of my breath to yell for Riot.

Then I brace for ice water to shoot into the back of my mouth.

Cold air rushes in instead. My oxygen-starved lungs gulp it in, restoring, as my mind races to understand.

I'm breathing.

Underwater.

Or  …  I'm swimming through air?

Not the time to figure it out. Riot needs me. I keep searching for him, carving my way through freezing black water that I can somehow breathe. Eyeballs chilling. Fingers numbing. Cold knifing into the back of my throat.

Bubbles rise up from below. Swarms of bubbles that grow denser, and steal my visibility.

Then they turn green.

First pale, then bright, then dark.

All shades of green.

As I'm grappling with this, their texture grows brittle against the skin on my arms and my face. A sound rises in my ears, a rustling like shaking leaves, and I feel the slap of bending branches on my legs and back.

I'm swimming through leaves.

And I'm going too fast.

My brain provides theories-gravity, falling through air, through trees.

None of them make sense, and I'm not ready when the branches vanish. I don't even brace myself as I fall through the canopy, punching into open air.

I see the maze of branches above me, the flash of a thick tree trunk, and the next instant I slam against the ground flat on my back.

My breath pushes out of my chest in one heave, like a balloon popping. I wait for the reverse, the intake, but I'm back to burning, starved lungs that can't draw any air.

Jode's face appears over me, frowning in concern. His wet hair drips water on my forehead. "Are you all right? Gideon, can you move?"

I thump my chest.

"Breath get knocked out of you?" The worry leaves his face. "Better work it out, then, because I won't be giving you mouth-to-mouth. It would be too odd, what with Anna."

I flip him the bird.

He smiles. "There you go. Right as rain again." He straightens, but I lie there another minute. Shivering. Soaked. Freezing cold. And my chin is throbbing, too.

"Horses?" I ask, finally able to look around. We're back in the woods. Back in the clearing where we camped. Where I stood less than an hour ago.

"Just there. Blazing angry, yours. He's about to set this entire forest on fire."

"Let him."

* * *

Jode's right. Riot's not himself.

Big curls of flame roll up his legs and chest. His amber eyes are huge and distant. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I can't sense what he's feeling.

I rest my hand on his wide forehead and keep it there until his eyes start to soften. Until I feel him grow stronger, his strength relaying back to me.

"You're a good horse, Riot."

He blows a blustering breath.

You're a good human, Gideon. But you could've warned me sooner about the ice. I don't like frozen lakes.



       
         
       
        

I pat his neck. Then I hang my arms over the saddle, letting him hold my weight, which makes us both feel better.

Jode's busy doing things I can't see. I hear him walking around behind me. Zipping up bags and talking quietly to Lucent and Ruin.

"Have you finished licking your wounds?" Jode asks, bringing Lucent and Ruin over by their leads.

"Haven't even started yet."

"Well, can you wrap it up? We need to find Marcus and Daryn, and Shadow and-"

"Did you actually think you could pull Riot off that lake with a rope? That you could. All five-foot-ten, a buck sixty of you?"

"It seemed more promising than standing beside him on shattering ice."

"I had a plan, Drummy."

"Did you? And what was it?"

"Not die. And it worked."

He lifts an eyebrow. "I can't argue that." He sighs, shaking his head. "Why?" he says, staring across the trees.

"I don't know. I think I might have had a nightmare just like that at some point."

He glances at me. "Do you think the Rift is trying to destroy us?"

"It's trying to do something." I realize I don't trust anything here. Not the trees or even the sky. Everything feels like it could change at any second. Jode's the only thing here I trust. Jode and the horses.

Jode rubs his head, making his damp hair spike. "It was him, Gideon. Across the water. It was Sebastian. Shadow wouldn't have left us for any other reason."

"He wasn't alone."

"I saw that. Do you think they were real? Or part of the trial?"

Trial, he calls it. Felt more like torture.