Drowning (Kaz Brekker)

xvi - Doomed

ASRA WAS GOING TO FLIRT KAZ BREKKER TO DEATH. She'd decided. For the second time that day, Kaz Brekker had lost consciousness, and for the second time that day, Asra had to be the one to deal with it. First the wagon, now this. They weren't particularly romantic settings, but that wouldn't stop her with anyone else. Kaz had fainted into her arms and he was never going to hear the end of it. She'd flirt and flirt and flirt until he either kissed her or killed her. Whatever his preference.

The fall was long and terrifying. The roar only grew louder, the descent only darker. Water, Asra realised at one point, a river. The so-called voice of Djel was simply the sound of a rushing river below them. A wellspring indeed.

On the Ferolind, Kaz had given them all Raske's latest invention, baleen. It would grant them ten minutes of air underwater as long as they didn't panic. Asra was certain she could manage that, but her confidence had dropped almost as quickly as her body.

The water was ice cold, the current relentless. At some point in the fall, just before they hit the water as she bit down on the baleen previously wedged between her front teeth, Kaz's arm had wrapped around her waist. She wasn't sure who had initiated the touch, but she'd clung to his chest as tight as she could, body pressed tightly to his, until they hit the waves, and afterwards.

They'd been swept down the current relentlessly. Asra had long since mastered the art of leaving her body, escaping to her mind and only coming back when she knew herself safe. She'd managed it in the river, but even in that half conscious daze she'd managed to keep a hold on Kaz.

She wasn't sure how she knew he was unconscious, but she did. So when Asra started to swim towards the surface of the now still water, she dragged Kaz along with her. Up and up, till she finally breached the surface and gasped for breath.

She dragged Kaz towards the shore, barely keeping her footing in the water, struggling to lug his body behind her. Matthias was at her side suddenly, taking him from her. She let him. She could hardly stand on her own.

She stumbled, shaking and freezing, onto the shore. She let her legs give out beneath her, let her body go to its hands and knees. She retched, coughed. The baleen had congealed at the corners of her mouth and, out in the air, were more effective at choking her than helping.

She'd lost a sleeve, and her shoes. Her skirt was in tatters. Her cloak was long gone. The already precarious covering of her breasts was one tug away from absolute ruin. She was shaking, freezing, dazed, sore and bruised and numb all at once. She turned her head to Kaz, who Matthias had dumped unceremoniously on the pebble beach. "Is he dead?"

Matthias grunted. He flipped Kaz onto his front, pressed his hands to his chest, and started pumping. "I. Should. Let. You. Die."

"He's dead." Asra said to herself, then spat.

Nina crawled to Kaz and Matthias. She was in worse shape than Asra. Besides a few luckily placed, skintight strips of shining fabric, she was completely naked. She shooed the Fjerdan away. "Let me help before you crack his sternum. Does he have a pulse?"

He has to have a pulse. He can't die. He still needed to tell her something from the roof. He had to make it to the Ferolind, Ketterdam, his riches. Otherwise Asra would never know what he wanted to tell her. Of all the things she'd done, she knew that would be the thing she'd never forgive herself for.

Nina pressed her fingers to Kaz's pulse point. "It's there, but it's fading. Get his shirt open."

Matthias tore open Kaz's stolen drüskelle uniform. Nina pressed a hand to Kaz's chest, the other pinching his nose as she breathed air into his mouth.