The North Star | COMPLETED ✔️

Chapter 64 ~ Reunions

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Chapter 64

As I fell, my stomach and every other organ lifted as if reaching for the ledge, while Karma used rain to push me down faster.

I sucked in a breath, bit back a scream, and through the sheets of heavy rain, I saw Bard reach out above me.

His lips moved around an anguished cry, but I couldn't comprehend the words over the river and wind and pounding of my own heart.

But I saw him.

As I fell. As I voluntarily fell to my own death so that he would live. I'd accepted my fate. I'd given my life to save him. My death had a purpose.

That asshole ruined everything.

He jumped.

Bard disappeared from view, only for a moment, before he sailed over the edge after me.

My back hit the water, and a thousand shards of glass bit into my flesh. It knocked the air from my lungs, swallowed me up in thrashing mud, and tossed me in all directions. I flailed, arms, legs, fighting to get to the surface but too disoriented to even know where that was.

Each attempt failed, and with every passing second, the burn in my lungs turned to needles. White blurred the edges of my vision, and I was about to give in, take a lungful of that deadly water and allow fate to have me...

Something gripped my shirt, then a pair of familiar arms circled my waist.

Bard pulled me to the surface, struggling to hold my weight against the torrential current. "I've got you!" he heaved, voice harsh and strained.

I gasped and spluttered, desperate for air, but the river continued to smack into mouth and steal it.

Bard gripped me tight and pulled the bag off my back, then did the same to his. "Hang onto it!" he yelled, gripping his own in front of him. Surprisingly, they floated, which made no sense to me, but I was too focused on surviving to question it.

I clung to the pack, survival instincts set to high, and desperately fought to keep my head above the surface.

"The log!" Bard motioned to a fallen tree ahead of us. "Grab it!"

We were moving so fast. It was impossible to see. The scenery flew by too quick to focus on any one thing before the river would change our direction again. We were nothing but more debris being carried away, rejected by Mother Nature herself.

But I focused on that damn log. Each time the water would whip me, I'd wildly search until I found it again, and my heart thundered as the crucial moment drew nearer. Almost there. A few feet. A foot less. There...

I lunged, barely caught hold of the coarse bark with the tips of my fingers. It dug in and cut my skin, but I clutched with all the force I had. I couldn't let go.

Bard reached around and grabbed onto a knuckle coming off the side. "Pull, Jessie! Pull yourself forward!"

I tried, but my upper body strength was no match for the watery demon fighting to yank us downstream. "I can't!"

Bard grunted. His hand palmed my back while his other held the log in a strained grip. He pushed me with another grunt, an angry sound as if he were yelling at his own limbs to be stronger. Once further up, I was able to get a better grip on the tree and help pull us along.

"That's it. Almost there," he huffed.

My fingers dug into the muddy bank, and a loud crack rattled my frame. The log shifted and groaned. I clutched hold of mud and rock as it started to roll over.