"Flames?" I asked, stilling at her side suddenly as the memory of my mother's lips moving as she burned on the pyre echoed in my brain.
"They said it was just the sound of the current," she sighed. "That the woman screaming was my mother on the shore before she dove into the water."
Flames hovered at the edge of my vision as I said the words I didn't really want an answer to. I hadn't paid any attention to the date on the reports, hadn't bothered to care about the details beyond how it would influence my understanding of Isa. "When was the accident?"
"I was five," she responded.
"The day, Isa," I said, my voice sharper than I'd intended.
"June fourteenth," she said, her face turning more serious as she studied me curiously. My head roared with the connection, my mind working to convince me that coincidences happened sometimes. With anything else, it might have worked.
If it hadn't been the fourteenth anniversary of my mother’s death.
20
Isa
His sudden stillness felt like an omen of disaster, but he brushed it off and turned a smile to me as if the moment had never happened. "My mother died in a fire on June fourteenth," he said, exhaling a ragged sigh as he propped an elbow up on the rock face and ran a thumb over my cheek to wipe away my tears.
"How is that possible?" I asked, my eyes widening as the implications of his words struck me in the chest. Three events on one day, in three separate years.
"Our connection goes back farther than you can imagine, Princesa," he murmured softly, touching his lips to my cheek briefly before he pushed off from the rock face and floated on his back. I eyed the water below him, suddenly longing to take that leap of faith.
But the shadows rippling in the clear waters did nothing to persuade me into pushing off the ledge. My hands clung to the rocks, needing the stability and the safety of knowing I could pull myself out of the water if something went wrong.
If something grabbed me and tried to pull me under.
The crystal clear waters showed straight through to the sandy bottom, despite the striking depth of the water. In spite of the shadows rippling, there was nothing in the water to grab hold of me. No barbed wire to get tangled up in and nothing to tear into my skin and rip the flesh apart as I struggled to get free.
Rafael noticed the deep breath I took as I spun to put my back to the ledge, my fingers still clinging to it desperately as my lungs heaved with the exertion of suppressing my panic. "I dare the spirits to try to take you from me," he said with a dark smile. "There is nothing that can keep me from you, Isa," he said, dropping from his back and moving his arms in the water as his legs kicked to keep him afloat.
I looked down at the water, at the solid bottom and the absence of a pit to lead me straight to the underworld.
And I let go.
Water rushed toward my face as I dropped into it, kicking my legs desperately to keep my head above water. A deep gasping breath escaped my lungs as I waited for the moment when something would grab me. For that second in time when my movement would attract the phantoms in the water.
Instead, Rafe moved into my space, taking my arms and sliding them beneath the water’s surface to sway front to back and side to side slowly. There was nothing but him as the steady motion of his legs and arms sank into me and I absorbed his rhythm into my being the same as when we'd danced. My legs stopped kicking frantically, mimicking the slow but wide kicks of his until I felt like a mirror of his movements.
His hands slid down my arms until his fingers laced with mine.
Forged in fire. Forged in water.
Two opposites of the same coin, he moved our hands together and showed me how to float at the surface of the water as he held my eyes. "I'm the only phantom you need to worry about now, Princesa," he said, the words jarring loose a tendril of memory.
Of the phantom who'd tucked me into bed and the shadows that hovered around him.
Of the comfort I'd felt, despite the similarities between him and the beings who haunted my nightmares. Like I'd always belonged in the darkness, and my fear was all that stood in the way of me meeting that fate.
"If you can float, you can swim," he said, guiding me to my stomach. He slid his hands beneath me, supporting me through the motions as my panic rose and I hissed out a breath. The position should have been better, I hadn't had the ability to float on my stomach when I'd been caught in the barbed wire.
But something about having my stomach vulnerable to the creatures in the water somehow seemed worse. Only Rafe's hands on me prevented me from going underwater as common sense returned and I kicked my legs. I moved my arms through the water in the way I'd seen swimmers do in videos. My body slid forward, gliding through the water as Rafael's hands fell away and I nearly panicked. He swam at my side, encouraging me on until I huffed a small laugh of disbelief.
I still watched the water for shadows. I never went far from Rafe's side. But I swam on my own, comforted that the phantom at my side would protect me.
Because I was his to hurt, and nothing else would ever touch me.
Rafe stood on the balcony, leaning over the glass edge in a way that made me wonder how he didn’t fear the fall should it
