The Painter's Apprentice

Chapter 23

My head breaks the surface of the water, and I gulp in air between sputtering coughs. I blink water from my eyes while my hands paw through the darkness in search of Destan. I call out his name, but the roar of falling water drowns out all other sounds. He finds me first, grabbing hold of my wrist when the moon appears from behind a cloud and illuminates the scene around us.

We float in the center of a river, a great waterfall behind us. The river flows through a dense, wild forest toward someplace that glows with pale, cold light. The entire world around us seems touched with an incandescence of life. The fungus growing on trees. The moss on water-slicked rocks. Even the flowers that bow their heads over the banks of the rushing river are lit from within. Flickers of light float through the air like curious stars, come down to investigate our arrival.

Destan pulls me towards me toward the waterfall and the weight of what we've done hits me. We weren't ready for this. We weren't prepared.

We swim through the waterfall. I forget how to breathe as a massive volume of water pounds my head, but Destan tugs me onward. On the other side of the waterfall, the roar of the falls echoes off a sheer wall of rock. "Destan!" I have to scream to hear my voice over the deafening thunder of the churning water.

He helps me out of the water onto the rocks, my feet sliding and scrambling for purchase. When they slip out from underneath me, he picks me up and sets me on an even surface, my back to the rockface. He lost the ribbon that held back his hair in the water. Dark, wet waves hang down to his shoulders and stick to his face. My breathing is heavy as I dig my fingers into the slimy surface of the stone. "Je suis désolé," I cry over the din. "I didn't mean to bring us through the portal. I — I didn't touch it!"

"I know," Destan says, his eyes scanning me for injury. He moves to stand closer to me so I can hear him better. "I saw what happened. It wanted you to come through."

"Then we are expected?" I shiver as my water-soaked clothes grow colder in the night air.

Destan's jaw pulses. I can feel a heat coming off him, but I don't dare lean into it.

"I don't know. But we need to go back. Now. Before anyone discovers we're here. I'm going to see if there is a portal at the bottom of the falls."

He steps down into the water's edge with impossibly sure footing. I start to follow, but he holds up a hand. "Wait here. I'll come back for you if I find something." He sinks into the water before I can object and disappears behind the falls.

I don't trust my feet to navigate the rocks on my own so I'm stuck to the cold stone wall until he gets back. I wrap my arms around my waist and clench my chattering teeth, but it doesn't stop the cold from seeping into my bones.

Destan's head breaks the surface of the water and his expression makes my stomach sink. "Nothing," he says. "The portal was one way only."

"So we have to find our own way—" My words catch in my throat as Destan disappears underwater in a blink of an eye. "Destan?" I shout, inching away from the wall to see if I can spot him in the river. All I see is churning black water and a froth of white foam on the surface. Then a hand closes roughly around my left arm. I turn, expecting to find Destan beside me, but I'm shocked to see a tall faerie man in burnished gold armor. He doesn't wear a helm, his long, pointed ears on display with the front of his chest-length silky red hair pulled back. He is so pale, his skin glows blue in the light of the luminescent plantlife behind the waterfall.

I try to twist my arm out of his grasp but a faerie woman in matching armor appears on my other side and takes my right arm. She is as dark as her companion is pale. Her brown skin shines with a purple shimmer and her dark hair is woven into many two-stranded braids. The twists are decorated with gold jewelry to match her armor.