Explosions sound in the distance, deep rumbles, and I see points of light on the surface. A surface which is only paces above me, instead of the miles I felt. The water has cleared too, my visions gone, and I see the explosions are people diving into the ocean, the light millions of bubbles exploding around them, caught in the evening sun.

  They have bald heads and flowing blue robes. Overseers.

  I slam my blind up, not even realizing it was down. And think fast: seeing the surface instead of darkness must mean I survived my immersion. I feel a swell of joy, of accomplishment, but it won’t mean much if the overseers find me. That must be what they’re doing, searching. My lungs burn for air, but surfacing now would be suicide.

  So I swim deeper. I have no idea which direction land is—I can’t see it in any direction. Did I drift so far? Keeping my blind thick, I swim away from the overseers, lungs hitching. How long have I been under? I don’t know, but I can’t risk surfacing until I’m farther from the overseers. I’ve survived this long—apparently all afternoon—without breathing. Uje let whatever magic the immersion was hold a little longer.

  My lungs convulse and I swim harder, icing panic. What was it anyway? A hallucination? But it felt real, Urte and Regiana and my father so accurately themselves. I’ve never doubted Ujeism’s teachings about life being a continuation, without beginning middle or end, but it’s one thing to know it and another to experience it. I can still feel them with me in the water, almost like Yelin’s bundle of emotions inside.

  And the deluge. I understand now what my father saw in the Chronicles, why people called him a heretic. Everyone thinks the next deluge is centuries away. But I saw something different.

  I surface and suck sweet lungfuls of air, vision swimming slightly. I keep my head low, and as soon as I can think again I peer around. The boat the overseers must have dived from is seven or eight hundred paces away. Behind it are the sea-cliffs, foggy with distance and the sun’s red glow.

  I almost suck sea water in my shock. The setting sun? Two thousand paces away? I leapt in sometime around noon—I’ve been under for hours, and drifted miles in the current.

  I should be dead.

  Should be, but I’m not, and I have things to do if I’m still breathing. I start the long swim back to the cliffs, body aching in a dozen places from the beating I took in the temple, circling wide of overseer boats. The first thing is escaping—I have to get away from Serei, if I’m going to do anything about what I saw.

  But I can’t leave Gaxna.

  Responsibility and guilt hit me like hammers. No, not guilt—love. Guilt wouldn’t drive me like this has, wouldn’t make me do all the crazy things I’ve done since Gaxna was taken. So I admit to myself, alone out here in the water with a good chance of dying, that I love Gaxna. And saving the world won’t mean much to me if she isn’t in it.

  I feel resistance then, a push against my decision, and realize it’s coming from the water. Coming from that deep mind that might have been Urte or my father or ancestors or Uje for all I know. It wants me to escape, to dedicate my life to fixing the world’s mistakes. And I will. I want to.

  Just as soon as I have Gaxna back.

  The resistance keeps on, and I ignore it. Focus on my breathing, and on my plans for how to get to her. I don’t know how to defeat Nerimes, the temple is probably crawling with overseers, and as far as I know, everyone loyal to my cause got killed or bloodborn during the last battle. So it’s not going to be easy, but swimming two thousandpace gives me a long time to think.

  By the time I get to shore, I have a plan.

  The first part involves climbing through the caves again. It’s not the safest way into the temple, but it’s the fastest, and I can’t stop thinking about Nerimes saying he might find a use for Gaxna. I pray that he doesn’t, for her sake—death would be better—even as I pray that he does, so she’s still alive when I get there.

  The caves are busier than this morning, and I spend a lot of time ducking into alcoves and hermit caves, unable to disguise myself and unwilling to spend the time fighting my way up. Then I hear a familiar voice among the muttered conversations, and feel a familiar presence in my chest, just a few feet away.

  Dashan.

  I wait till the group has passed—about five people, all our age—then slip behind and try to pull Dashan aside. He yelps instead, and the whole group turns. I curse.

  “Theia?” he says, amazed. “I—I thought you were dead!” The others—mostly students from our class—echo him.

  “That’s how I wanted it,” I hiss back, pulling them into a side cavern. “What are you doing down here? Hunting me?”

  “We’re escaping,” Erjuna says, former head of Dashan’s house. “The temple’s gone mad.”

  “And we believe you,” another puts in. “We saw what you showed in the water.”

  “And saw how Nerimes sold us out to the witches,” Dashan says, face dark. “They got our blood.”

  “You’ll be fine,” I say, trying to get them to keep their voices down. “They can’t bloodpush you through your blind.”

  “But what about when we’re not holding it up?”

  I smile. “Welcome to my world. You have to learn to never let it down.”

  “Theia,” Dashan says, gripping my arm. “Tee. Come with us. We’re going to start our own temple, reform Ujeism to include women.”

  “You—what?” It’s like he’s read my mind. Then reality hits. “You and these four?”

  “There are more,” he says, shaking his head. “Everyone who survived. A lot of people who used to be on Nerimes’ side.”

  Uje. I know what my father would say. I know what I should do. But—“I can’t. Gaxna’s still up there.”

  His grip tightens on my arm. “Flood Gaxna! This is the temple we’re talking about. Your people! We need a leader.” Then through our skin: I need you, too.

  Love and commitment pour from him, intoxicating. But there’s fear, too. I probe a little deeper in his thoughts, trying to find why—and gasp.

  He jerks his hand away, eyes going wide, but it’s too late.

  “You bastard.”

  “Theia, I—”

  “You bastard!” I emphasize it with a slap to the face, hard enough that he staggers back.

  “Theia, wait, I can explain!”

  “Explain what? How you told Nerimes where I was hiding? Where he could find Gaxna? How you led them right to her? Explain! What!” I drive the words home with punches, my rage rising too hot to control. “She’d be alive if it weren’t for you! Here with us! With me!”

  The others are simultaneously backing off and trying to shush me, but I’ve only got eyes for Dashan. I kneel to where he’s fallen, seize him by the neck. “You’ve got two breaths before I kill you. Tell me why I shouldn’t.”

  Fear and love and despair war on his face, flood through the blood bond. “I did this for you, Theia. To save you. She was dragging you down. But—yeah. Maybe you should kill me. I—”

  He’s actually weeping. Slops. I’m too angry to deal with a weeping Dashan right now. And I’ve got bigger things on my mind. “Good luck with your flooding temple,” I growl, pushing past the rest of them. “Try not betraying your friends next time.”

  “Theia wait!” he calls after me, echoed by the others, but I’ve got no ears for it. No blood except the rage boiling in my heart, that wishes to Uje I had killed him. Instead, I stalk right through the next group of men coming down the caves, just hoping they’re loyal to Nerimes, praying for a fight.

  They’re more seers, trying to escape. I ignore their cries, ignore their warnings about the halls above, how they’re full of overseers. I know that. I want to meet an overseer right now.

  Others warn that I can’t defeat Nerimes. That I already tried with all the help they could give, and failed. But I can feel the usurper inside me now, like a little spark of arrogance and ambition. And nothing would feel better than crushing it.

  I stalk through the kitchens and climb the stairs to the temple, anger in my heart and death in my hands. An overseer turns the corner and I lash out at him—not with the iron fire poker I took from the kitchens, but the truths I carry in my mind.

  He wasn’t there for my argument for Nerimes—Miyara conveniently kept them back until after the talking was done. So I show my proofs to him now, force them into his mind through the water. And add what I saw in my immersion, the proof that the deluge is coming and Ujeism is wrong.

  He gasps, going rigid where he stands. I stalk past, poker still swinging in one hand. One for me. Another appears, probably drawn by the confused thoughts the first man is releasing into the water. I thought-push him too, show him all the things Nerimes did to set my dad up, force him to know all the proofs that the Seilam Deul were behind it. And as an afterthought, I add a selection of my own life, of how hard it was to grow up a female seer.

  He collapses to the stream-covered floor and I move on. The truth hurts. But I’ve already been through my pain.

  More overseers come. I thought-push them, strike down the occasional one who offers some resistance, read in their panicked thoughts the last known location of Gaxna. Unsurprisingly, the story I piece together is that Nerimes and Ieolat left the ceremony with her in tow. Of course, she’d be with Nerimes, the one person I don’t know if I can defeat. It doesn’t change my mind. Other people know about the deluge now—let them save the world, if they’re going to. I’m going to save the only part I still care about.

  I drop a squad of overseers five-wide with my truths, mercilessly push into them the memories of being excluded from student Houses, singled out by trainers, teased by students when no seers were around. Find myself dry-eyed about it all just as they’re weeping and repenting. Good. Maybe the temple won’t need as much work as I thought.

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  And then I’m at Nerimes’ door, heavy wooden slabs reinforced with iron. He likely knows I am coming by now. That’s fine. I’ve made no effort to keep my presence hidden. I don’t think I could surprise the man anyway.

  So it’s no shock to find him garbed and facing the doors as I push in, bedchamber broad and luxurious behind him. My father lived here once, but silks and statuettes spread like rot over the simple furnishings he kept.

  “Aletheia Vjolla,” Nerimes says, shaking his head. “I thought I was done with you.”

  “I wish to hell I was done with you. But I saw things. You saw them too, if you actually went through your immersion.” I bar the door behind me, wanting no interruptions.

  “I went through it.” Nerimes waves a hand. “Air-deprived hallucinations. No one’s ever been able to make any sense of it.”

  “My father was making sense of it. You just didn’t want to believe what he found out.”

  “His heresies, you mean?” the man asks, and from his intonation I know he knows exactly what I know.

  But how could anyone know that, have seen the destruction of all the people in the world, and not want to do something about it?

  “Do you not care even for your own salvation? I mean, this thing is coming soon. It could be next month.”

  He smiles richly. “Ah, the idealism of a new seer. Everyone goes through it, you know. The conviction the world is ending. The passion to do something. The surety that the temple needs to change, Ujeism needs to change. There are actually quite a few seers we’ve had to put down because of it, because they couldn’t see reason.”

  “Reason? What’s reasonable about letting the world die? And us too?”

  He cocks his head. “I suppose it isn’t reasonable. Not really. But this has ever been the way of society: the sacrifice of the many for the good of the few. You know how Serei was built, don’t you?”

  Everyone knows the story of Old Serei, of the theocrats forcing the rest of the city into hard labor to build their mansions. “That’s our past. I’m talking about our future.”

  He nods. “An extremely brief future, if the accounts of recent immersions are true.”

  I shake my head, forgetting even Gaxna for a moment. “So what, you’re just okay with dying? With letting everyone die? Why did you work so hard to get here, if you knew it was all going to fall apart?”

  “Ah,” his eyebrows go up, “that’s exactly why I had to work so hard. I’m sorry it involved the death of your father. But Uje—well, let’s call it the Power, shall we?—was never going to save everyone. Just the best of us. Your father probably knew that too. He just wasn’t the best.”

  I’m not going to get a clear answer from him. I scan the room, the wide bed and large glass windows and heavy trunks.

  “Looking for your friend?”

  I curse, remembering again that he can read me through my blind. I have to keep my mind off the plan.

  “Or should I say lover? Don’t worry, she’s perfectly fine. Taneyen?”

  A laborer comes from the back room, carrying a heavy bundle. No, not a bundle—Gaxna. She’s stiff as a board, frozen in an upright position, only her eyes darting back and forth.

  “What did you do to her?” But I know almost before he says it.

  “Bloodpushing, of course. As a senior witch, Miyara’s had her blood for ages. We think she’ll be useful in reeducating the city. Not as good as you would have been, but the girl has some seership, and she has a connection to you, should we need that. How fitting, then, that she will watch you die.”

  My mind spins in the background of my emotions. He admits girls can have watersight? Use her to reeducate the city? Why bother if everyone’s going to die?

  But the forefront is all emotion, a thick river of horror and anger and love. I grit my teeth, focusing on the anger. That’s what I need right now, if I’m going to have any chance of beating Nerimes.

  His eyebrows rise just a fraction before I strike, swinging the fire poker like a regular staff. A staff made of iron. And pointed with a wicked barb.

  He blocks, but there is a difference between iron and wood. Yes, iron is slower and heavier. But its momentum—

  He curses, stumbling back and clutching his arm. I don’t think I broke anything yet, but I’m just getting started. He comes at me again, lightning fast, but I get the poker up, aim the long barb so he can’t touch me without impaling himself. Cursing, he goes for his staff.

  I don’t want him armed, but I need Gaxna’s help more. “Gaxna! Remember what we did with Estrija! You can beat them! Just focus!”

  She broke through Estrija’s bloodpush. Not much, and not for very long, but if she did it once, she can do it again. And if I can just keep Nerimes occupied long enough, maybe she can walk out of here, bloodpush or no.

  There’s no sign she heard me, but I know she did. Nerimes is coming back, robes billowing behind him. “Fight it!” I cry, and then the battle is joined again.

  It’s like the other times I’ve fought Nerimes: nearly hopeless. He is lightning fast, strong as two overseers, and impossible in how he reads my moves through my blind. I get hits in anyway, drawing yelps from the weight and barbs of the poker, but they are few and far between the blows he rains down on me.

  “Gaxna!” I yell. “You can do this!” I can’t spare much time to look at her, but I don’t think she’s moved an inch. Nerimes strikes in again and I roll left, his staff shattering a tall vase where I’d been. The room is already in shambles. I am losing. But in my growing despair I feel a seed of arrogant satisfaction, alongside the seeds of worry and pain that I know are not mine.

  And I smile, knowing my plan might still work.

  I lash out at Nerimes through the water. Push his own injustices and heresies back at him, like I did with the overseers. Add my visions in the immersion and my life as a girl in the training.

  It barely fazes him. I think I see an eyebrow go up as our staffs clash again, my strike at his sternum deflected to just graze his ribcage. I slip back under his counterattack, nearly stumbling into the bed. I didn’t think that would work. But if my theory is right—

  I summon a furious offensive, driving him across the room, willing my iron rod to break his staff or arms or legs. And at the height of it, when he is back footed, I push my mind out again.

  Only this time I don’t push it through water. I push it through blood.

  He freezes. Because I force him to freeze, like I force people to hear my thoughts when I push thoughts through the water. Like I’m a seer and a theracant.

  Because I am.

  I strike in, ramming my poker straight at his forehead, in a blow that will crush his skull and the life within it. A hairsbreadth before it hits, he reacts, dodging back.

  It still hits. He screams, but instead of dying he stumbles back with hands to his face, where blood now gouts from a ruined eye socket. I strike again, to finish him, but Nerimes reacts. Despite my will in the blood, despite the loss of his eye, the man pulls back, swings his staff up in a clumsy counter.

  It isn’t much, but it’s enough to close the window I opened. I feel all the horror and pain and fear close up inside him, iced like I ice my emotions, though I don’t think I could ever manage to ice something that big, that powerful.

  “Bloodpushing,” he says, circling me now, voice calm despite the blood running free from his eye. “Clever. I should have expected it from a witch. When did you get my blood? In the fight, I suppose.” In the water, he calls for overseers, and a moment later there is pounding at the door.

  I try again, shoving my mind through the blood, willing him to freeze.

  It hits his blind, solid and cold as the one he keeps in the water. “Clever, but it won’t work twice.”

  He strikes in, and I counter, and the dance is joined again, twice as hard this time. He’s pushing for the end—needs to defeat me before blood loss makes him so weak his advantages don’t matter. All I have to do is hold out till then. Assuming the overseers don’t break in first.

  This is my last plan. My last move. It’s all skill and staff from here, unless Gaxna works her own blind up enough that she can walk out. I would leave this man in an instant if she could, and let the world burn.

  Gaxna moves. I glance left, and she is still moving—walking, actually. Victory wells up in me. She broke through the bloodpush!

  Nerimes’ remaining eye narrows, and I push him harder. “Gaxna!” I cry. “The window! Climb out of here!”

  She is going for the wall instead, where a sword and other weapons hang on a polished wood rack. “No!” I call. “I’ve got this! Get out!”

  She takes one, oblivious to me, and turns to the fight. That’s Gaxna, I guess. Stubborn to the last second. I smile despite myself.

  I guess we’ll kill him together then.

  I am so relieved, so excited to be done with this whole mess that I almost don’t see her sword chop. It’s not aimed at Nerimes.

  It’s aimed at me.

  I jump back at the last second, Nerimes scoring a blow on my shoulder. “Gaxna! What?”

  The Chosen smiles then. “Miyara has control of her now. However you may have trained her, whatever she managed against Estrija, it won’t make a difference. Not with a master bloodpusher controlling her.”

  Gaxna strikes at me again. It’s awful. I try to ice the horror, but my mind is too much of a glut now to focus on any one thing. I sidestep Nerimes’ blow, parry Gaxna’s slash, and see an opening to disarm her. To slash at her forearm in a move that would probably break it.

  But I can’t. I’m trying to save her, not kill her.

  Nerimes grins. “Having some trouble doing what you need to? That was the difference between your father and me, too.” He is panting now, his clothes and the floor a mess of blood, but his movements are still lightning quick. The pounding grows louder on the door. “He never could do what needed to be done. Neither can you, I see.”

  I redouble my attacks against him, trying to keep him between Gaxna and I, but he’s too smart for that, and again and again I am driven toward her, where she weeps but keeps swinging the short sword at me. I thank Uje that she is no swordswoman. Nor is Miyara, apparently.

  Still, I am driven back. I take blows from Nerimes and cuts from Gaxna. Pain and exhaustion slow my counters. And worse yet, the blows on the barred doors have become rhythmic, like the overseers are beating on it with something. I don’t trust myself to be able to convince them of the justice of my cause with Nerimes right here to counter me. And to fight him off. And to fight off Gaxna without killing her.

  I’m going to lose.

  We’re going to lose.

  “Gaxna!” I try once more. “Fight it! You can do this! I know you can! Remember Estrija!”

  There’s no sign that she’s heard me. There probably won’t be one. Miyara probably has her locked down tighter than the clamps on a wellhouse. I slash back at Nerimes, increasingly desperate. If I can just kill him, maybe I can disarm Gaxna and carry her out of here, whether she’s bloodborn or not.

  He evades it. Slowly, clumsily, but he evades it. And his staff takes my right knee from the side, just when my foot’s come down in his blood.

  I slip and land hard on my ribs. I try to roll up, but they are both there. Nerimes with a foot on my staff arm, and bloodborn Gaxna kneeling on my legs.

  “No,” I moan. Nerimes knocks the poker from my hands. “Why are you doing this?”

  I don’t know if I’m talking to Nerimes or Gaxna or Uje.

  “For the poetry of it, if nothing else,” Nerimes says, shooting off an order in the water for the overseers to stand down. “Your own puppy-lover forced to kill you in front of the man you hate. Oh, she’s going to have nightmares about this. Or maybe she’s getting used to those. Gaxna?”

  My friend, my lover, the only person I still truly care about in this world, raises the blade, double-fisted, pointing down at my chest.

  “Gaxna, no,” I whisper, shaking my head. At least let it be Nerimes. Let it be anyone but her.

  She pauses at the top, her eyes the wide panic of a bloodborn. I wait for it, cringing, trying to find space in my flood of fear and despair.

  Still, she pauses.

  After a second, Nerimes says. “Miyara? End this.”

  Still Gaxna doesn’t move. And I break out into a smile.

  “Fine,” Nerimes snaps, taking up a dagger nearby, movements sluggish. “Just as poetic if I do it. And I’ve got more important things to do tonight.”

  I try a last desperate push at him through the blood, hoping to freeze him too. No doing. The knife flashes down.

  It lands heavy as a sack of grain. There’s a pain in my chest, but it’s not as deep as it should be.

  I open my eyes and Gaxna is there, lying on top of me, her head next to mine, body a dead weight.

  “No,” I moan, pushing against her, willing her to get up. “No no no no no no NO!”

  Nerimes is cursing behind her, struggling with the dagger. Hot blood runs over me. Gaxna’s blood. She sacrificed herself to save me. “NO NO NO NO NO—”

  And then I catch a glimpse, just a fading beat, of a new seed in my heart, alongside my bloodbonds with Dashan and Yelin and Nerimes. A seed full of love, and sadness, and despair, but most of all love.

  Gaxna.

  The seed tells me she would not want me to lie here mourning her. She would want me to live.

  So I shove the body off me, onto Nerimes, icing what I can of the pain and horror and denial, and try to get up.

  “Overseers!” Nerimes shouts, leaping to his feet.

  There’s something wrong with me—not all the blood soaking my shirt is hers—and I stumble on my way up. Nerimes shoves Gaxna’s body off, getting to his feet too, and the rhythmic pounding begins again, door splintering.

  All my emotions crystallize then, into one desire: to kill Nerimes.

  I leap for him, bare-handed, in a perfect Drop That Breaks the Dam. He counters with an Ice in Summer Rain, and the dance is joined again, but my movements are too slow, my hands shaking. He is weaker too, his face a ruined mess, but still faster than me. The door splinters further.

  I try bloodpushing again, and his blind is weakened enough that it slows him, allows my poker to punch a hole in his stomach. At the same time, panicked thoughts slip through him in the water: thoughts of Miyara and Ieolat, of some secret cabal behind my father’s death.

  It is too fast to process, then he knocks my poker aside with Thunder Shakes the Rooftop, blind closing again. I strike in with Spring Erodes the Stone, and he meets it with a vicious Sleeting Rain. I slip backwards, nearly falling, and he picks up Gaxna’s sword.

  I understand with the insight that comes from deep breathing that I can either escape here or kill Nerimes, but not both. And of the two, Gaxna would want the first.

  So I get up. The door fractures halfway open on the far side of the room, and Nerimes stalks toward me, movements slowed but still deadly. The room grays some. I grab something next to me—another vase, I think—and smash it into the window. It breaks.

  There is a forty-foot drop to the gardens below, and just rough marble to cling to, but I will only join my dying lover if I stay.

  So I climb out, defeated, and run.