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The shouting above the surface turns muffled, distant, useless. Sunlight breaks across the water in fractured lines, and beneath it, below me, Elara is sinking.

Her hair spreads around her face. Her arm drifts upward. She is not fighting anymore. That’s what tears the air from my chest.

No.

I cut through the water toward her, every thought narrowing to the distance between my hand and her body. I reach her waist and drag her against me.

She is limp.

Her head falls back against my shoulder as I kick toward the surface, and the weight of her soaked clothes pulls at both of us.

For one terrible second, I think I am too late.

Then we break through.

“Elara,” I say, turning her face out of the water. “Breathe.”

Nothing.

Her lashes stay shut.

Water runs down her cheeks and over her pale lips.

“Elara.” I hate the way my voice trembles when I say her name.

Then her body jerks.

She coughs, a violent, broken sound, and water spills from her mouth as she drags in a breath. The relief is so staggering it almost hurts.

I pull her against my chest. “That’s it,” I say, one hand cupping the back of her head. “Again. Breathe again.”

She coughs once more, choking and shuddering, her fingers scraping blindly over my shoulder until she finds my skin and clings to me.

I let her hold on. I would let her claw me bloody if it kept her breathing.

“Nikolai!” Viktor shouts from the terrace.

Anya is crying behind him. “Papa!”

I look up once.

Viktor has her in his arms, but she is trying to twist free, her face pale and terrified.

“Take her inside,” I order.

“She wants to see⁠—”

“Inside, Viktor.”

He stops arguing.

Then, quieter, because my daughter is watching me and I need to remember that, I say, “Please.”

Viktor understands. He carries her away while she cries for Elle.

Elara coughs against my shoulder, folding into me as if she no longer has the strength to hold herself upright.

“I have you,” I tell her. “You are out of the water. Anya is safe.”