They were underwater, speeding to the bottom of a lake and Gavriel Sterling wanted that thing gone.

Every instinct he had screamed to burn it out. His magic agreed.

His green coiled around the parasite, or suppressor, or whatever it was, and pulled hard, the way you pull a weed from wet soil, and for half a second he felt it give, felt the smothering thing loosen its grip on her magic, felt her pink flare brighter in response like a fire finding oxygen.

Then he felt the roots.

Deep. Tangled into things he couldn’t see, threaded through pathways he didn’t understand, connected to systems he had no map for. This wasn’t a weed. This was infrastructure, and he’d almost yanked it out of the ground without knowing what it was holding up.

Rationality kicked in like a boot to the chest.

He released it. Immediately. Hard. The green pulled back so fast it snapped against him like a rubber band and left a hollow ache behind his sternum. The smothering thing settled back into place like it had never been disturbed.

She didn’t even seem to notice he did anything, which also alarmed him more.

But he stopped because he didn’t know what this was. For all he knew, it was load-bearing. It could be Maelor’s cloak. The thing Maelor reapplied every few days to hide her from the Emperor, the magical equivalent of a witness protection program that required constant maintenance.

If Gavriel’s magic ripped that off, it would be the equivalent of lighting a flare in a dark field and handing the Emperor a pair of binoculars.

It could also be the tether itself. The shadow-tether to the High Emperor that the ancestors warned was accelerating, the one that tightened every time her emotions spiked, the one that was slowly, systematically strangling her magic like a vine strangling a tree.

Something was wrapped around her magic that was hurting her, and it had been hurting her, and the fact that she’d been carrying it without complaint made him want to find every person who should have noticed and ask them what the fuck they’d been paying attention to instead.

Either way, Gavriel Sterling would be removing it the moment they were out of this water. If it was the cloak, Maelor could recloak her with something that wasn’t hurting her. If it was the tether, then Maelor could supervise while Gavriel removed it. Gavriel would be the first to agree he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, but he knew one thing for certain, he could remove it and his magic knew what to do.

He wasn’t fully in control of it yet. But it responded to his thoughts the way a new horse responds to a rider, mostly cooperative, occasionally opinionated, capable of doing what he wanted as long as what he wanted aligned with what it considered reasonable.

That’s when he noticed the water around them was turning green.

The color spread outwards from both their bodies in a luminous cloud, bright emerald light bleeding into the black water the way ink bleeds through cloth. The same green from the volcanic pool.

The same green from the parachute. His magic was broadcasting itself into the lake like a signal flare in a mineshaft, and he hadn’t told it to do that, which meant his magic had opinions about darkness and was expressing them without consultation.

He felt Serena’s surprise through the matebond because she’d expected pink or gold and gotten neither.

Rook: Subtle.

Gavriel: Shut up.

Rook: Nothing will notice the enormous green man illuminating the entire lake.

Gavriel: I liked you better when you were just instincts and growling.

It didn’t last. After ten more seconds of being dragged, the light grew sluggish, dimming at the edges, struggling to bloom the way a flame struggles in thin air. The depth was smothering it, the sheer weight of water and pressure and ancient dark magic pressing back against his green like a hand pushing against a lantern.

Serena’s heartbeat thudded through the matebond so loud he could feel it in his own ribs and hear it in his ears.

She was afraid.

The fear poured through every channel between them, matebond and Fae frequency and the contact of his arm against her body, and he could distinguish it from his own fear the way you distinguish two instruments playing the same note in different octaves.

His fear was controlled, compartmentalized, the fear of a warrior who had been trained to function while terrified and had been doing it long enough to treat the feeling as background noise.

Hers was different. Hers was coiling tight in her chest like a fist closing, getting tighter with every foot of descent, and he could feel something underneath it that wasn’t just fear of the depth. It was the memory of the last lake.

They were well over a hundred feet under and still being pulled towards the bottom at velocity. That alone could kill a wolf without deep-water experience, the pressure alone capable of rupturing eardrums and collapsing lungs. Experience was the thing that kept you calm when calm was the only thing keeping you alive.

Serena had some training with the Draken Forces and she had been in battle. But she was not a full-blown warrior and would be the first to admit that.

The deeper they went, the heavier everything became. Her limbs. Her breath. The fear compressing in her chest like the water was compressing around them, tight and tighter, walls closing, the black getting blacker, and he recognized the shape of it through the matebond: claustrophobia.

Genuine, visceral, born from a year in a dungeon cell that was too small and a lake that tried to kill her and a body that remembered both.

He couldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t have blamed anyone.

Gavriel: Serena.

Serena: Gav.

The voice she used to respond to him with was calm and did not match the panic.

Gavriel: Remember when you asked if I trusted you?

Serena: Yes.

Gavriel: Do you trust me?

Serena: Yes.

Gavriel: Good. Then stop white-knuckling your composure and let me carry it for a minute. I just parachuted us off a volcano. I’m qualified.

Her surprise bled through their connection, like she thought she was hiding it from him. It was cute. Almost funny. Gavriel would take surprise over fear any day.

Gavriel: Want to hear something funny?

Serena: We are sinking into a black abyss, Gav.

Gavriel: Right. So you could use something funny.

Serena: What?