Caedrion's mind rebelled.
One moment he had been leaning back in the marble baths of Dawnhaven, steam easing the ache from his limbs, the grime of a year's war slowly lifting from his skin.
A quiet moment at last, the first since Emberhold's fall.
The next… darkness. Salt. Water crushing in from all sides. Arms, pale and inhuman, coiled about his chest.
His ears roared with pressure, his chest clamped like an iron vice, every instinct screaming to thrash upward, but there was no upward, no surface, only black water swallowing him whole.
He gasped, but air did not come. Instead warmth, teal and radiant, filled his lungs, not his own breath, but another's.
He coughed, choking, half-swallowed by the glow before he realized he was still alive. Still breathing. Somehow.
And then he saw her.
