Chapter 206: The Lake 2

BONNIE

"Now."

"We don’t even know if we’re surrounded." I kept my voice low, glancing back towards the manor. "You said yourself that someone might be following us. You said—"

"Bonnie, look around."

I did.

The cars remained lined up beside the house, and the staff were busy carrying luggage through the open front door. But of the dozen sentinels who had climbed out of the vehicles minutes earlier, I could see only four. The others had disappeared into the grounds. A flicker of gray moved along the hedge. Someone slipped around the corner of the stable, while another figure crossed the roofline with a rifle slung across his back, silhouetted against the sky before vanishing from sight.

"They’ve already taken their positions," Lysander murmured. "They’ve been preparing for this since last night. The others are keeping watch from places you can’t see." His gaze returned to mine, and a wicked grin spread across his face. "Besides, if anything does happen, I’m counting on you to save my life. It would be a shame to waste your talents by staying on dry land."

"That is not funny."

"It’s a little funny."

"It really isn’t."

He gave my hand a light tug before releasing it and setting off across the lawn, his hands slipping into his pockets as he whistled a carefree tune. He didn’t even bother looking back to see whether I was following.

"Fuck’s sake," I muttered.

For three full seconds, I stood glaring at his retreating figure, caught between the urge to drag him back by the collar and the equally strong desire to see what he was so eager to show me. Then I gathered my green skirt in both hands and hurried after him.

The grass gave softly beneath my boots, springy and damp in the shade cast by the manor. We crossed the slope in silence, the distance between us narrowing as the ground dipped away. The breeze strengthened with every step, carrying the cool, earthy scent of the water and the faint smell of reeds.

Then the trees fell behind us, and the lake opened into view.

It stretched across the valley below, wide and startlingly blue, its surface broken by long, silver ripples wherever the wind brushed against it. A wooden dock extended from the near bank, its weathered boards bleached almost white by years of sun and rain. Across the water, dark pines crowded the opposite shore, their reflections wavering beneath them. Farther along, a shelf of rock jutted over the water, sheltering a natural basin between two broad shoulders of stone. Even from where we stood, I could see how clear the water was, darkening to a deep, glassy blue where the rocks plunged beneath the surface.

We stopped at the edge of the bluff, and I looked down at the water, suddenly aware of just how far we were above it. The drop was perhaps twelve feet, enough to make my stomach tighten if I thought too hard about jumping.

"Oh," I breathed, the word barely audible.

It was beautiful. An inadequate word for what lay before me, but the only one that came to mind. Sunlight scattered across the water in bright, shifting coins, and dragonflies skimmed above the reeds, their wings catching the light whenever they turned. Somewhere along the shore, a bird called out the same two notes over and over, with the persistence of a creature that had yet to learn any others. The air smelled of cold water and crushed greenery, fresh enough to make me draw a deeper breath.

For the first time since the dream, I realized my shoulders had loosened. The tension I’d been carrying since waking had eased without my noticing, and for a few precious moments, I wasn’t thinking about what might be waiting for us at the manor, or what I’d promised Lysander I would tell him. I was simply standing there, looking at a lake.

I turned to share the thought with him.

Lysander wasn’t looking at the lake.

He stood a pace away, the sun behind him and the breeze stirring the hair at his temples. His jacket was gone, and his shirt sleeves were rolled neatly to his elbows. The light caught the edges of his hair, turning them gold, while the wind pressed his linen shirt against his chest.

His gaze was fixed on me with such unguarded tenderness that I lost track of what I’d intended to say.

He looked, I thought with a sudden and thoroughly inconvenient flutter in my stomach, rather lovely.

Heat crept up my neck.

"What?" I demanded.

"Nothing."

The bond hummed between us, warm and entirely without shame. It carried the truth his mouth had declined to offer, and there was no mistaking it. Lysander had never managed to conceal his feelings from me through our connection, not even when he’d tried, and he made no attempt to hide them now. His affection reached me in a quiet, overwhelming rush, so sincere and unguarded that it left me feeling strangely exposed.

It settled beneath my ribs, warm and heavy, like a hand resting over my heart.

He was a terrible liar. The unfortunate part was that I wasn’t sure I could have done any better. Whatever he was feeling from me was probably reaching him with exactly the same clarity, which meant he knew perfectly well that I was standing there blushing over a man who had done nothing more than look at me.

"You’re staring," I managed.

"I am."

There was no embarrassment in his voice, not even the courtesy of pretending he’d been caught doing something he ought not to do.

Then, without warning, he turned and took two quick strides towards the edge.

For a fraction of a second, I thought he meant to look down at the water.

Instead, he jumped.

I opened my mouth, but the scream caught somewhere in my throat as Lysander launched himself off the bluff. His arms spread wide, and a delighted whoop tore from him as he sailed out over the drop, looking less like a king than a boy who had just discovered he could fly.

For one absurd moment, he hung against the blue sky, his shirt snapping in the wind and his hair flying back from his forehead.

Then gravity claimed him.

He hit the lake with a tremendous splash, sending a sheet of white water into the air.

My teeth snapped together on a scream.

The surface swallowed him. Ripples spread across the lake, widening into overlapping rings, while the heron abandoned the shallows with an indignant croak and flapped furiously towards the opposite bank.

I stared at the water.

One second passed.

Then another.

By the third, I was moving.

"Lysander!"

His name tore from me, cracking halfway through. I rushed to the edge, my shoes scraping against the rock, and stopped so abruptly that loose gravel skittered over the drop.

My toes hung over the lip.

"Lysander!"

He surfaced about twenty feet from the bluff, shaking his head vigorously as though he were a dog fresh out of a bath. Laughter followed him out of the water, and he dragged both hands through his hair, slicking the wet strands away from his face. Water streamed down his forehead and along his jaw, dripping from his chin into the lake. His shirt clung to his chest, soaked through and nearly transparent.

I could have strangled him.

"Have you lost your mind?" I shouted.

"Come down!" He kicked lazily beneath the surface, treading water with the infuriating ease of someone who had absolutely no appreciation for the heart attack he’d just given me. "It’s wonderful! Bonnie, you’d love it!"

"Get out of the water!"

"Why?"

I stared at him, momentarily speechless at the sheer audacity of the question. "Because you’re the Regent! Because you’re a target! Because there are people out there who would happily put a knife or a fucking between your ribs, and you’ve just thrown yourself off a cliff into a lake like an overgrown child!"

I pointed furiously towards the opposite bank. "Look at the tree line. That ridge gives anyone watching a clear shot at the water, and the sentinels on this side wouldn’t see them until it was too late. You can’t just abandon every sensible precaution because you feel like taking a swim!"

"Then you should come down and protect me," he called back.

I gaped at him.

"That is not an argument!"

"It’s a very good argument."

I spun around, desperate for someone to share in my outrage, only to find two sentinels standing at the top of the slope with their arms folded. Both wore expressions of impressive neutrality, though one had the unmistakable look of a man fighting for his life against a laugh. The other had apparently discovered something fascinating in the clouds.

I stared at them in disbelief.

"Useless," I muttered.

When I turned back to the lake, Lysander was no longer laughing.