Page 54 of Fierce Highland Magic

"And you make a great many rules for someone who refuses to admit she wants anything."

The market leaned nearer.

My face went hot.

"I want to leave."

"There," he said softly. "That one was easy."

"It isn't the same."

"No." He looked at the black water. "It isn't."

I should have answered. I had several options available, most of them sharp. But the first pale shape beneath the water drifted close to the surface.

It had hands.

Small hands, pressed palm-up against the underside of the black reflection.

The blue lamps trembled.

Rowan stepped into the water.

It should have reached his ankles.

Instead, it swallowed his boots to mid-calf. He stopped. The muscles in his shoulders went tight beneath his coat.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing."

I laughed once. It came out brittle. "That word is going to kill me."

"Not tonight, ideally." He took another step. The water climbed to his knees.

It wasn't moving. It didn't splash or ripple. It simply rose around him, smooth and black, the surface holding too still against his legs.

Rowan looked back at me. "Stay where you are."

"That is not happening."

"Lyra."

"You bought a crossing. I am crossing it." I stepped into the water.

Cold hit first.

Not loch-water cold or rainwater cold. This cold moved through my boots and skin and straight into the spaces behind my ribs, as though the passage had found every hollow place inside me and poured winter into it.

The water reached my ankles. Then my knees. I looked down.

It hadn't risen. The lane had deepened.

The dry arch at the far end remained exactly where it had been: thirty feet away, blue-lit, close enough to reach in half a minute.

Rowan took three steps.

The arch remained thirty feet away.