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Turo, Samora thought bitterly.

Her fingers brushed absently over the flesh surrounding the wound, her touch delicate despite the agony gnawing at her insides. She had tried to forgive him, even after he had driven the dagger into her side. She had tried to excuse his threats—his declaration that he would kill her child. She had convinced herself that he was just naive, young, influenced by her husband.

But this?

He had deliberately dragged her into the water, tried to drown her, and demanded her baby like it was some kind of trophy?

No, there was no excuse for that.

She wanted to scream, to spit in his face, to tell him what a fool he was. "He's still inside me, you idiot! I can’t just open my womb and hand him over to you like some prize!"

Did he really think it was that simple? Did he think childbirth was as easy as picking a fruit from one pile and throwing it into another? How could he be so blind? How selfish, how thoughtless.

She felt ashamed for ever loving him—how could she have been so foolish? How could she have let herself care for someone so broken, so twisted? Her hands trembled, her body racked with pain, a feeling of being torn apart from the inside out. How much longer? How much longer until the child inside her was born? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she had to make it to the other side of the lake before the time ran out.

The next contraction hit, stronger than before. A jagged burst of pain shot through her, seizing her body in its relentless grip. For the first time since she left Chief Marnoell’s hut, a strangled groan escaped her lips. She moaned, the sound echoing across the storm-wracked lake. It felt almost freeing—no one would dare follow her here, not in the forbidden waters.

She was already beyond their reach, in a place where she could no longer be touched by their laws, their rules, their expectations.

Here, she could feel.

Here, she could break.

When the contraction finally passed, Samora set the palm stem oar inside the coracle and leaned against the frame, allowing herself a brief moment of rest. She gazed upward at the rain-filled sky, though all she saw was darkness—above, below, around her. It was as if the world had become a blanket of heavy clouds, smothering everything, pressing down on her, making her feel small and invisible.

At first, raindrops pelted her face, stinging her eyes and blurring her vision, but they stopped as quickly as they had started. Still, she kept her eyes closed, trying to shut out the world, retreating into herself for a moment. Her mind wandered back to the simpler days—when life had been different. When she had been a child, and Calla had taught her and the other kids a song. A song she had sung a thousand times, but never really understood.

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Now, in the silent chaos of her escape, it suddenly made sense.

She hummed the tune softly at first. As the last of the pain from the contraction ebbed away, she took a breath and began to sing the words aloud, her voice the only sound in the otherwise silent night. The distant chirping of crickets was the only other noise to accompany her soft, fragile song.

"Waters rise and the skies do groan,

Cursed are the paths my feet have known.

The winds that howl, the storms that tear,

Were sewn by hands too proud to care."

Tears mingled with the rain on her cheeks, but she didn't wipe them away. She wondered—desperately—if she could make it across the lake, to the safety of the shore beyond. Would she survive the storm? Would her body hold out long enough for her to reach that distant land, or would the waters claim her?

Something jolted against the coracle, its sudden force nearly tipping the vessel sideways and plunging it into the water. Samora's heart raced. Panic flooded her chest as she gripped the frame, trying to steady herself. What had that been? Had she reached the shore? Was it a tree trunk, floating aimlessly in the water, that had struck her vessel?

But then, a more terrifying thought gripped her. Could it be a crocodile? She knew the lake harbored them, and the thought of one sensing her, drawn by the scent of her blood, made her stomach twist. Crocodiles could smell blood from miles away, couldn’t they? She wondered how many could be lurking beneath her, waiting. The idea of a dozen cold, hungry eyes staring up at her from the depths made her breath catch in her throat.

Was this how it would end? To escape the monsters of her own village only to meet her fate at the jaws of these flesh-hungry beasts?

She strained her eyes, searching the darkness that surrounded her, but saw nothing. The world felt utterly blind—completely consumed by the void. It was as if the night itself had swallowed her whole.

The coracle swayed again, this time much more violently, as if something from beneath the water was pulling at it. Or worse, climbing onto it. Her pulse hammered in her ears.

She gripped the palm stem tightly, her mind racing. Please, please don’t let it be a crocodile. She muttered the prayer silently, hoping that the gods might listen to her desperate plea.

Then, as if to answer her prayers, a flash of lightning illuminated the surrounding darkness. For a split second, the world around her was briefly revealed—shimmering water, the faint outline of trees swaying in the storm, and a figure clinging to a fallen palm trunk for buoyancy.

A knot twisted in her stomach.

And in that moment, she regretted praying for the presence of a crocodile. The beasts, though dangerous, would have been a merciful fate than what had truly found her.

It was Turo.

His wet, trembling form emerged from the darkness. His eyes locked onto her with a hunger that made her blood run cold. He had followed her into the water, but that wasn’t what terrified her. It was the desperate way he was trying to climb into her coracle, his hands reaching for the edge, his breath ragged from exhaustion.

The betrayal, the violence, the threats—all of it flooded back to her in an instant. She wanted to scream, to curse him, to push him back into the water. How could he be here? How could he follow her? After everything, after everything he had done to her, how dare he come after her now?

Samora felt her pulse quicken as she gripped the palm stem tighter. She would not let him near her. Not after everything.

Not now.

Not ever.