"I'm sorry, Gav."
Her voice was a whisper and she didn't look at him when she said it. She pulled out of his grip and straightened, boots hitting the ground, hands smoothing her training suit with the frantic composure of a woman pretending the last four seconds hadn't contained information she would be processing at 3 AM for the rest of her natural life.
Gavriel said nothing about it. The matebond said everything about it. They both pretended the matebond wasn't there.
Before them stretched the lake.
Black water beneath a lattice of ice, the frozen surface cracked and fractured in jagged veins that let the dark liquid beneath show through, the pattern spreading across the lake like lightning frozen mid-strike. The ice was still forming, still creeping, still sealing itself in real time, and the water visible through the fractures was so dark it looked like it went down forever.
Serena stared at it, and her breathing stopped.
