The ice gave way beneath them like a trapdoor, and the lake swallowed them whole.
The cold hit like a wall of knives. Freezing, instant, the kind of cold that bypassed the nervous system entirely and went straight to the bone, the kind that should have locked every muscle in his body and started the countdown to hypothermia in under sixty seconds.
Gavriel's body glowed green.
The magic erupted from his skin brighter than before, a full-body shield of emerald light that wrapped him in warmth so total the cold couldn't touch him. It snapped around Serena in the same instant, the green energy reaching for her before he consciously decided to extend it, his magic treating her protection as a default setting that didn't require input from his brain.
Serena blinked underwater, stunned.
