The flames died down, and Saize reached for the knife, already cool enough to touch safely, and regarded its blade. It was ancient, made of a material he’d never seen before. “As long as we have this and our vows, the Curse will be bound forever.”

Jae’s eyes flew open, and she clawed at the water around her. She was disoriented and all too aware at the same time. She twisted, trying to shove the magic away, force the Curse’s pounding out of her mind. The pain receded, but that didn’t matter—she couldn’t find up, couldn’t see anything at all. A scream built in her chest as she tore at the water, her limbs moving slowly despite her chaotic motions.

Light began to shine around her in tiny pinpricks, energy suspended in the water. She could feel the faint presence of the Wellspring Bloodlines and reached for them, but she was too weak and totally lost. She needed to breathe but couldn’t, with blood pounding in her ears as she thrashed against the water.

Her feet brushed something. Horribly dizzy, her head throbbing and her eyes unable to make sense of anything through the distortion of the water, she pushed off feebly, barely able to straighten her legs—

She broke through the surface, and a moment later strong hands grabbed her, hauled her toward the shore. She couldn’t stop coughing and couldn’t resist, so anxious that even having someone else drag her around while she was helpless couldn’t make it worse.

It felt as if she’d spat out half the Well by the time she got a deep breath. She was hunched over on her hands and knees, her throat raw and her head spinning. But at least the Curse was fading. After that one burst, it was gone; the ache in her lungs was all from her near drowning.

Elan was the one who’d pulled her in, and he still crouched next to her in the shallows. Tal came to kneel in front of her. He touched her elbow, and when she didn’t pull away, he helped her sit up on her knees, and straightening up made it easier to breathe.

“Jae, what happened? Are you all right?” Elan asked, looking ready to catch her if she collapsed again.

She shook her head, drawing away from both of them, grateful the Curse couldn’t force her to answer anymore. She just wanted to sit until her chest and throat stopped aching, and she didn’t understand what had happened.

It should have been the Well’s binding in the water. She’d sensed it there, those tiny pinpricks of energy, but they were almost gone. Instead there had been the Curse, somehow tied to the Well’s energy, overwhelming it. But as she thought about that, it made a twisted, horrible sort of sense. The Bloodlines had somehow bound the Well—and the Curse worked its horrible magic on the Bloodlines. Now the two were linked together, the Curse and Bloodlines tangled with one another, and where the Bloodlines’ magic should have ruled, the Curse did instead.

Finally Jae found the strength to push to her feet. She staggered to the shore and collapsed onto her back. Sand prickled, sticking to her, sun-heated and uncomfortable, but at least she could breathe.

“Jae,” Tal murmured, tentative, not quite a question. He sat near her—not too near, thankfully. Elan hung back even farther, eyeing them unsurely.

“I think I know what happened to the Well,” Jae said when she could finally speak again without her lungs hurting. “I don’t know how, but…but the Well’s binding is almost gone. The Curse has eaten the whole binding away.”

Jae only had to tell Elan and Tal once that she needed to rest before she could explain more. Neither of them seemed too happy about waiting, but they didn’t argue with her. Instead Tal dragged Elan back to the edge of the water and showed him how to begin scrubbing the sand and sweat out of their clothes. They didn’t have anything to wash the clothes with, but rubbing layers of fabric against one another would get the worst of the dirt and sweat out.

When they finished, Tal was the one who brought Jae her damp travel robe. She spread the robe over the sand so she could sit on it instead of the damp ground. Tal found an outcropping of rock at the cliff’s base, and he and Elan spread the rest of the clothes over it to finish drying.

Finally they filled the canteens and came over to sit with her. Jae gave Tal a grateful look, and he smiled back at her, understanding. Then she glanced over at Elan.

Elan was still wearing only his underclothes. Unlike Tal, who was lithe and wiry the way she was, Elan was larger and broader. Even stripped of his title and family, he still looked powerful and strong. There were whiskers on his chin now, long enough to be a proper beard, if an unkempt one, and his hair fell in loose curls down to his chin. But the scar on his chest was what drew her eye. His skin was already a lighter, more golden brown than hers, but around the scar it was paler still, shiny and pulled tight. The center was still too scabbed for her to make out the design of the brand.

Jae’s cheeks heated up, and she looked away from him.

“Can you— It would be nice to talk now,” Elan said eventually, catching himself. Of course. He was less used to silence than she and Tal were.

She nodded. “The Well’s magic is centered there, bound somehow. I could sense the Wellspring Bloodlines—the Closest who crafted the Well. Their magic is still there. But so is the Curse, and the Curse has been…feeding on the binding. That was what I found instead. The Curse, where the Well’s binding should be.”

“I don’t understand,” Elan said.

Jae gestured around. “The Well is going dry, just like Aredann’s reservoir, because its binding is eroding, and the binding…somehow it’s linked to the Curse’s binding. So I was looking for the Well’s magic, and I saw the Curse’s instead. I saw it, like I was watching. Some mage, one of the Highest. Saize.”

Elan nodded. “Saize Pallara—the grandson of one of the four mages who originally crafted the Well. Or…” He shook his head. “Or that’s what I’ve always been told. He, well…he’s remembered for casting the Curse.”

“He did this to us,” Jae said, one hand clenching a fist. Elthis was cruel, vicious—but Jae doubted even his evil could compare to dreaming up the Curse. “I saw him bind it. The Curse is made of fire and air, the magic bound to a knife. But somehow that binding is tied to the binding of the Well.”

“The Curse makes the Well’s binding weaker,” Elan said, reasoning it through out loud. “So to restore the Well, we need to restore its binding.”