Free Shadow Blessed (The Shadow Accords Book 1) by D.K. Holmberg Page A

grabbing for his wrist. For a moment, she had him.
    “Don’t let me fall!” Kel pleaded.
    His wrist began to slip. Carth didn’t have a strong enough grip, and he slipped from her, falling into the churning water.
    The current pulled at him, too fast for him to swim against.
    Cursing, Carth stuffed the knife into her pocket—she wasn’t about to lose the one thing that might help her get revenge on the A’ras—and jumped into the river after him.
    She was a strong swimmer, but this was madness!
    Cold water slapped at her, and the frothy churn tried to pull her under. She kicked, keeping her head above the water, and swam with the current, trying to reach Kel. Each stroke carried her far along the shore. If she wasn’t careful, she’d float beyond the city… or more likely, get bashed into the rocks.
    Kel popped to the surface not far from her. With another stroke, she reached him and slipped an arm around him, keeping him above the surface.
    He coughed and took a hoarse breath. “Carth?”
    “Can you swim?”
    “Not in this. Water is too fast!”
    “It’s not too fast. Just kick your legs.”
    Kel looked at her, his eyes wide and the color drained from his face. “You should have just let me go. Now we’re both going to drown.”
    She started kicking, trying to get to the shore. They’d been pulled to the middle of the river, and the shore looked to be over twenty yards away. “We’re not going to drown,” she snapped. “But you have to help.”
    Kel finally started to kick. They moved slowly toward the shore, angling against the fast-moving current. The only advantage to it being night was that none of the shipping boats sailed, leaving the river as a churning black sheet.
    “I can’t keep going!” Kel cried.
    “You have to.” Carth’s arms had begun to tire and her lungs burned, with each breath feeling like she breathed fire, but she knew the moment she gave up, they would drift along down the river. Much longer, and they would get pulled under.
    “Carth—”
    He started to slip from her grasp, and she squeezed his sides, trying to hold him in place. She couldn’t—she wouldn’t —lose Kel. It was her fault that he’d fallen in, and she wasn’t about to be the reason someone she cared about died.
    Carth continued to kick, holding as tightly to Kel as she could. Her vision started to go black and she blinked, trying to clear it, not wanting to lose sight of the shore. It was tantalizingly close now. All she needed was a few more kicks.
    Kel slipped from her grip and dropped beneath the water.
    Carth cried out.
    She stopped swimming and took a deep breath before diving beneath the surface.
    Water rushed past her as she tried to swim in place. It was too dark to see Kel. Had she lost him?
    Something grabbed at her sleeve.
    Kel?
    Then Carth was pulled from beneath the water, and with strong strokes, someone dragged her to the shore and threw her up to the top of the rocks. The overwhelming cold finally struck her and she shivered uncontrollably.
    Someone had saved her.
    “Kel!”
    She sat up and saw a man with a dark cloak shaking himself free from the water. “The other will join you soon.”
    Carth followed the direction of the rushing water along the shore and saw another man carrying a small, unmoving bundle over his shoulder. When he neared, he set Kel down next to Carth. She checked to see that he was breathing, then finally allowed herself to relax.
    “Thank you,” she said.
    The first man stood along the shore, staring out at the river as the other approached. “You should not have gone for a swim so late.”
    “It wasn’t a swim. He fell in.”
    “And you went with him?”
    “I went after him.”
    The man turned and came toward her. Moonlight filtering through the clouds gave deep shadows to his face, but there was something familiar about him. Had she seen him before? He didn’t have the look of the sailors who came through the docks, dropping off shipments on their way