Matt’s frozen fingers brush against mine, and I seize his hand.

We’re not out of the woods yet, but just to have hold of him feels like a fucking miracle. The chunk of ice he’d been clinging to disintegrates as I pull him to me.

He’s a skinny kid, but it’s a hell of a struggle to beat back against the current with him in my arms. If he were wearing a proper winter jacket, it might have helped him float. He’s just wearing a lot of threadbare layers, and it’s all dragging us down.

He tries to help out by grabbing hold of me, but his numb fingers can’t find any purchase. In the end, I’m forced to swim with one arm locked around his chest. He gives up, lets me take over. It’s easier without him moving around, but not much.

I fight hard against the current, against my fear, my growing exhaustion.

The raging water blocks my view of the riverbank, of Aiden. But there’s a dip in the waves, and I catch sight of him, trying to get up, his blue eyes frantically searching the water. He’s looking for us. I can see and sense his panic, even from here.

The urgent need to get back to my Companion Plant lights a fire in me, gives me a burst of energy. I push forward, then nearly fall apart inside when I feel the tip of my shoe scrape the muddy bottom.

We’re there.

Gasping for breath, I stagger out onto the riverbank, dragging Matt with me.

It probably took us a handful of minutes to get here, but it felt like an eternity.

I slick my hair out of my face, then twist on the spot, looking for Aiden. The current took me farther down the river, carried me away from him.

He’s already looking at me. Our eyes lock across the distance between us.

I can’t believe that he’s still conscious, much less on his hands and knees, trying desperately to get to his feet, to get to me. He’s reeling from the massive effort of what he just did, his balance thrown off, his movements clumsy and unbalanced.

“I’m okay!” I gasp, and then again, louder: “I’m okay!”

Aiden stops, lets out a heavy breath, and collapses back onto the ground.

I want nothing more than to rush over there, but Aiden is only tired. Matt is the one in real trouble.

I’d dropped him on his back, his feet just beyond the edge of the water. He hasn’t moved.

I fall to my knees and lean over Matt, trying not to look as frantic as I feel. The sudden warm bath in the river seems to have helped him out, but his skin is pale, his hands swollen, his eyes closed.

“Hey!” I take his arm and give him a shake. “Matt? You still with me?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, then convulses, his frozen body twisting up. He coughs twice, rolls onto his stomach, and vomits up a lot of swallowed water.

I sit back, but leave my hand on Matt’s arm, trying to give him some sort of anchor point in this chaotic moment.

When he’s done, he sits up slowly. His unfocused eyes travel over the riverbank until they find me.

He stares at me, trembling, then closes his eyes.

“Am I dead?” he asks, in a thin, ragged voice.

I’m about to say no, but it occurs to me that I can see and speak with ghosts. Like, there is a possibility.

“Look at me?” I say, and Matt does.

He shows no indications. He looks solid, I was able to hold onto him, I don’t think that ghosts can throw up, and - if Matt had died, Aiden would have heard it.

“Nah, bro, you’re all good,” I tell him.

“Cool,” he says, in a dazed kind of way.

“Can you sit tight for one second? I need to go check on my boyfriend, real quick.”

Matt nods silently, still in shock.

I’ve never been this physically drained before. Somehow I end up running to Aiden, anyways.

He’s sitting up, trying to get to his feet again. But he’s swaying with exhaustion, too uncoordinated to make it happen. He falls flat onto his back just before I reach him.

I drop down by his side, take his stubbled face in my hands.

“Hi,” I say, pressing my forehead against his.

Aiden lets out a sound that’s half a laugh, half a dry sob of relief.

“Hi,” he breathes. One of his hands lifts to rest on my cheek, and I lean into his palm, grateful beyond words for the feeling. “You - sure you’re - okay?”

A powerful wave of love and relief floods through me, and I laugh softly, bending to press a kiss onto Aiden’s mouth.

“Yes.” I gaze down at him, all of my love held in my eyes. “You were amazing, Heliomancer.”

Aiden can’t muster up enough energy to laugh, only to let out a soft rush of air through his nose.

“Matt - alright?” he manages, and I nod, droplets of water tumbling from my hair, sprinkling down onto Aiden. “Okay - I’m gonna release the heat.”

“Release the-?”

I break off as Aiden drops his head back and lets out a long sigh of relief, like every second of this was costing him.

The Guardian-made heatwave fades away, just as quickly as it came.

The river’s surface is no longer frozen, and a whole lot of snow is missing, but otherwise, it’s like it never happened at all. The temperature is as it was before. The steam rising from the water blows away on the wind.

I shudder in the sudden cold, newly aware of my soaking clothes and wet hair. My weary brain wants the warmth back immediately, but the thought is ludicrous. If Aiden passes out, there’ll be no heat, anyways, and then I’ll be alone with two incapacitated people, both ready to freeze.

“Hey! You need to wake up! You can’t pass out, okay?” I hesitate, then flatten my palm on Aiden’s chest. “Take some energy from me.”

“You feel like sleeping for two entire days again?” he mumbles.

“Just take what you need to make it back to the car! You can do it without knocking me out, I know you can, just - just focus.”

Aiden gazes up at me, his blue eyes glinting like precious stones in the sunlight.

He closes them, then puts his huge hand on top of mine, where it rests on his chest. The connection shimmers open, and before I can begin to feel him, breathe him - my energy begins to seep away.

I can tell that he's working hard to control himself, to go slowly. He’s doing a much better job than he did at the Bratton Collection. Still, as what little remaining energy I had escapes through my fingertips and sinks into Aiden’s body, it’s hard to keep myself steady. My shoulders droop, and I nearly tip forward onto Aiden.

He sits up before I can, gently catching me, keeping me upright. The movement breaks the connection, and - I’m okay. Definitely awake, if tired enough to curl up and fall asleep right here on the riverbank.

I manage to get my eyes open, and find Aiden no longer semiconscious. My energy is still glimmering in his eyes, which are more alert and focused than they were before, and fixed on my face.

After the ordeal we’ve been through, all I want to do is cuddle up into his strong arms, settle into his body heat, be close to him. I know that he wants the same thing - I can tell from the way he’s looking at me - but this isn’t the time. The bitter winter cold is back in full force, and we need to get Matt somewhere warm.

Aiden staggers to his feet, pulling me with him. I grab my discarded jacket on the way up.

Together, we make our way back to Matt, leaving stumbling, dragging footprints in the mud.

As we move, storm clouds begin to gather overhead, twisting and dark, blocking out the sunshine. Forming at an unnatural pace, appearing out of thin air, right before our eyes.

The science teacher in me wonders what exactly insta-melting a section of frozen river will do, especially when the heat disappears again instantly. Or - is magical heat different?

I have no idea, but I can throw out a guess about the effects of suddenly evaporating so much water. We’re in for snow, or rain, or both.

The sunlight has dimmed down, but Aiden is still putting off a gentle glow, light radiating from his bronze skin.

We drop down on either side of Matt, and I let out a soft, startled gasp.

“Hey, man,” Aiden says, as Matt stares up at us blankly. “You alright?”

Aiden sounds completely unnerved, and I understand why. Though it wasn’t the case when I left him here, blood is rushing from Matt’s nose at an alarming rate, and he’s shivering uncontrollably.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Matt says thickly, his voice shaking as badly as his body.

“Your nose is bleeding,” I tell him.

He swipes a sleeve beneath it, cringing in pain.

“Cracked my face on - on something,” he stammers. “Didn’t see what.”

I retrieve my phone from my jacket, then offer the jacket to Matt. With a little help from Aiden, he sits up, then pulls my jacket on over his drenched clothes. He’s moving slowly, but it's a good sign that he's moving at all.

“What happened?” he asks, feeling the ground around him with his hands. “Everything got so bright, and then - I was just - at the top again, I swear!” He gives up on rooting through the mud and looks up at me. “Are my glasses lost?”

This is the first coherent sentence I’ve heard from Matt that was more than like, five words. Another good sign.

“Yeah, those glasses are definitely lost forever,” I answer, with an apologetic wince. “Sorry about that.”

“No, please don’t be sorry! Not after-” Matt presses his sleeve to his gushing nose, speaking in a dazed, detached way. “It’s just that my dad is gonna be mad that I lost them. Or not mad, but - disappointed.”

Aiden sits back, looking just as relieved as I am to hear Matt talking.

“No, he won’t, man," he says. "Believe me, your dad won’t give a shit about that, when he hears what happened. He’ll just be glad that you’re okay.”

And I think that Matt will be okay. He has yet to stop shivering, but that’s actually not a bad thing. I know from my mom that it’s when the shivering and chattering slows to a stop, when your brain dulls and won’t let you reach your thoughts - that’s when you’re in real trouble. Matt's talking and trembling means that he’s not in danger of death by hypothermia.

Still, he shouldn’t spend another unnecessary minute out in the cold.

Aiden must be thinking along the same lines, because he gets to his feet. He takes one of Matt’s cold hands. I take the other, and we pull him up.

Matt sways precariously, but stays on his feet.

“We need to get back to the car,” Aiden says, clearly trying to get his thoughts into some kind of order. “It’s so cold, and-” His eyes land on me, and grow troubled. “Your hair.”

“My hair?” I ask, taken aback. Is it so awful that it bears commenting on now, of all moments? I swivel to face Matt, alarmed. “Does it really look that bad?”

“Um.” Matt squints at me, uncertain. “Hard to see without my glasses, but - it seems fine? There’s a little bit standing up in the back. You want me to fix it?”

Aiden lets out an incredulous laugh.

“No, dummies, I mean that it’s wet. We need to get you both somewhere warm before you get sick, so let’s get moving.”

We each thread an arm behind Matt’s back, help him get moving.

I can’t imagine what we look like, right now. All three of us are stumbling from exhaustion, covered in mud, sweat, and water. Matt keeps one hand pressed under his nose to hold back the blood, but it’s already gotten all over his clothes and my jacket. Crimson streaks run down his mouth and chin, the front of his throat.

Snow begins to fall around us, thick and fast. It covers up our footprints, the churned-up earth, the marks of bodies dragged through the mud, Aiden and Matt’s both. All of it disappears beneath a glittering white blanket.

The river’s surface - glossy, black, and unfrozen - is the only sign that we were ever there at all.

~~~~

I’m so tired. The wooded land around us passes by in a blur, and my notion of time stalls out. When my eyes catch a flash of blue, my car - I barely remember how we got here.

I open the back door, let Matt crawl inside before Aiden and I get in. Then I turn the heat on at full blast.

It feels incredible.

I look at Matt in the rearview. “We’re gonna take you to the hospital, okay?"

“No,” he says, leaning forward. “Can we please - my dad - my house is like, five minutes away, I swear. My dad can take me.”

I exchange a glance with Aiden, who shrugs, then twists in his seat to face Matt.

“Fine. But you need to go. Have him take you right away, alright?”

Matt nods, holding his hands out to the heat. “Alright.”

“And do what we tell you, this time,” I add, teasing, trying to keep Matt awake. “Unlike when we told you to hold still, and you started grabbing every piece of ice in sight.”

Aiden sees what I'm trying to do.

“Yeah, Jesus Christ,” he says, fixing Matt with a faux-stern look. “What was that, Sir Flails-A-Lot?”

“Fuck off,” Matt groans, half-laughing. He stops abruptly and slaps a hand over his mouth, his eyes widening. “Oh - I’m sorry! Don’t tell my dad that I cursed at you.”

Aiden’s expression softens.

“Again, your dad is fully not gonna care about any of that,” he says, more gently. “Trust me.”

Matt is too tired to argue. He sits back, his eyes fluttering closed. I get some directions out of him, but otherwise, he goes still and quiet.

He’s breathing just fine, though, and he’s got his fist pressed under his nose. I think he’s okay.

Following Matt's directions, I take us down a long, unpaved road. There's a tiny house at the end, tucked into the trees. A man stands on the porch, working on a cup of coffee, gazing out at the sudden snowstorm.

I stop the car behind some clustered pine trees, out of view of the house. Aiden and I get out to help Matt, but he’s already closing the car door after himself. He takes off at a faster clip than I’ve seen him go so far, rushing for his dad.

Matt’s dad turns when he hears him coming. An exasperated look comes over his face, and he sighs deeply, setting his coffee on the porch railing.

“Matthew,” he says sharply, loudly enough that Aiden and I can hear it from where we’re hidden. “What are you doing? You’re supposed to be at school by n-”

He stops, his eyes widening as he gets a better look at Matt, his bloody face and hands, his drenched clothes, the tears that are suddenly falling hard and fast from his eyes.

Matt’s dad starts slowly down the steps of the porch, then breaks into a run, meeting Matt halfway up the path to the house.

“Oh my god,” he says, sweeping Matt into a tight hug. “Oh my god - what happened? Mattie? Are you okay?”

“I - fell,” Matt stammers, sounding vaguely befuddled. “The river was glowing. They pulled me out, saved me... those guys… one of them was glowing… and I didn’t curse. I didn’t. Lost my glasses. I'm sorry.”

“What?” Matt’s dad pulls back and takes him by the shoulders, his voice shaking. “You’re not making any sense, what-?”

“They said to - to go to the hospital.”

“Who said?”

Matt turns around, then blinks in surprise. “I thought - weren’t they right behind me? Didn't you see them?”

“Jamie,” Aiden whispers, and I nod.

We slip into the car, and I start backing us up towards the main road, going as quickly and quietly as I can.

Just before we’re about to take the turn, Matt’s dad rushes around the bend in the road, peering through the fast-falling snow, looking for us.

But by the time he gets there, we’re gone.