Hi all! It's short but it's here. :)

Two changes this volume:

1. A new POV!

2. I've cut down the number of acts in each volume. It's now a prologue and three acts, meaning that I can move through the plot a lot faster without having to fill in four acts of narrative to fulfil the same purpose. I have each volume's plot sketched out already and hopefully things will move along faster this way.

Anyway, enjoy!

PROLOGUE

I Could Hear the Water

Eight years ago …

Aeron blew out the candles with a stuttering breath. The smoke danced away from the wicks, staining the air with grey as applause rang through the room.

"Happy birthday, sweetie," said Caroline, reaching around to squeeze Aeron's shoulder. "Do you want to cut it?"

Aeron nodded as if on autopilot. Caroline plucked all fifteen candles away deftly, leaving him a clear field for operation as he dug the knife into it and cut a small piece.

"It's yours, you know," said Ric. "You could at least cut yourself the biggest one."

"I'm not that hungry."

Various protests were heard around the room, all light-hearted, all jesting. Aeron caught Lizzie's disapproving gaze. Act normal, be normal, she'd said. They lived in a family of supernaturals, and if they were going to keep secrets, they couldn't be spoilsports that had lost their appetite. All it took was a hint of suspicion to pull their entire plot apart.

"And I have to save room for the ice cream," he added, receiving laughter in return.

"And the truth is revealed," Josie mused from the other side of the room where she was trying to step on Marcel's toes. He was too fast, leaving her stumbling and giggling every time.

As Aeron took his sliver of cake to the ice cream station Caroline had set up, he spotted Lizzie's approving nod. She turned away, starting a conversation with Rebekah about her hair. She'd been thinking of dyeing it, apparently, and Rebekah was thrilled at the suggestion.

Lizzie was much better at lying than Aeron was. He was going to have to get better at it.

"Rainbow sprinkles or m&m's?" asked Elijah, who was manning the ice cream station while clad in a frilly pink apron. (Kol may have been stuck on the other side of the world, but he still made the most entertaining bets and he never, ever lost.)

Aeron forced his mouth to beam wide. "How about both?"

Now …

Lyn didn't know how long she spun through the water for.

She caught on rocks that sheared her clothes and flesh, leaving streaks of red as she was pulled down the river. Her shattered ribs creaked with each breath she tried to take above the water, her wings limp and barely steering her through the river.

She found a piece of driftwood eventually, clinging to it until the water calmed. Through the eye that wasn't swollen shut, she saw the opportunity to swim to shore; her legs would not obey her.

So she spun through the water, rocked as though in a cradle until her good eye shut too. She drifted to and from consciousness, the early evening breeze stirring up the water, threatening to tip her off the driftwood.

Lyn spun for long enough that she didn't remember what it was like to be still. She'd long ago emptied her stomach of its contents, too dizzy to keep anything down. Her throat burned with bile, her lips cracking, fingernails shredded from clinging to rocks in the initial descent.

She was going to die here, Lyn concluded. She used the last of her energy to look up at the sky, at the stars piercing through the dark, evening blue. At least she wasn't alone.

Lyn was insensate by the time there was a crash of water beside her. She barely registered the rough fingers on her sun-burned cheeks, the panicked voice crying her name, the feeling of being lifted up, up, up.

When she opened the only eye that would, Lyn saw nothing but sky.

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