"What do you mean?" Sebastian asked, his eyes narrowing down at her as she tried to catch her breath and speak at the same time. He patted her back and willed her to relax for a moment before she spoke again, but the terror she must have experienced seemed intense enough that she didn’t wait to catch her breath and raised her hand trying to describe what she was saying even as the words came tumbling out.

"Water, it took a form like a snake, I don’t know how that ha-happened, but it wrapped around me and dragged me into the river. It even spoke to me...I...I couldn’t break free from it no matter how hard I tried." Viola rasped, her throat still feeling raw from the experience and her body shaking, but she didn’t care about any of that as much as she cared about making him understand what had just happened, because she had never experienced anything like it in her life.

"Breathe, relax," Sebastian coaxed as he watched how she was struggling and her words registered in him. Water wrapped around her? Sebastian wondered, moving the wet hair away from her flushed face as she looked up at him, her eyes darting around frantically like she was expecting something to come out.

"We-we should move away from the waterside before it comes back..." She said, attempting to stand but falling back down from the heaviness of her clothes.

Sebastian quickly pulled her back down before she could slip on the muddy riverbank, and put his arm around her waist to keep her from attempting to move away frantically. "Nothing will come and take you, calm down. Are you sure of what you saw?" He asked calmly.

Sebastian hadn’t seen anything around her when he spotted her standing at the edge of the cliff. From where he had been standing it had looked like she had jumped in herself, but then if nothing had actually pulled her and she had truly wanted to end her life, she wouldn’t have turned to look at him with that terrified face and cried out for help.

Viola nodded her head, his arm around her making her calm down a little, feeling that with him holding her, she wouldn’t be pulled into the water again.

"I am sure of what I saw and felt. It...it spoke to me about knowing where my sister is and tried to lure me to come forward before it grabbed me. I swear on the moon goddess. You have to believe me, there is something in that water."

She said, glancing briefly over his shoulder at the still surface of the river behind him before looking back at his face, hoping with everything she had that he would believe her even though what she was saying didn’t make any rational sense.

Would she have believed herself if someone else was telling her this from another point of view? Viola honestly doubted it, because it was just too absurd. However when Sebastian spoke again, his wet hand coming up to rest against her cheek, he said,

"I believe you."

He had no real reason not to. Apart from werewolves there were many supernatural things in this world that nobody could fully account for or explain. And if that water had specifically wanted her pulled in, it meant there was something about Viola he hadn’t discovered yet. It seemed that everything he was beginning to learn about her barely scratched the surface of what her background truly was.

Viola was stunned that he believed her yet again and she looked at his face, his lashes wet and dark around his silver eyes, and something shifted quietly in her chest again. That feeling she thought she could fight for him came back tenfold, warming her inside.

He had said he believed her even when the people at the orphanage had tried to paint her as mentally unstable, and now again he believed her when what she had just experienced was something so far beyond the ordinary that most people would have looked at her like she had lost her mind.

"Did the water have a face?" He asked, looking at her steadily, brushing wet hair away from her face as the warm breeze of Nightshade blew in their direction.

Viola broke out of her trance of staring at him and shook her head.

"Not one I could see. It had a voice though. And...I think it might not be the first time I have experienced something strange when it comes to water." She muttered, looking down at her still trembling hands and hugging her arms across her chest when even the warm breeze felt chilly against her damp skin, causing goosebumps to rise along her arms.

"When have you experienced something like this before?" He asked, his eyes narrowing with serious focus on her because she hadn’t mentioned it to him.

"It was before our marriage, when I went out to eat with Nick. I was standing outside in the rain when I felt something touch my shoulder. It felt so real, but when I turned there was nothing there. I ran, and while I was running I thought I heard a loud splash behind me but I didn’t have the courage to look back..." She said quietly, and then glancing warily at the water behind him she whispered, "Could it be that water is starting to evolve and take forms the way wolves did in the past when they first took human form?"

Sebastian would have found that theory almost amusing had the situation not been this serious and had she not looked so genuinely shaken by every word she was saying.

Seeing how badly she was trembling from the cold and the shock, he got up, gathered her into his arms and straightened to his full height. "Let’s get you warm first."

He began to walk away from the shore, no longer trusting the river behind them. He was turning everything she had told him over in his mind when her voice came again.

"You haven’t answered my question. Is water also taking form now?" She asked again, disturbed and wanting answers to what had just happened to her, her head automatically leaning against his chest as she soaked in the warmth of his body.

"I genuinely don’t know, babe. I have never heard of water taking a physical shape and form like that, and I can’t give you a clear reason for why it did." He paused for a moment, as if searching his own memory.

"There used to be words passed down that the water in the werewolf world have a life of it’s own, because more than hundreds of creatures live beneath the surface. There was a time when it was said they swallowed people who wandered too far into them and not even their bodies were ever found, but that was believed to be the mermaids’ doing when they still existed. Now, I honestly can’t say with certainty whether it is their doing or not."

Mermaids had long been believed to be extinct, and even though he and Gilbert still held the belief that some lived deep in the seas and oceans, it hadn’t been a mermaid itself that had attacked and pulled her in but the water moving as if directed by something. Unless a mermaid was behind it, working from a distance, because those creatures were known for having far more tricks at their disposal than most gave them credit for.

Sebastian’s eyes glinted and darkened at the thought. If a mermaid was truly behind this, then this very water might be the key to what he had been searching for. And though he didn’t yet understand why a mermaid would send its power after his wife, he already knew that if he could get his hands on one, he would use its heart as the sacrifice he needed.