She did. All of them. He let out a breath he had not meant to hold.

Around them the gathered residents murmured with soft concern already thinning into something else. Relief, perhaps. Or simple reset. The emergency had passed from their sight and so, for many of them, from their minds. Two of the onlookers drifted back toward the sun decks. Another stood watching the water as if searching for the shape of what had happened. No one asked what they should do next. No one seemed angry that danger had existed at all.

Elias wanted to shake them. Instead he got his arm under Lina’s shoulders and helped her toward the retaining stones a few yards up the bank where the sun had warmed the old sea wall through the morning. The stone held heat like a body. He sat with his back against it and drew her close because she was shaking too hard to stay upright on her own.

She buried both hands in the front of his wrap and held on.

For a while neither of them spoke. The water rushed below. Farther off, someone had started singing again, timidly at first, then with the easy repetition of a habit returning.

Lina’s lips were pale. Her wet hair stuck in dark lines over her forehead. Elias rubbed warmth into her upper arm and watched the color creep back by degrees. When she tried to pull away, embarrassed by her own need, he kept his voice flat and practical.

He kept rubbing warmth into her upper arm. “If you fall over now, I’m not fetching you twice.”