Chapter 17
“So, this is Neris Island.”
Kye stood at the base of the cliffs, gazing across the narrow beach.
I brushed hair from my face, coming to stand beside him in the morning sun. “Do you remember it?”
He turned a shell over with the edge of his toe. “Bits and pieces. Is this where I fell in?”
I pointed at the rocks where our boats were tethered. He grunted softly in reply.
“Did you find what you came to Leihani searching for?” I asked, hoping my words would prompt him to share whatever it was.
His eyes darkened, the corner of his mouth curling into the smallest hint of a smile. Lacing his arms behind his back, he didn’t answer. Winds changed, and the scent of mint and rainwater drifted over me. I tilted my head, wondering if it came from him.
Mint. The sweet herb wasn’t native to Leihani; the island sun was too intense. I’d only smelled it a few times, walking past Akamai’s home late in the dry season. The healer purchased the herbs in thick bundles from sailors and hung them to dry for the year ahead.
Once, the smell had been so alluring, I’d stolen a single leaf from the suspended cuttings. Had snapped it between my teeth out of curiosity, unprepared for the taste that swept across my palate. Like sweet, cool pools of water, new and young and bracing.
“Did Akamai buy mint leaves?”
His mouth parted, his brow lifting as though—of all the things I might say—he’d expected that least. “I don’t know.”
Chest bare, his dark-gold waves tousling around his face, he looked like a warrior of the sun, some ancient deity clothed in ancestral ink and gleaming skin. I tried not to stare at the hardened muscle that coated his abdomen, my gaze lingering instead on an image tattooed onto the inner side of his forearm. A circle of elegant leaves around an imperial helmet, with a plume of hair fastened in a narrow strip that ran from crown to base.
“My mother’s family crest,” he explained, rotating his arm for a better view. “She was from Cressi.” I took his wrist, tilting it so I could see without the bright sun reflecting off the waves. The tendons in his arm tightened as he stretched his fingers. “How did your mother die?” he asked softly. “Was she killed by an islander?”
“No.” I dropped his wrist and crossed my arms, though a tingling spread through my fingertips, a sudden desire for his smooth skin against mine.
He wrapped his other hand around the wrist I’d just held, and he rotated his arm under his own grip, wiping my touch away. “So. Why is this island said to be cursed?”
“Nahli.” I gestured to the dormant volcano, the highest point of the island, blanketed by emerald ferns, moss and lichen. “A thousand years ago, this was the biggest island. The islanders of Leihani lived here until it erupted.”
“It’s cursed because the volcano erupted?” He cocked his head at the sleepy mound in the distance.
“It’s cursed because Nahli was the goddess of liquid fire. She longed for children, so she took a mortal man to her bed, but he burned alive before he could impregnate her.”
Kye’s brows jumped to the center of his forehead, blinking slowly as he stared at the distant landscape. “That’s the best way to go, I suppose.”
I crouched in my herb garden, not in the mood for humor. “And after several failed lovers, she gave up, heartbroken at the needless death and the personal failure that came with it. But she was approached by Inaina, a pregnant island woman, who promised to give Nahli her unborn child if she could save Inaina’s husband, who had fallen to the bottom of the sea.”
Kye gazed down at me, the mischievousness fading from his eyes. Wind danced with his hair, and I forced my eyes from him.
“Nahli agreed, and she left her volcanic house, venturing to the depths. But Inaina’s husband wasn”t there. He was alive and well, in the arms of another woman. With Nahli off the island, Inaina threw herself into the chimney of Nahli’s volcano, knowing she’d awaken the sleeping chamber of magma below.
“Nahli’s volcano was a part of her body, as your heart is a part of yours. Miles away, deep under the water, Nahli felt something stir within her. She coughed, smoke billowed out of her mouth, and she knew she’d been tricked.”
I picked an errant weed among my turmeric starts, inspecting to see how long its roots had grown.
“She raced back to her island, but it was too late. Covered in lava, the island perished, and the people with it. All because of Inaina’s scorn and Nahli’s desire. In her grief, Nahli buried herself and her island under the water, until only the tip was visible. She promised if men walked her island, she would drown them. If women walked the island, she would bury them under molten rock. And if a child were to set foot on her beach, she would steal it and raise it as her own.”
The leaves of my turmeric brushed my hands. I sat back on my heels, numb as I watched them sway in the wind, long and glossy.
Kye sucked his teeth. “Such a comfort, these island stories.”
“It”s a myth,” I deadpanned. “I”ve been coming here since I was a child. I should either be buried or stolen, and you should be drowned.”
He crooked a small smile. “I almost did.”
His tone was playful, but I didn’t laugh. Gazing at my hands through the leaves, my arms covered in damp soil and scores of red, the distant thud in my head returned, blood rushing in and out of my ears. I held my arms out, staring at the angry tracks Naheso had carved into me.
Kye’s lips parted as though he read my thoughts, and he crossed the sand to fold his fingers around the raised welts in my skin.
“Why—” I breathed, unable to form any solid thought other than the single word.
He shook his head, shoulders softening as he gazed at me. “Because the biggest threat anyone will ever face is their own fear,” he said, hands firm around my marred flesh. “And the biggest fear anyone will face is their own demons.” His eyes flickered over mine, as if there were more—as if he himself had once chased the threat of fear away.
Or been hunted because of it.
“He said he knew I wasn’t a witch,” I murmured.
Kye’s mouth tightened. He lifted a hand into the hairline under my ear, his thumb sweeping across the corner of my jaw, sending a nervous warmth through my face and neck. “No,” he said. “You’re something else entirely.”
“I think I hate them all.” I waited for his judgement, but he licked his lips and swallowed.
“You have the right.” His thumb glided along the groove under my neck and across my throat, eyes dropping to the bruises beginning to bloom there, and he exhaled slowly.
A static washed over me, buzzing in my head, vibrating in my belly. I swayed, caught under the power of his warmth, his hands, his eyes.
Something shifted in his body. He straightened, gaze drifting over the sea behind me, and I followed his line of sight.
A ship sliced across the waves.
It was dark and wide—taller than any merchant ship I’d ever seen. Far across the turquoise water, it approached like a black hole over the ocean.
Kye sucked his breath sharply into his chest, his fingers curling possessively around my arm.
I stepped out of his grasp, studying the ship. There was something ominous about it. Grim. Haunting. Sixteen sails graced its masts, twice as many as any of the ships in the pier. A long, thin blue flag trailed from the tallest mast. The cables of the shrouds stood out like black cobwebs. Men climbed up them, little black spiders hunting for prey.
It was muscular, imperious, somehow elegant. It floated through the thrashing tide like a feather in the wind, sails lavish, black lacquer coat shining and clean.
Kye swore softly under his breath.
“Do you recognize it?” I asked Kye, my throat dry.
He nodded. “That’s the admiral’s flagship. It’s a frigate. A warship.”
“They sent the Navy for you?” My voice broke in disbelief.
He seemed not to hear me as he cracked his neck, then scanned his little rowboat, massaging one hand with the other as he gathered his thoughts. “They’re a day early,” he said to himself.
I watched Kye cut across the beach, his movements smooth and sure as he grasped the rope that tied his boat to the rocks, though something in his eyes spoke of anxiety. “Come on.” He demanded softly, bracing the vessel still against the waves as he glanced up at me.
I stared blankly at him. “Back to Leihani?”
The thought of stepping foot on Leihani among the islanders sent my stomach a scatter like the beetles I collected from my garden and thrust into a bucket, swarming as they searched for escape.
“They won’t know to look for me here. Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
He said it with such certainty I almost believed him.
But I knew my people. There’d be an uproar if they saw me, and as much as Kye’s presence calmed my nerves, I doubted he could take on an entire island just to douse the fire that would erupt were I to set foot there.
I remained where I was, feet firmly planted in the sand.
In a fluid motion, Kye shoved off from the side of his boat, stalking toward me. “I’m not going to leave you here. You’re coming with me. To Calder.”
His words struck me speechless.
Leave the islands?
Without meaning to, I glanced at distant Leihani, then at the shady cliffs where the Naiads and I usually met.
It’s not as though the notion of leaving hadn’t ever occurred to me before. In fact, I’d spent years poring over the idea while gardening or hunting clams. My relationship with the other islanders had always left me wondering whether it would be best if I found a way to leave. Board a ship and never look back. But my father and the Naiads had always kept me grounded here. A reason to stay.
Do you make people do things? Can you lure people?
My stomach twisted at the conversation I’d shared with my father.
How would he feel now that I’d killed his sister’s husband? His best friend?
And the Naiads—Mihauna, I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to see a Naiad again.
“Maren,” Kye said, snapping my attention away from the cliffs. I realized I’d curled my arms around myself. “I don’t want to leave you alone here. Not after—” He worked his jaw softly, chasing after the right words for you killed your uncle.
Everything within me went cold. Hollow. “I can’t leave.”
He stared at me, his jaw hard. “You don’t even have to step onto Leihani. You can board the ship from your boat.”
I shook my head. “I can’t leave the islands.”
I couldn’t explain it, even to myself.
But I belonged to the islands, as much as the islands belonged to the sea. Something tethered me here. It always had; otherwise I’d have left years ago.
It always would.
“What are you going to do?” he asked calmly. “Hide here on a cursed island for the rest of your life?”
Mihaunain the stars, I knew it made no sense. Especially to him, a Calderian man who’d never had to work a day in his life. Who’d never fallen in love with roots and ash and the songs birds sang in the early morning before the dew had left the leaves.
But I couldn’t think of a strong enough argument to shield me from his doubt, so I simply stood there, meeting his eyes in silence as the ocean wind shifted my hau bark skirt around my thighs.
Kye exhaled, tension leaving his body with his breath. I tried to read whatever it was that flashed behind his eyes. Disappointment, maybe. Pity. Waves broke along the sand, shells brushing past our ankles.
“You”re sure?” Kye finally asked.
Throat tight, I nodded.
He offered me his hand, digits loosely splayed as they hovered in the air, and waited for me to take it.
Curious, I obliged him, watching his fingers curl around the heel of my hand. His skin was warm from the sun, his palm calloused and rough. He ran his thumb gently over the back of mine, sending heat dancing under my skin.
“I’m glad to have met you, Maren,” he said, capturing my gaze with molten eyes.
“I’m glad to have met you, too.” My mouth had gone dry, but the corners of my eyes burned with moisture.
He sighed, the sweet, cool scent of mint leaves tumbling off him as he raised my knuckles to his mouth and pressed them to his lips.
A thermal wave hit me in the wake of his breath and skin against my hand. My mouth parted on words that my tongue couldn’t speak, my pulse simmering through my veins. Kye released my hand, leaving me flushed and dazed among the palms as he turned and climbed into his rowboat.