10. Kye
10
Kye
I paced the rocks, fists on my hips like the head chef in Laurier Palace when I was caught sneaking sweets from the kitchens as a boy.
I’d expected Maren to resurface. Like an idiot, I thought she’d duck underwater and realize she needed warmth before diving into the cold again.
I’d waited for her to come back. She hadn’t.
Cursing the sun and everything below it, I’d finally jumped in after her, only to find the barren seascape entirely too short of a singular dark-haired woman with a penchant for driving the sanity from my skull. I searched, diving as deep as I could, scanning north and south. She wasn’t there. She’d all but evaporated.
Blood humming with irritation, I climbed back up and yanked my sodden shirt and boots off, leaving them in the fading sun. A vain attempt at drying them. Nothing was dry here. It was almost dark, and everything was wet. The air lay thick with constant mist, the rocks often slippery, and the water...
This cursed fucking water.
Mind churning with impatience, I stole a piece of driftwood from a stone crevice, tossing it with more burning enthusiasm than necessary into a space I impulsively declared our fire. Whenever she decided to turn back up.
Aalto above, this woman. This woman and her hair. Her skin. Her legs and hips and neck. The way she moved, lithe and fluid, floating barefoot over the rocks while I grunted and stumbled behind her, unable to look away until she turned and laid those sun-forsaken midnight eyes on me, forcing me to realize I’d been staring. Eyes that lit into me like sparks from a flame, sending my heart rate into a mad sprint. Eyes that stole my breath and thoughts and fucking Aalto knew what else. A heist waiting under thick lashes. Hoarding secrets.
So many fucking secrets. My mind counted them like items on a list. The ones she’d given me, and the ones I’d discovered on my own. I threw them against the rock, mental darts into a wall, trying to connect them. The ability to hold her breath—and to suffocate another man’s outside his body. To clear airways. Something to do with scent. The way she often leaned in when I tried to swallow a thought, nostrils slightly flared, as though drawn by my smell…
I suppressed a shiver, shoving on wet fucking pants and boots again, unable to sit still.
She’d kissed me under the water, but as soon as she’d breathed into my mouth, the world had somehow lost color and grown brilliantly rich in vibrancy all at once. Fuck if I knew what she’d done. I should be grateful.
I sighed, snatching another smooth branch from my feet and turning it in my hands. There were all the things that had to do with air, and then there was seduction. It didn’t fit with the rest.
She’s a witch, Kimo’s voice whispered in my ears. The islanders of Leihani nodded inside my head. I waved them away, impatient, my lips pursed with thought.
But she was a witch. She had to be. And so was Thaan.
Not for the first time, the beast that lived in my chest growled at the thought of the man. I somehow managed to wrestle it into a cage when Maren was nearby. But it chuffed and gnashed its teeth often enough whenever I let my thoughts wander. I’d somehow missed all the signs that Maren had been manipulated as much as I had. And without her here now, I let it give a sharp roar into the wind as I paced back and forth, no where to go and nothing to destroy to quench the festering anger in my bones.
Anger at him. Anger at myself.
The hardest part of losing memories was the question of my own sanity. And that vile waste of skin and bones had made me doubt every inch of my own intuition. Had driven me to dot tiny spots of ink along my wrist every hour when I'd found myself back in Calder, marking when I’d lost time. To arrange my shoes and jackets in certain patterns to see what activities I might have dressed myself for. To set a wire trap inside my door, refuse to eat the palace food, and then to worry my obsessions would take me someplace darker than ink and wires.
Some place that sent me overlooking steep cliff-sides and roaring tides.
Or, even worse, someplace that landed Maren there.
The beast gave a snarl as my thoughts returned to Thaan. No one liked him, not even the King, yet he’d wormed his way through the court, his mouth in the Crown’s ear as he sent his mute little fucking assistant all over the palace to spy for him.
I trusted very little other than the desperation in Maren’s voice as she screamed for Kriska to stop strangling me. And the glass of water I’d watched her drink to keep a garrote from my neck. Her worry was the only thing I trusted, though ironically, it was the thing that confused me the most.
I swooped for another branch, and then another. The channel sent a surge under my feet, foam dissolving as the surf fell out from the rocks, and I drummed my fingers against the velvet wood. Maren could keep time by the arc of the sun. I wasn’t as adept at it, but I was sure it had been almost an hour since she’d left.
In another hour, it would be dark. Shadows stretched over the rocks, growing longer as the sun escaped the day. My unease grew with them, banishing certainty with the slowly ceasing light. I glanced again out to sea. A vein pulsed in my forehead. She hadn’t taken this long last time.
The woman would kill herself from the cold. And if not the cold, this cursed channel. Waves of impatience licked my sides as I promised myself she’d surface any moment now. She’d come up blue and shaking, limbs frozen, and I’d strip her down and bury her in my own heat, which would be easy to do as I’d been full of Aalto-fucking burning irritation since the moment she left.
I shouldn’t have let her kiss me. I should have dragged her out of the water and carried her. I’d known what she’d been trying to do. Comfort and convince me to stay underwater. Under cursed water. Water so cursed, Rivea hadn’t built any towns here. Didn’t send any ships through the shortcut the channel provided. Even irritated, I had to admire the strategy. She’d discovered a sun-damned tactic and used it against me without hesitation.
Next time I wouldn’t kiss her back. Wouldn’t put us both at risk just to be near her. But fuck, it would be hard not to.
Suns alive, where was she? If I had to drain this entire channel cup-by-tin-fucking-cup—
A scream pierced the wind.
My head snapped up, body freezing as I listened, the armful of wood tucked against my bare stomach.
It came from the south. The direction we were headed.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck—
The small pile of wood dropped to my feet. I snatched the pack and sword as I ran. Visions of Maren swept through my head, filthy fucking pirates forcing her onto a ship, even though I’d given myself a headache staring at the dull patch of sunlight reflecting off the horizon, ensuring none appeared. All the frustration of the moment before vanished, leaving my veins as cold as the churning sea beside me.
Gravel and pebbles crunched under my feet, salty sea spraying my arms and face as the surf crashed against the cliff. My shirt clung to my skin, damp, sending goosebumps along my arms and chest.
Where are you?
The coastline stretched for miles ahead of me, but all I saw was the same dark gray rock, wet and shining. It was an asshole of a coastline too, rock shelves stacked on top of each other, forcing me to climb up and down as I ran, slowing my pace.
“Scream again, Leihani,” I muttered, fingers stinging from the rough handhold I’d forced them into. A wave crashed against the rock, and my eyes strained to see through the thick sheet of mist it left suspended in the air. I climbed a section of rock higher than the rest, above the haze of sea spray, scanning the length ahead. But still found nothing.
My fear burst into full-blown terror. Terror and fucking panic. Twin serpents coiling and twisting, knotting around my heart and hissing chaos into my veins. With a running leap off the other side, I sprinted across the rock.
“Maren!” The waves swallowed my voice. I barely heard it in my own sun-damned ears. I threw a curse to Aalto and tried again. “Maren!”
Another wave thrashed the rock at my side. I might as well have been swimming for how soaking wet I found myself, pants heavy and boots rubbing the sides my ankles raw.
A small creek emptied into the channel, the saving grace we’d been waiting for. It fell off the rock face in a thin waterfall down to the sea, and I splashed through it, gripping the surrounding stone to avoid being swept over the edge, recording the location in my memory. How far had she gone?
My boots landed on a shallow pebble beach, half covered with the gaining tide, and a floating log caught my eye. A log in the shape of a woman, face turned away, hair a tangled mess behind her. She bumped against the rocks, limp and unmoving.
My heart stopped. I froze for half a moment before I dashed for her, legs wading angrily through the surf until she was close enough to grab, latching my fingers onto her satin dress and dragging her toward me, wiping wet hair from her nose and mouth to feel for the vein at her neck, pulsing weakly.
The beast in my chest snarled with relief. I scooped her up, carrying her up shore where the waves couldn’t reach us and laying her on dry pebbles to look her over. No broken bones, though gashes in her legs and shoulder met my wary eye.
“Leihani?” My voice strained against the whoosh of the sea. The relief at finding her ebbed away the longer I took her in. Unresponsive to my voice and touch, her flesh pale and cold, her eyes bloodshot when I lifted her lids. Her breath came shallow and labored, and a rash bubbled under her skin, though that didn’t scare me as much as the thin trickle of blood escaping her nose and ears.
Everything in our pack was soaking-fucking-wet. I didn’t even have a fire to warm her. Worry coiled in my stomach, the twin serpents twisting again as I sat her up to pull her dress off over her head. She gave an involuntary cough, blood from her mouth landing between her legs. Her head fell back, her eyes hovered open, and she stared into the sky without an ounce of life. Still holding her up, I raked a hand through my hair. I'd witnessed countless wounds, but I'd never seen this. The serpents slithered deeper into my chest, the sun sank below the horizon, and darkness whispered from behind the corners of the wet rock, watching us with a gleam in its cold, predatory eyes.