12. Maren
12
Maren
W armth stroked my skin.
Resin snapped in my ear, the sweet scent of burning wood inviting my eyes open.
A jacket lay across my shoulders, a leather bag under my cheek.
Sand and rock crunched under boots. Kye’s face dropped into view, blurred.
A crescent scar came into focus, soft fingers brushing hair from my forehead. “What happened?” His words echoed strangely in my head. I tried to answer him and found I couldn’t. My lips formed words that my voice couldn’t carry, soundless breath escaping my mouth.
My sides didn’t sting. My Naiad skin had already sewn together the gashes where the thing had ripped into me. But my lungs burned as though I’d inhaled acid.
Kye tried to sit me up. My head rolled along his chest, neck devoid of any strength. He pulled me into his shoulder, brows knit as he looked me over. “Can you drink water?”
Cheek buried into the hollow under his collar bone, I blinked at him.
He rubbed his knuckles hard over his brow, then glanced around the meager campsite.
“Can you eat? Are you cold? Do you need to lie back down?”
Do you know what the greatest danger is to a Naiad in the sea? Selena asked in my memory.
Drowning, Thaan answered.
I closed my eyes. Kye had warned me for days not to enter the water. The channel was cursed—something lived deep under the waves. Something with multi-jointed legs that connected to a bodiless frame, with fangs and claws and a clicking mouth.
Mihauna , I was thankful it had been dark. Thankful I hadn’t actually seen the thing. Its mandibles sounded sharply in my mind. Click click click.
I blinked and squinted at his face, trying to clear the blurriness away.
He lifted the tin cup for me. Freshwater hit my tongue, along with bite-sized chunks of fish and a lacey grass that tasted like shrimp.
Shield weed.
I turned my head, violently ejecting the mouthful.
Kye ran a hand through his dark-gold hair, eyes large as he gazed down at me. His breath ghosted over my nose, shallow and fast. He glanced around the camp again, as though searching for something to help. “What do you need?”
I couldn’t answer him.
I didn’t even know what might help me. I rasped torturously as I expelled my oxygen. Each breath brought ragged pain, but I pulled it deep into my lungs anyway—the only thing I knew might heal the bends.
Detoxify. Ignore the pain.
“What happened?” Kye asked again, his thumb sliding over the curve of my shoulder. His opposite hand wove into mine, and a wave of guilt engulfed me without warning.
My fingers twitched as I attempted to hold his hand. I tried to apologize. Brows drawn, I mouthed the words, and he went still, golden gaze rapt on mine as he watched, puzzling out my silent message—until he suddenly understood. Clarity parted his mouth, but my apology only seemed to drive desperation deeper into him. He shook his head, glaring out at the sea.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he whispered. “I don’t want to hear it.”
But his arms pulled me closer, wrapping tight around me, and the scent of metal I’d expected was nowhere to be found. Acrid fear met me instead, sour and sickly sweet. His heart pounded against my ear, his breaths stunted and gasping even though they fell silent. His Adam’s apple bobbed against the crown of my head.
Dimly, I realized he thought I was dying. I considered the possibility myself. It certainly felt as though I was. My eyes closed, and I sank against the soft thud of his chest.
There were worse ways to die. I’d escaped death’s hand more than once now. Nahli had tried to drown me. Naheso had tried to strangle me. Kriska had tried to stab me.
It wouldn’t be that terrible to go here and now.
“Don’t,” he ordered, as though he’d read my mind.
How easy it would’ve been if that were true. If we could share thoughts, passing them back and forth without the need for secrecy. The idea burned deeper than the ache in my limbs and chest.
We didn’t move for several hours. The sun came up, early light warming the rocks.
Kye settled me back onto flat stone, tucking the leather bag under my head. “There’s a stream not far from here. I’m going to get some water. I’ll be right back. You’ll be okay?”
He stared, waiting for some indication from me. I tried to nod, but my head couldn’t move. I simply stared back at him.
Kye hesitated, watching me. His thumb smoothed over my cheek, tracing my jawbone. Then he pulled the jacket over my chest and turned out of sight.
I listened as the rapid crunch of pebbles under his boots faded.
He returned not ten minutes later, carefully setting our tin cup onto the coals of our fire, leaving it to boil. After it had cooled, he hauled me up against his knee, tilting the cup into my mouth.
The fire in my throat soothed at once. My muscles took relief as well, my hands lifting, weakly grasping the cup and gulping the whole thing down.
He exhaled a shaking breath, taking it from me. “More?” His brows lifted hopefully, his foot already braced over the rocks.
“More,” I croaked.
He turned and fled again.
Three hours later, he’d brought and boiled water six times. When I handed the final cup back to him only half-full, he sank to the rock beside me and scrubbed a hand into his face.
By the time the sun set, a sharp numbness began to billow into my toes like a spiteful swarm of ants. I tried to wipe insects away, and they persisted. It wasn’t until the morass of my cognition unraveled that I realized my prickling skin was simply that.
Kye laid beside me, asleep.
I tried not to wake him, watching the moon instead as it drifted over my favorite constellations. The flying whale, the ghost ship, the lonely sea. In six days, Mihauna would be full. Her light shimmered over my skin, bright enough to recharge my body.
Kye had dressed me in pirate pants, and I pulled them off, drawing my satin dress up my thighs, careful to not shift against Kye as I drank in the cold moonlight. Each passing moment brought soothing strength into my arms and legs. I gazed at the man next to me. The dark shadow of his stubble. The architecture of his face. A proud nose between high brows and cheeks. A forest of lashes. The crescent scar on his lower lip.
Mihauna in the stars, he seemed so big beside me.
His mouth twitched as he released a deep breath, and I wondered if he was dreaming. I draped the jacket across him, and his eyes snapped open.
He propped on an elbow in an instant, eyes raking over me as he searched for what was wrong.
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice cracking.
He stared at me as though he didn’t quite believe me. Then his jaw hardened. He fell back onto the rocks, throwing an arm over his eyes. “What happened,” he deadpanned.
I swallowed. “Can I have more water?”
He handed me the cup without looking at me.
Apparently his forgiveness only applied while I was presumably dying.
Sitting up under my own power, I knew I’d improved. My lungs no longer ached, and the fire in my joints had cooled, even if it had left my skin itching.
I wiped my mouth and handed the cup back.
“What happened?” he asked again.
“The bends.”
Silence.
He didn’t move. Didn’t react. His arm remained over his eyes, hiding his face.
“How deep did you dive?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “Deep. So deep it was black.”
Click click click.
My blood chilled, my heart crawling into my throat. I tried to swallow it down, but fear preyed upon my breath, forcing my lungs tight as I remembered the feeling of the thing’s hooks in me, drawing me to its mouth.
I bit my lip, deciding not to mention it to him. The thing—the walking ribcage as large as a horse carriage, with spindly legs and disorienting fangs.
It wasn’t that I thought he wouldn’t believe me. Something told me I’d have to deal with the opposite. He’d believe every word, and I’d have to mount a defense to convince him that the sea was safe.
Because I’d have to return to it. Eventually. My Naiad skin needed the salt, my muscles needed the fish, my heart needed the tide.
Under his elbow, Kye’s jaw clenched hard enough to pierce stone, his fingertips drumming his leg as he waited for more.
“Is that Vranna?” I asked, gesturing toward the distant city lanterns even though he couldn’t see me.
“Yes.”
I forced away the urge to squirm at his clipped tone.
“Kye, I’m sorry—”
“You’re not getting back in the water.”
My eyes snapped to him, lying under his own arm, and without warning, anger blazed inside my chest. I smelled it on myself, a metallic heat rising in the air, and could have sworn the sky darkened in response. Something primal took hold of my arms and hands, sending me to shove at him, sending him sideways. He scrambled upright to gaze at me in shock.
“What in Aalto’s—”
“You can’t deny me the sea,” I hissed, fists curled and ready to unleash. My blood spiked heat into my face, a slight tremor in my voice. I was in little position to argue after he’d found me half-dead on the rocks and nursed me back to health. But he'd have to tie me up in chains to keep me from the water. Electricity fizzled between my fingers, static lifting the hairs at the back of my neck.
His jaw gyrated in place. “Lay back down.”
I did, crossing my arms. Rage trickled down my spine, and somewhere far across the sea, thunder echoed from the dark sky. I wondered if all sirens ran feral at the thought of someone robbing them of the ocean. The waves. The salt.
Kye watched me calmly, his eyes reading the angry lines in my forehead, my hard-set mouth. My brows drew tight, a burn igniting the back of my eyes. “I had to do something,” I growled. “You would have just let us starve.”
“Aalto burn the sky and stars. If you’re worried about starving, do me a favor. Just eat me.”
“I need the sea, Kye.”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Did nothing but study me for what might have been a lifetime. A woeful, irritating curiosity regarding what thoughts rolled around inside his head seeped into mine . He still hadn’t asked me about how I’d saved Hadrian. How I’d drowned Aleksei.
How the pirate ship had ended up below a tidal wave.
His mouth worked on some private notion, and I waited for questions to come as the last remaining sparks of my fury died away. But he stared daggers into the rock beside my hip, war waging behind his eyes, then thrust his arm back over his face and heaved a sigh.
“We’ll reach Vranna by tomorrow night,” he said, voice muffled inside his elbow. “Earlier, if we’re lucky. I’m not going to let you kill yourself when we’re so close. You’re not touching a drop of water unless I give it to you in a cup. You're welcome, by the way.”