36. Maren
36
Maren
S omewhere behind me, Kye swore.
He called my name as I turned and fled through dry shrubs and parched wildflowers. Up a small hill and through a thatch of birch and ash wood, over roots and rock. My lungs burned with the chill of the evening, my breath a fog that swept translucent and white over my face.
It took less time than I expected for him to catch up, but suddenly I heard him, crashing through the forest hills behind me. His steps came quick and hard, pounding the cold ground, and I knew that while in the sea I could outstrip him ten times over, I’d never beat him on land.
“Stop,” he shouted, his voice radiating with surprise.
I took a sharp curve and heard him scramble as he changed direction to follow. Under a green limb and over a log, I was forced to slow and felt him draw close. Instinct warned me not to glance back, but he’d come close enough that his boots crunched leaves in my ears. Fingers swiped across my back, knotting in the folds of the loose shirt I wore, and I was yanked to the side.
Trajectory impeded, my feet lost their grip over a bed of half-rotten bark, and I went down hard enough to snap my teeth together. Kye swore again. His weight dropped beside me, hands reaching for my own. My body became a tangle of legs and kicking feet, shoving him off and away, and he wrapped one leg over my pelvis, immobilizing my bucking hips, his hands fixing mine to solid ground. I gazed up at him through disheveled hair, cast wildly over my eyes and mouth, bark and leaf caught throughout the strands.
He panted into my face, his diaphragm expanding and constricting against mine. His heart pounded, a beat off from my own. His pulse throbbed through the grip of his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m sorry. The rope was the wrong thing to mention—”
I wriggled violently under his weight. “Get off.”
“I would never actually—”
Pinned to the forest floor, struggling to fill my lungs, I somehow dug deep enough within myself to muster enough air to scream in his face.
His jaw clenched, chest slowing as he caught his breath more elegantly than I. But he waited, patient for me to run out of steam, golden eyes calm and stoic. The world around us bloomed with the scent of melded iron ore, though from which one of us, I didn’t know. My body emptied the last of its reserves, energy and volume alike, and he unmasked his teeth in something between danger and a smile. “Promise me you won’t run like that again.”
I glared up at him. “No.”
Fingers twitched against mine. “Promise me.”
“ No .”
“ Aalto and back ,” he cursed, his voice full of gravel. “You can’t take the pass, Leihani. There is no pass. You’re going to kill yourself.”
“You can’t make decisions for me, Kye,” I panted. “You can’t tell me where I’m allowed to go. What I’m allowed to do. You can’t keep me safe .”
Kye’s body went still. Something flickered behind his eyes. His mouth parted as he drew in a sharp breath and held it.
“What are you going to do?” I pressed on, rasping over every word. “Shove a knife under my chin and escort me onto a ship? Lock me in a cage so dark that I hear nothing but the sounds of a cargo hold? Tie me to a chair while you sleep in a bed?”
I glared at him, determined to ignore the pain in his eyes. His fingers loosened. He slid off, letting his hip find the earthen floor at my side. I waited for him to argue. To pull me to my feet and march me back to the inn. But he didn’t. He stared at me, the gentleness in him snuffed out, his face impossible to read. And damn it to Mihauna, my traitorous gaze flicked to his mouth, full and smooth but for his crescent scar, hovering just beyond the breath of mine.
Kye’s eyes dropped to my lips in answer. His panting rushed over my skin, shallow and fast. The burst of molten metal thickened around us, growing heady and savory as we sat gasping for air.
His eyes closed as though willing himself a measure of control, but his next exhalation sank his body deeper into mine. He slanted against me, warm breath curling into the side of my neck, his nose grazing the hollow curve just below my ear.
I was suddenly motionless under the familiar weight of him, spread over me like sand over a bed of coals, and a predatory animal in my core flickered to life, raising its nose and sniffing at the sudden scent in the air, potent between our bodies. My fingers itched to travel through the roots of his hair, and I found myself arching my back, thrusting myself against him, feeling his hips and legs through the thin cotton of his low-hanging pants. He trailed his mouth across my collar bone and up my neck, then grazed my lips so softly I thought I might catch fire.
My mouth opened without hesitation, seeking the smooth glide of his tongue, the soft crush of his lips, inviting him to deepen our kiss as he rolled his weight over me. Every stitch of muscle and bone in his body grinded against mine, electric through my limbs. He tilted my head back and sucked my lower lip between his teeth, fingers settling on either side of my jaw, holding my face with heartbreaking reverence.
And I moaned into him, pushing my ankles into the soil, grating my center against the growing firmness of his body. I felt him still against the side of my cheek.
“Promise me you won’t do that again,” he rumbled. My eyes flew open.
I kicked out, throwing my hips in a futile rage. “Get off!”
Kye glared down at me. Irritation coursed through my belly, hot and piercing. And under that, the soft current of slow, quiet shame. A creeping river below the raging fire in my chest. I stared up at him, a siren gazing at a human, and wondered when he’d gained the ability to seduce the seductress. When exactly had his skin and warmth become a weapon to use against my resolve, his body beckoning to mine in a way words never could.
Kye leaned away, his back proud and straight, a warrior poised for victory. As though he’d discovered a weakness in my walls.
Before I realized what I’d done, a jet of water hit him hard in the side of his face.
It knocked him sideways, sputtering as he waved the splash away, and I scurried to my feet. Loose spray peppered my face and hair, the strands sticking to my damp skin, curling around my shoulders.
On his knees, Kye glanced up at the sky, as though expecting to see rain clouds. Then to me, eyes wide as water dripped off his stubbled chin. He looked up again, then ran a hand roughly over the side of his temple, pulling it away to inspect his shining palm.
I made to spring away—but his hand struck out, grabbing hold of my wrist. Water trickled slowly from the center of my palm, sliding off my fingertips. Water that had summoned itself, without a thought or word from me.
I’d used my Naiad powers in front of him before. But in most cases, I’d managed to hide them from his detection. I’d never hit him in the face with them.
He gestured mildly to my hand, heart rate increasing, a sudden acridity in the air. “What’s this,” he asked, though it didn’t sound like a question. His breath still stunted from our chase, eyes churning as he stared at the open palm of my hand.
“Nothing.” Heat waves from the moment before evaporated, leaving me stranded in the horrified shock of summoning water in front of him.
Kye inhaled through his nose hard enough the tendons sprang along his neck. Then he wrapped a hand around his temples, dragging his fingers to meet at the bridge of his nose. “Do it again.”
I shook my head, the motion jerky. The trickle in my hand grew, even as I closed my fingers into a fist, turning my arm in and pressing it against my body. I urged it to stop, my own heart wild in its cage. But it wouldn’t. And the more desperate I grew, the faster it came, the moist air feeding droplets into my palm like condensation to a glass.
Kye wiped his face again, eyes returning to my hand. Flexing my fingers, I flicked the water away, not that it did me any good. He stared, his thoughts as loud and clear as the trees shivering above.
Witch .
“It’s not what you think,” I said.
One hand still holding my wrist, Kye nodded. “What do I think?”
“That I’m something to fear,” I replied, forcing a swallow down my throat. Kye fixed me with a long look, the seconds dragging out between us as crickets sang in the autumn grass.
“ Should I fear you, Leihani?” he murmured. I opened my mouth and closed it. Of all the questions he might have asked—how I’d managed to save Hadrian and kill Aleksei, to hold my breath and heal wounds within days, to seduce a man and steal his memory—I realized this was the one I’d been dreading. This was the one that sliced me open like flesh stripped from my body, leaving me bare and cold. The one that froze me solid, rooting my feet into the crisp autumn undergrowth. The one that tore at my aching heart.
I blinked back at the sudden heat prickling at my eyes. “Probably.”
We studied each other, him on his knees only inches from where I stood, ignoring the growing dark as the sun slowly fell below the treetops. Kye exhaled. “Show me.”
I hesitated. Then lifted my hand, palm facing the sky. He finally released my arm and pushed to his feet, taking the smallest step back, as though expecting another hard stream of water. But I summoned only a small sphere that hovered over my open fingers. It grew, absorbing the moisture around it, until it might have been just too wide to fit in a drinking glass. I forced the molecules together, watching it harden as ice fractured the smooth edges of the sphere, trailing to the center like veins in flesh. The ball shifted to bright white as frost invaded its surface, but I flushed out the tiny ribbons of air before it solidified completely, leaving it clear as a crystal orb.
I gently tossed it to him. Kye caught the sphere and brought it to his face, expression timid even as he looked it over with curiosity.
I waited, suppressing a shiver.
“Tell me why,” he finally said, his voice soft enough to surprise me.
“Why—why I can…” I gestured vaguely to the air where my stream of water had manifested the moment before.
He shook his head. “Why won't you take a ship? Why won’t you talk about what happened?”
I stared at him, humiliation threatening all over again. It gripped me in the chilled air, slithering down my scalp and across my shoulders. Ice ball in his fingers, he drove his fists into his hips and waited.
“Kye,” I sighed. My throat closed, and I cursed the weakness living within me that led me to me cry when all I wanted to do was rage. “I grew up talking to the moon. Tracking the stars. There were nights—many nights—that the sky and sea were all I had.” I stopped to pull a deep breath into my lungs. “And I’ve been on two ships now. Each time, I’ve been imprisoned below deck. My hands have been chained. I’ve been left in an iron cage. I’ve been spat on, slapped, starved, and drugged unconscious. I watched them torture you. And there was nothing I could do about it.”
The solid line of his shoulders deflated slowly, and though I didn’t meet his eyes, I felt them, heavy and sober, burning into mine.
“And each time,” I continued, gazing at the ice sphere in his hand. “Each time, I thought I might die before I had the chance to see the sky again.”
Kye’s jaw relaxed and clenched. The sphere dropped into a bed of moss, fuzzy green magnified through its walls. He reached for my hand again. Fingers cool and slippery from the ball of ice, he held my hand until I looked up at him, and then brushed the mess of waves out of my face, tucking my hair behind my ears.
“If it’s the sky you want, Leihani,” he said, thumb drifting across my jaw to land on my chin, tilting it slowly upward, “there’s no better place to see it than the mountains.”