15 Imogen #2
He caught it in his fist with ease, but the effort made him slip farther down.
The rope I’d thrown him ran through his fist, burning his palm as it did, but he held tight.
Straining, he climbed up, nearer and nearer, just as the ship began to straighten out.
The creaks and moans of the massive vessel were deafening as it righted.
I thought it would snap in two, but it rolled back safely, laying me on my back, half strewn over the lattice, half across the deck.
My hands shook. The ship teemed with crew racing to fix sails and broken rigging.
Theodore’s hand gripped my ankle. He yanked, and I slid across the deck, so we were nearly eye to eye.
I stared at him, both of our breaths racing.
Sweat dotted his brow, and dark smudges sat beneath his eyes.
I liked the gruff start of his dark beard and had to keep myself from reaching up to feel it scratch against my palm.
Even breathless and shaken he managed a tormenting half smile. There was a tease in his voice. “I was coming to find you.”
The ship was relatively steady now, but I felt like I was careening. “Foolish of you.”
“I needed to tell you about a spell I found…” But he trailed off, staring at me with a warm glaze over his eyes, and his lips softly parted.
I scowled. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“How am I looking at you, Imogen?”
“I don’t know. Like that. All moony.”
“Moony!” He rose to his knees and reached down a hand to help me up. “I’ll refrain from grabbing and kissing you. I’ll do my best to avoid grand proclamations,” he said, sternly. “But if I look at you like that, trust that it is entirely out of my control.”
We stood too close. The wind still whipped, its perverse gusts pulling our hair this way and that. Another terrible twist moved through me and my stomach knotted over itself.
Lachlan rushed toward us. “Go check on Halla, Theo.” He glowered between Theodore and me. “And if you insist on being out here, tether yourself to the rail and beware the danger of distractions.”
Theodore’s jaw clamped tight. His fierce look lingered on me, hitching my breath, before he took a step toward his stateroom, then stopped. His guards had made their way back to their post at the door. “Check on Her Highness,” he shouted at them.
Lachlan fumed. “Dead Gods,” he said under his breath. “She’s not a princess any longer, Theo.”
But Theodore ignored him as he bent to retrieve a stray rope, stepped toward me, and began to knot it around my waist. He held my gaze as he tightened the knot with a tug. Lachlan grumbled as he secured the other end to the rail. “Can’t you control the wind and sea here?” he asked me.
I swiped at the hair that whipped across my face. “I can’t feel a tie to it. It feels like it’s tied to Eusia.”
Theodore’s countenance was grim as he tethered himself to the ship as well. “But so are you.”
Another gust rushed over the deck, rocking the vessel to and fro. I’d been so set on trying to keep Eusia at bay, at keeping a hold on myself, that I’d not even considered riffling through the bond we shared to see what power it might afford me.
I stared down at the water again. Lachlan stood to my one side and Theodore the other. He reached up and pulled back some of the hairs that clung to my cheek. “If you and I had been able to share each other’s power—”
“No,” I said, trying to not be distracted by his attention. He was careful to not touch me as he drew his fingers down the strands he held. “My bond with Eusia doesn’t feel anything like ours did.”
“Because it was forged by magic. But we already know she can access your power through it. It might go both ways, Imogen.”
The prospect of exploring that oily, burning power filled me with terror, especially with Theodore so close, but his nearness also gave me a dose of courage. I closed my eyes and, as if crossing the threshold to a boarded-up wing of a rotting house, searched inward.
Intention, I thought. That was what guided Eusia.
Want was what fueled her and her magic. I searched through that uncomfortable writhing inside me; I turned to the place in my mind where her voice would sound.
It was a shock to realize that what I’d thought had been a barrier built from something solid and impermeable was in fact tissue thin. It was naught but a veil.
When I passed through it, I felt something burst inside me. Something squirmed. I could feel the undulating water, could feel the chaotic winds. I tightened my hold on my intention and willed the world around me to calm.
In Fort Linum, when I’d dipped into seawater for the first time, Eusia’s voice had been a faint call. Near the sea, when she spoke through the nekgya, her voice rang, clear like a bell, between my ears. Now it was as if my own throat vibrated with her words.
My jaw loosened, my mouth moved as if guided by her hand. “Dear girl, look how far you’ve come—”
Somewhere in the periphery of my consciousness, I could still feel Theodore’s solid body at my side, could sense his warmth. Could hear him shift and grunt. “Imogen.”
But the rest of me had been transported.
Plunged into a dark and murky pool of acerbic water.
My back pressed against the very bottom of it.
My hair floated around my face and an orb of misty light hung above me.
Cold limbs bumped into mine. The whole pool seemed to thump as if I were inside a heart… or a womb.
My mouth moved again. “Nearly home… I’ve waited so long.”
Hard hands gripped my wrists; something struck my spine. The jolt ripped me from that awful water and threw me back into my own body. I opened my eyes, gasping.
Theodore was against me, the whole of his weight pressing me into the rail, hands pinioning my wrists to the wood. Three scratches along the length of his neck oozed bright blood. Lachlan had his dagger near my throat.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m so sorry. Theo, I—”
He was stunned, gaze locked with mine. “Your eyes.”
Lachlan lowered his blade in shock.
“What about them?” I asked.
Theodore swallowed hard. “For a moment, they looked like… like the Mage Seer’s. Like Rohana’s.” A milky, flickering white. Disquieted and keeping his hold on me, he finally glanced around. “You did it. It stopped.”
The ship was still, I knew it was. The wind had calmed, but I couldn’t take my eyes from the three bleeding lines I’d carved into Theodore’s neck. They knitted themselves back together as he released my wrists and stepped away from me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t know what happened.”