37 An Unknowable Creature of Air and Water
An Unknowable Creature of Air and Water
T emmi darted after Spie.
The princess tapped her CB, and a beam of light illuminated the air above her wrist. She opened a hatch in her balcony’s flooring.
Wooden steps led to the garden below. They descended quickly, Spie lending Temmi her hand each time Temmi inevitably tripped over her own feet.
Which was too many times to voluntarily admit to.
A path snaked away through the garden. They walked side by side in silence, their fingers occasionally brushing.
The chirping of some creature Temmi couldn’t begin to identify created an eerie ambiance.
From somewhere nearby but invisible came the telltale hum of a hovercraft. The imperial night patrol.
“Are they going to follow us?” Temmi asked. Her voice sounded too loud in the quiet dark. She lowered it. “The guards, I mean.” She didn’t want anyone to overhear what she was going to tell Spie.
Spie glanced skyward; the night was cloudy. “No. My CB has biometrics, so if they sense any irregularities or distress in my heartrate, they’ll swarm; otherwise, we’ll be left alone.”
“It must be disconcerting, being watched all the time.”
Spie’s response was a shrug. In the distance, the sound of crashing waves grew unmistakable. Temmi shivered. Her near-drowning in the manor’s pool had instilled in her a bone-deep fear of water.
She glanced sidelong at the princess. “Please tell me we’re not going to the beach?”
“Oh, we are.” Spie shot Temmi a wicked grin. “I’m in need of a swim.”
“In the ocean ?” Temmi’s mind short-circuited at the mere suggestion.
The path beneath her feet morphed from hard-packed earth to shifting sand. Before them, the ocean appeared. A sprawling black yawn of terrifying depth, the surface broken intermittently by silver-white surf. Like foaming teeth. Temmi stopped, terrified.
“That’s right, Trash Girl,” Spie said, a little bit of laughter in her voice. She snatched Temmi’s hand, kicked off her sandals, and began to run directly for the crashing waves.
Temmi was yanked after her, stumbling along, incapable of matching her wild grace.
Before them, the ocean became a living, breathing entity.
Spie dropped Temmi’s hand. Temmi crashed to one knee in the cold, wet sand while the princess continued her forward assault as though compelled by the moons above, her long, lithe body lengthening as she bellowed some wordless anthem, a whoop of joy or something else, and threw her arms over her head.
She splashed into the surf, leapt, and dove into the black expanse. The ocean swallowed her whole.
Panic gripped Temmi’s lungs. She darted forward on hands and knees, slicing her finger against a sharp rock.
Freezing water lapped up to soak her sweatpants.
She screamed Spie’s name. Water wasn’t safe.
Water had nearly killed Temmi. Might’ve killed Rosaria.
To willingly throw oneself into a wild ocean under cover of night? Utter insanity.
Were the tides high or low? Expan Proper had three moons, so that would definitely complicate the tide situation, but Temmi had no experience with the how.
Something popped up above the water a few yards distant, but it was too dark to discern exactly what. Temmi screamed Spie’s name again.
That something bobbed closer. Fucking hell. Temmi stumbled backward in the wet sand.
The creature rose slowly from the surf, long mane whipping backward over its head.
It arched a slender neck as it metamorphosed into Spie Expani.
A sound like laughter rang out from her throat as she turned to face Temmi, her soft purple eyes distinctly black.
Slowly, she shook water from her hair and skipped back through the shallows, her sheer pajamas clinging to her frame.
She was practically naked, the ocean dripping from every surface of her skin.
Temmi struggled to her feet. “What the fuck is wrong with you!” She fought against the crash of waves and bark of wind to be heard. “You’re mad!”
“I’m alive!” Spie yelled, and spun in a circle, arms raised, as she danced out of the surf. She was a siren, a phantom, an unknowable creature of air and water. Wicked and wild and beautiful. A queen, not a princess. Not of galaxies and empires but of darkness and the will to live.
She danced up the beach and threw herself onto the sand.
An elegant flop. Far enough from the surf that the water could no longer touch her.
Temmi, caught in her web, in the invisible pull of her wild royalty, her wicked beauty, the stark sense of life pouring from her water-slicked frame, trailed helplessly.
Spie’s chest rose and fell rapidly, her gaze focused on the dark, clouded sky.
She shivered visibly. Temmi lowered herself to sitting, settling into a lotus position, trying to ignore the soft bite of cold as the wind touched her damp pants.
She tugged her sweater over her head. Underneath, she wore only a white undershirt and her necklace of orrist basalt.
The crimson-and-black stone glowed in the moonlit darkness.
“Here.” Temmi offered Spie her sweater. “Before your teeth fall out from the cold.”
The princess sat up. Flecks of sand were stuck to her arms and mixed up in her damp locks. “Thanks.” She shrugged into the sweater. Something warm swelled in Temmi’s chest as she watched the fabric fall around Spie’s upper body; it was too large on her slender frame.
“What’s that?” Spie nodded at the glowing necklace.
Temmi looked down. Heat radiated from the rare basalt. “Oh. That’s—” Spie’s fingers reached out to touch it, and Temmi grabbed her hand to stop her. A reflex. “Sorry, uh, it’s dangerous. It’s orrist basalt. A very small piece is enough to kill a man.”
The princess looked at her hand in Temmi’s.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, then immediately brought Temmi’s hand to her sweater.
Bunched the fabric around Temmi’s cut finger.
“There,” Spie said, after a prolonged moment, once the bleeding had stopped.
But she didn’t release Temmi’s hand. And Temmi didn’t pull away.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re wearing a little piece of death rock on your person?” Spie’s thumb brushed the back of Temmi’s hand; Temmi’s breath got trapped in her throat.
“Because it reminds me of X72.” With her free hand, Temmi plucked at the necklace’s chain.
“It’s safe so long as the protective sheath isn’t broken.
The danger only comes when the rock’s in direct contact with someone’s skin.
That and inhaling fumes from factories that purify the basalt.
Which is why everyone on my planet is dying from some flavor of lung disease. ”
“That’s the stuff that makes jumpgates work, isn’t it?” Spie scooted closer, her knees bent and bare. “It looks familiar; I feel like I’ve seen a similar rock before.”
She twirled her hand around Temmi’s and intertwined their fingers. Temmi’s heart thumped double-time. When she looked into Spie’s salt-lined face, sand and ocean water clumping her dark tresses together, she felt entirely too much.
Focus on the orrist basalt, she told herself.
“Technically, no. Orrist basalt doesn’t make jumpgates work—they work fine without it.
The problem is, ships, and anything else that enters a jumpgate, can’t withstand the pressure of condensed spacetime.
Purified orrist basalt, if circulated through ship systems, can protect them.
So, orrist basalt doesn’t make jumpgates function; it allows us to safely use them.
But I could see how that’s considered the same thing.
” Temmi knew she was rambling. She didn’t know how else she was meant to survive Spie’s closeness without giving in to it.
Spie smelled of the ocean, briny and untamed and free. Temmi wanted her, had always wanted her, but didn’t know the first thing about reaching for her.
“My mother’s diadem,” Spie said, gaze trained on the necklace.
With her other hand, the one not holding Temmi’s, Spie reached up to lift the necklace’s chain, her fingers brushing Temmi’s collarbone.
“That’s where I’ve seen it before. I never knew it was orrist basalt. How did you bring it on the show?”
“I wore it,” Temmi said. Her breaths had gone shallow.
“Security never caught it? That seems odd, considering how tightly my mother regulates the stuff. You could be arrested for having this, couldn’t you? It’s a Type A controlled substance.”
“Are you going to arrest me, Your Highness?”
Spie’s lips curled into that malevolent grin that Temmi found so gut-clenchingly sexy.
God fucking damn. She’d never experienced an attraction so intense, like an aching need in her core.
Like some alien parasite had awoken inside her body, bringing to hot, bright awareness parts of herself she’d never known existed.
“Only if you want me to.” Spie’s fingers glanced along the curve between Temmi’s neck and shoulder.
“I just might.” Temmi would let Spie Expani arrest her, lock her up, yank her hands behind her back and bind them tight. She wouldn’t even fight.
Why had she come out there again?
For the space of a heartbeat, Spie’s eyelids fluttered closed. She squeezed Temmi’s hand tighter before opening them again. “How come you’ve never asked me to call you Temmi? You told Nicky to call you Temmi. I remember because I was watching the feed on our ship. But you’ve never asked me to.”