Chapter Six #4
The words echoed, piercing sharply through the hum in her ears.
Naia shook her head to clear it, but the action blurred Einar’s face.
When her eyes focused once more, he was no longer himself but the man she’d seen on the ship—older, lankier.
He knelt on the beach in front of her, silver braids woven with shells hanging down around his weathered face as he traced a nautilus shell in the sand.
Her heart convulsed, splintering an ache through her chest so strong that it stole her breath. Her vision blurred again, this time from the unshed tears that welled in her eyes. She blinked, and the tears flowed down her cheeks.
Einar stared up at her, concern shadowing his features, but it was him once more as he rose and touched her wet cheek. “Naia?”
Across the way, Zanya called Einar’s name.
Naia covered his hand with hers and smiled, though the effort felt shaky and unconvincing. “They need you.”
“They can bloody well wait,” he rumbled, his brow creased with worry. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” It was only a small lie. The buzzing sound in her ears had begun to fade, and she could now clearly see only what was before her and nothing else. She dried her cheeks and pushed lightly at his shoulder. “Go.”
He stroked her cheek, but when Ash shouted his name this time, he sighed and dropped a kiss to her forehead. “Call if you need me.”
He jogged over to where Ash and Zanya had been working on replacing the damaged roof of a dwelling large enough to house several families.
They had removed the broken beams and rafters, and now needed to place new ones.
They conferred briefly, then Zanya vanished in a swirl of shadows.
Gasps and a few scattered cheers accompanied her reappearance on the home’s roof.
Ash and Einar gripped the center beam and began to heave it up. The muscles in Einar’s arms and back bunched with the strain, and Naia’s cheeks began to heat.
“You’re blushing, little nymph.”
Aleksi’s whisper shivered up Naia’s spine. “So are you.”
“Guilty.” He made the word sound positively delicious—though not as delicious as what he said next. “But I sincerely hope he does not tire himself out. I have plans for the two of you tonight.”
She looked over at him, grateful that no traces of tears remained on her face. “Oh? Please, do elaborate.”
But of course Aleksi saw. He always did. His suggestive smile vanished, the heat replaced by warmth as he cradled her face between his hands. “What has happened? Are you hurt?”
“No, I—”
A crash and a commotion nearby commanded their attention. An older woman had dropped a heavy bucket near Sir Jaspar, and dirty water had splashed onto his polished boots. Jaspar, who had very obviously loathed every moment of the day and accomplished absolutely nothing, lost control of his temper.
“You useless waste!” he shouted at the cowering woman. “These are Rehesian leather! They cost more coin than you’ll ever touch in your lifetime, but I’ll see to it—”
So many things happened, all at once. Indignant protests rose in a cacophony of sound that still could not drown out the woman’s sobs, and Naia and Aleksi started toward the ugly scene just as others did the same. But before anyone could draw near, Jaspar raised one hand above and behind his head.
Preparing to strike.
No.
Blood thundered in Naia’s ears, an angry sound like howling winds and crashing waves. The entire world seemed to slow as she dragged in ragged breaths and willed the burning rage in her breast not to explode.
It did not work. A volcano erupted inside her, burning her alive as it flowed outward in a very real, very tangible burst of heat.
Jaspar flew off his feet, yanked into the air by an unseen force, and slammed against the side of a rebuilt hut.
He hung there, expensive boots kicking helplessly as his reddened face contorted with fear.
Everyone froze. Only Naia continued to advance. Hot wind stirred her hair as it lifted her off the ground and carried her forward, toward the old woman, who had crumpled to the ground in a silent, staring heap.
Naia pulled her back to her feet, the action effortless in a way that she did not understand and had no time to ponder. All she could feel was a steadying warmth that flowed from her hands and into the woman’s frail arms.
“You will be fine,” Naia assured her. “No one will hurt you.”
Especially not Jaspar. Naia turned on him, and the soothing warmth flared and fled, melting once more into incandescent fury. The horrible man stared at Naia, his eyes just as wide as the old woman’s, but with fear instead of awe.
“You already do every other cruel and dismissive thing you want,” Naia told him. “One thing you will not do is touch my people.”
“I don’t—”
Naia squeezed, her entire body trembling as she cut off his air.
She only planned to do it for a moment, because she could not bear to hear his justifications or excuses.
But that moment stretched into several, and he deserved this so much.
For his terrible attitudes toward the locals, for his fervent belief that an accident of birth had made him worthy of anything, much less everything—
“Naia, love.” The voice surrounded her. Suffused her. “Either release him or end it.”
End it. The words made no sense until she realized that Jaspar’s face had gone purple, and his tongue protruded from his mouth. She relaxed her grip with a startled cry, and he dropped to the ground, gasping and choking.
“It’s all right,” the ethereal voice murmured. “I’m here.”
Aleksi. She turned toward him, and all she could see was light.
Every color that had ever or would ever exist, dazzling and unformed and wrapping all around her.
It gentled the rage, made her think of fond, easy laughter and the quiet, intimate hours before dawn when everything was still and peaceful.
Perfume filled the air, and petals floated down around them—soft pink and red and yellow—as she clung to him.
“Naia!”
This voice wasn’t ethereal; it was visceral, crashing thunder and the silence of the deep. Storm and sea, as familiar to her as her own name. It was a part of her very soul, the reason she had torn free of the Dream in the cool dark of the ocean. The place that belonged to him.
Bronzed skin. Silver braids. And the bluest eyes Naia had ever seen, like a perfect, cloudless summer sky.
Theron.
The memories crashed over Naia, and she floated where they carried her, unable to do anything else lest she drown.
She drifted through the haze of the very beginning, when the seamounts had boiled up, parting the ocean to make way for her island.
Hot and green, teeming with wildlife and later with people.
Her children, whom she had grown to love with a ferocity matched only by those final days of turmoil, when the quaking earth and roiling seas had threatened to wash away everything she had ever cherished.
Then, the end.
She stumbled into Theron’s arms, a thousand questions tearing at her—and only one that truly mattered. It tumbled out of her, over and over, until the words barely made sense. “Where have you been?”
He stared down at her in agonized confusion, blue eyes one heartbeat and brown the next. Of course he did not know. He could not, because this was Einar. He had never followed her across leagues of water or chased her through the verdant jungle or stolen a kiss under the summer stars.
He did not remember her.
He did not remember her.
Pain pulsed from her in a wave that stirred the petals blanketing the ground. Instantly, Naia pulled it back, ashamed of herself—for her loss of control, and for letting herself be swept away by sadness. What did it matter if Einar did not remember, if he was here, safe and whole?
She took a calming breath and let her power wash outward again, this time redolent with the essence of Rahvekya. This was not a place of pain, but of hope. She remembered that now, and eventually so would he.
Until then, all the memories, the joys and regrets, were hers to bear.
A low rumble of voices rose all around them, and Naia looked to see the villagers kneeling.
Even the oldest among them clutched at others and struggled to take one knee.
The rumble resolved into voices—“by Her grace” and “through Her blessed intercession.” They had been murmuring these prayers of thanks to Naia since her initial arrival to the island, but now she recognized them for what they truly were.
Pleas.
For a moment, Einar stared at her in utter shock, then he hit the ground on both knees as understanding washed over him.
His expression changed, all the affection he carried for her subsumed by sheer awe.
He gazed up at her reverently, the way a sobbing sailor would eye his first piece of solid land after being adrift at sea for months.
She wanted to lift him to his feet, to urge him never to kneel, not for her. To somehow convince him that she was the same person he’d lain in bed with only hours before.
The words died on her tongue.
Aleksi knelt beside Einar, one arm around his shoulders and a few whispered words in his ear. Naia heard them, though she should not have been able to, just as she saw them take form on Aleksi’s lips.
Your goddess.
Someone clutched at Naia’s elbow, and she turned to find that one man had risen and approached her. Tears streamed down his pale cheeks, tracking clean paths through the soot that smudged his face.
The blacksmith, whose forge Isa had borrowed for the day.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I’m so sorry, my lady. I did not believe—”
“It’s all right, Larus.” She grasped his hands, which quaked in hers from the sheer force of his tears, and smiled up at him. “Neither did I.”
Others had followed his lead, taking to their feet and crowding around her. Naia tried her best to connect with them all—to touch their hands or catch their gazes, to repeat their names or answer their desperate questions.
To soothe their pain.
They had been awaiting her return for thousands of years. Hoping beyond hope, telling stories of her in secret. Risking their safety and freedom to keep the memory of her alive so they could pass on that hope to their children.
This was the least she could do.