Chapter Sixteen #2
“This is impossible to comprehend, much less believe, coming from someone else. And if I had a better way to tell you, I would, I swear it. But it is true.” Her voice faltered, and she swiped at her cheeks before trying again. “I had hoped you might . . .”
She had hoped he might remember on his own.
That had been the oddness seething beneath every interaction, every look. The inexplicable tension every time she said something and looked at him, hope and dread battling in her eyes. That impossible grief she struggled with? The grief that had stirred unwanted jealousy in his heart?
That hadn’t been grief for the love she had lost. It had been grief because her lost love stood before her, and didn’t remember her.
And those times he’d said something that startled her? Like his words in the temple, the ones that had felt so right. Had those come from some spark of memory he could not access? Had they been not his words at all, but the words of the storm god?
Naia’s distress was so wrenching, his protectiveness overrode caution. He reached out and found another tear with his thumb, gently swiping it away. “There was no better way,” he said softly. “And I know you would never lie to me. I want so much to tell you that I can remember this, but . . .”
“I know,” Naia assured him. “It’s impossible.”
Einar didn’t know what else to say. Aleksi’s coaching in manners and thoughtfulness could prepare him for a dinner or a dance, but what prepared a man for being told that the legend he’d grown up idolizing was actually . . .
No. It was too much to believe. Even Aleksi could not have navigated this situation gracefully.
But the thought of the Lover made his stomach flip in a different manner.
“Does Aleksi . . .” No. It wasn’t a question.
So many things made sense now. Those moments, when the two of them had shared a look or cryptic words that left him feeling lost and adrift. “Aleksi knows.”
“Yes.” She twisted her fingers together, betraying her nervousness and guilt. “I needed to say it to someone, to know if it sounded as unbelievable aloud as it did in my head.”
Maybe Aleksi had handled it gracefully after all, then. Einar envied him that, even as he was grateful someone had been able to help Naia through this moment. He certainly didn’t know how. “I understand.”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner, truly, I am.
” Her pinched face all but pleaded with him to understand, to forgive.
“But I thought it might be easier if you remembered on your own. I mean, it’s one thing to reconcile conflicting memories, but how do you hear something like this when you have none? ”
And he didn’t. There were places on the island that had stirred echoes, but they had always felt secondhand. Petya’s stories, living so vividly in his imagination that he had already dreamed of walking these shores before he’d ever set foot on them.
Naia’s big eyes shimmered with worry. Einar tried to find a question.
Any question. “Did he—I mean did I . . . ?” He gestured to his body, to the silvery skin that belonged more to a creature of the sea than one that walked the land.
“Petya’s stories never said what the storm god looked like. I’m not sure anyone knew.”
“You—” She stopped. Seemed to correct herself. “Theron . . . looked like a man. Just different. Tall, like you, but thinner. Older, with long, silver hair, and the bluest eyes . . .”
So nothing like him at all, in any of his forms. “How do you know it was me? Not that I’m doubting you, I just mean . . .”
“I caught glimpses, even before I remembered everything. You would do or say certain things, and it felt like something that had happened before. But, mostly? I just feel it. Feel you.” She stopped and took a deep breath, as if trying to recenter herself.
“Whatever questions you have, if they’re within my power to answer, I will. ”
Maybe this was the path through the awkwardness. As a young boy, he would have given anything for the chance to hear the authoritative tales of the island’s powerful guardian and the woman he had protected. And maybe he would feel an echo in her words. Maybe he could remember, too.
“Are they true?” he asked. “The stories they tell at the Flame of Life Festival? The storm, and the ships, and the storm god following the goddess home?”
She laughed softly. “Yes and no. I did not defy the storm god to ensure my people’s safety. I tricked him. And when he realized it, he did follow me back. But not because he was hopelessly in love. He was angry, and a little intrigued—though he never would confess to that last part.”
That sounded exactly like the Naia he knew. Clever, and more than willing to use the fact that others underestimated her against them. “Is that how he came to stay on the island? He was . . . intrigued?”
“At first.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “But truly? I think he was lonely.”
Einar could relate to that, at least. He knew the bitter taste of loneliness. “Do you know where he was from?”
“From a place so distant, it wasn’t on any of our maps.” She gazed past him, as if seeing something far away—or from long ago. “It was a cold place, with rocky shallows and dangerous fog. Ships steered clear because it was so treacherous.”
A place nothing like what Rahvekya had been in those times. The storm god had come from a frozen world to the shores of a tropical paradise . . . and he’d stayed. Out of love.
Einar could relate to that, too. “And when the war between the High Court sundered the continents. You said before that he wanted you to leave?”
Naia stiffened and looked away. After a moment, she spoke in an agonized whisper. “He begged me not to do it. Said that raising that wall to protect the island would kill me. And he was right.”
The words hit him hard enough to knock the breath from him. If she hadn’t raised that wall of water, his family, his life, Petya . . . This island wouldn’t exist anymore. The selfishness of the storm god should disgust him.
But Einar could remember sailing into this harbor for the first time. The panic that had gripped him when he’d felt Naia sinking her strength into the ocean, spending it recklessly to bring down the wall of ice blocking their path.
Was that where that overwhelming sense of dread had come from? Was that why he’d snapped at her? Some ancient memory of watching her give too much, give everything . . .
Sorin had escaped his cage. A confrontation was coming, one way or another. Naia would hardly sit on the sidelines of the coming storm. Asking her to would be betraying who she was.
If he found himself in that same spot, watching her take a risk that would surely kill her, could he step aside? To save his crew, to save her people, to save this island? To save the world from what Sorin would do to it if he could?
He didn’t know. And he didn’t like not knowing.
“As you’ve seen, I do not know what became of him—of you—after that.” She heaved a shaking breath. “It seems that no one does.”
No wonder she had been so inconsolable in the temple. Almost eight hundred years passed between her fall and Einar’s birth as a mortal. Eight hundred years when anything could have happened. He wished he could tell her what. “I’m sorry.”
“Einar, no,” she said firmly. “It hurts, yes, but it is no one’s fault, least of all yours.
And if we never find out what happened, then that is what must be.
” She reached up and slid her fingers through his hair, and in this form it was long enough for her to tangle around her fist. “Perhaps it is best to let it go, and to focus on what we have now. You and me and Aleksi.”
He gathered her into his arms, savoring how easily they fit together.
He’d been drawn to her from the start, from the first taste of her power in the waves.
Drawn so strongly it had bordered on obsession at times.
Was this why? Did some part of that ancient god linger inside him, desperate to find the love that he’d lost?
And what if he did? Did that make the way he felt about Naia mean less? Or so much more?
“You don’t have to believe me,” she whispered against his shoulder.
“Naia—”
She lifted her fingers and pressed them to his lips to silence him.
“This journey is yours, and you’ll make it in your own time.
” Her hand slid to his cheek, and she gazed up at him.
“But I hope you know how much I want you. Whether you’re a man or the Kraken or a pirate or a god. I love you here, now, in this life.”
Aleksi would likely say that was all that mattered, in the end—and he would be right. Einar turned his face into her hand, brushing his lips across her palm. “You have never let me doubt it.”
“And I never will.” Not just a promise, but a vow.