Chapter 10
The memory of Valrek’s lips refused to fade.
Ariella lay awake on her narrow cot, staring at the ceiling of her room while the pre-dawn light crept through the single porthole window. She pressed her fingers to her mouth for the hundredth time, feeling the ghost of Valrek’s kiss.
She’d felt so… wanted in his arms. Not studied, not examined, not evaluated for her lung capacity or the efficiency of her gill function. Just desired, like she was a woman instead of a science project.
And I wanted him too. That part was almost as shocking.
She’d thought about boys when she was younger—what girl didn’t?
She’d even had a crush on Mathias, the son of one of the village fishermen once.
She’d waited for him one day after the boats came in, shyly offering him a shell she’d retrieved from deep beneath the water.
He’d smiled and taken the shell, but then his friends had laughed and told him not to touch the “fish-girl” and he’d dropped it as if it burned him.
The lesson had been clear—she was too strange, too other, for human boys. Her father and Merrick had also made it clear that such distractions were a waste of her time and resources. She was an asset, not a person, and her future was already decided.
So she’d shut that part of herself away. She’d focused on her work, on the obligations that would one day buy her father’s freedom. She had never allowed herself to imagine a different future.
Yet, with Valrek, she didn’t feel like a fish-girl. She’d felt seen. In his arms, pressed against the hard wall of his chest in that storm, she’d just been Ariella. The way he’d looked at her—like she was precious, like she was the only thing that mattered in all the universe…
The rain had finally stopped a few minutes after he kissed her.
They’d climbed back down to the cave in silence, her body humming with a restless energy that made her skin feel too tight for her bones.
He hadn’t touched her again, but the memory of his hands on her waist, of the hard, possessive strength of him pressing against her, lingered.
Lilani had been awake when they returned, sitting by the fire with a shell held to her ear.
“Where were you?” she asked, her golden eyes wide. “I was worried.”
“We were checking the solar array,” he said, his voice rough. “The weather turned.”
“I don’t like storms. They make the ocean angry. The waves sounded like they were crying.”
“The ocean cries a lot,” she murmured without thinking, and his head had snapped up, his gaze meeting hers across the fire. He’d seen too much in that simple statement. He’d seen the lonely little girl she’d been. He saw the lonely woman she still was.
It had been too much for her, and she’d fled back to the familiar comfort of the sea before he could stop her. And now she was here. In her room. Alone.
She slid off the cot and padded to the window.
The storm had passed, and the sky was beginning to lighten, the cliffs emerging from the darkness.
Was he already awake, making breakfast for Lilani?
Had the little girl already started talking, asking her endless questions with her usual excitement?
She wanted to be with them so much it was like a physical ache, but Merrick’s face rose in her mind.
She was promised to him. That bargain was the only thing standing between her father and debtor’s prison. Three weeks. That was all the freedom she had left. And she’d just wasted a precious hour of it on a fantasy.
Going back to Valrek’s cave was playing with fire. Getting attached was reckless. Letting herself feel things was dangerous.
But when she closed her eyes, all she could see was the way he’d looked at her in that narrow crevice, rain drumming against the rocks while his golden eyes burned with an intensity that made her forget how to breathe.
All she could feel was the press of his massive body against hers, the safety of his arms, the impossible gentleness of his hands cradling her face.
The first rays of sunlight spilled through the window, painting a stripe of gold across her blanket, and she turned to get dressed, her decision already made.
Her father wouldn’t wake for hours—he’d been up late running analysis on the water samples she’d brought back, muttering about mineral composition and salvage potential.
Merrick wasn’t due for another visit until the end of the week.
She had time, and she was going to use every second of it.
She dove beneath the surface and let the current carry her away, her body moving through the familiar pathways around the cliffs.
The morning light filtered down in shifting columns of green and gold, illuminating schools of silver fish that scattered at her approach.
She barely noticed them. Her mind was already racing ahead, imagining Valrek’s face when he saw her.
Wondering if Lilani would be awake. Hoping—desperately, foolishly hoping—that yesterday hadn’t been a dream.
She surfaced near the rocks where she usually emerged, pushing wet hair from her face. And there he was.
He stood on the shore like he’d been waiting for her.
His dark hair was tied back from his face, revealing the strong lines of his jaw and the sharp points of his ears.
His golden eyes caught the early light and seemed to glow from within, tracking her movement with an intensity that made her stomach flip.
“You came back.” His voice was rough, like he’d been holding his breath.
“You said we needed to talk. After you kissed me.”
Something flickered across his face—heat, want, a flash of the beast that lived beneath his surface. She watched his hands curl into fists at his sides, like he was physically restraining himself from reaching for her.
“About that—”
“Don’t.” She climbed out of the water, her webbed feet easily finding purchase on the slippery rocks. “Don’t tell me it was a mistake again. Don’t—”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You weren’t?”
“No.” He closed the distance between them in two long strides, and suddenly he was so close she could feel the heat radiating from his massive body.
His hand came up to cup her jaw. “I was going to tell you that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
About you. About the way your skin lit up when I touched you. ”
Her skin flared in response, violet light rippling across her collarbones like she was proving his point, and her face heated.
“That’s… um. I can’t really control that.”
“I know.” His thumb traced the edge of her jaw, following the glow. “I like it. Your body tells me what you’re feeling, even when your words don’t.”
“That’s a little unfair.”
“Is it?” He leaned down, his lips brushing her ear, and she shivered at the warmth of his breath. “Then tell me, Ariella. What are you feeling right now?”
Terrified. Thrilled. Like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff and about to jump.
“I feel—”
“Star Lady!”
The shriek came from somewhere up the beach, followed by the thunder of small feet. She barely had time to brace herself before Lilani barreled into her legs, small arms wrapping around her waist in a fierce hug.
“You came back! Papa said you would come back but I wasn’t sure because sometimes people don’t come back and I was worried but you’re here and can we play in the tide pools today? Can we? Please?”
She laughed, her heart swelling at the child’s unbridled enthusiasm. She knelt down to the girl’s level, meeting those big golden eyes—so like her father’s, yet filled with a brightness that Valrek’s often lacked.
“Good morning to you too, little one.”
“I’m not little. I’m almost seven. That’s very big.” Lilani’s nose wrinkled. “Papa says I’m growing like a starfish. What does that mean?”
“It means you’re getting bigger every day.” She smoothed back the wild curls that had escaped from Lilani’s braids. “And it means you’re probably hungry. Are you hungry?”
“Always,” Valrek said dryly from behind her. “She eats like a Vultor warrior twice her size.”
“I do not!” Lilani released Ariella and spun to face her father, hands on her hips in a pose of pure indignation. “I eat like a princess.”
“Princesses don’t usually have berry juice on their chins.”
Lilani’s hand flew to her face, and her outrage melted into a sheepish grin. “I had breakfast already.”
“I noticed.”
She stood, watching the easy affection between father and daughter with a strange ache in her chest. She’d never had this warmth.
Her father’s interactions had always been clinical.
Observations and data points, measurements and modifications.
Nothing like the way Valrek reached down to ruffle Lilani’s hair, or the way Lilani leaned into his touch like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“We’re going on a picnic,” Lilani announced, turning back to Ariella.
“Papa said so. He packed food and everything, and he even put in the special dried fish that I like, and he said we could go to the meadow where the flowers grow, and—” She stopped, her expression turning suddenly serious.
“You’re coming, right? You have to come.
It won’t be a proper picnic without you. ”
She glanced at Valrek, who was watching her with an unreadable expression. His arms were crossed over his broad chest, muscles shifting beneath the scarred skin, and she remembered how that skin had felt beneath her fingers.
“I’d love to come,” she said. “If that’s all right.”
The smile that spread across his face was small, almost reluctant—but it reached his eyes, warming the gold to something molten and bright.
“It’s all right.”