Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Liora couldn’t stop touching things.
The bark of trees—rough and cool and textured in ways she’d never imagined.
The leaves that brushed against her arms as she passed—some smooth, some fuzzy, some with tiny serrated edges that tickled her skin.
The soil beneath her feet—warm where the sun touched it, cool in the shadows, sometimes soft and sometimes packed hard with the weight of ages.
She’d been walking in circles around the tower clearing for what felt like hours, cataloging sensations the way she’d once cataloged weather patterns and plant growth cycles.
Baylin followed her patiently, never rushing her, never suggesting they move on.
He just watched, his green eyes soft with something that made her chest flutter every time she caught him looking.
But eventually, even her boundless curiosity began to settle into something calmer. The initial shock of freedom faded into a warm glow of contentment, and she found herself standing at the edge of the clearing, staring out at the jungle with a different kind of longing.
“What do you want to do first?”
His voice was low and warm, close enough that she could feel the heat of him at her back. She turned to face him, her heart still racing from the sheer impossibility of being outside, and felt the answer rise up in her before she could even think about it.
“The ocean.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly. “The ocean?”
“I’ve watched it my whole life.” The words tumbled out, eager and breathless.
“From my bedroom balcony. I’ve seen it change colors with the weather, watched storms roll across its surface, counted the different shades of blue it turns throughout the day.
I’ve imagined what it might feel like.” She reached out and gripped his arm, her fingers pressing into the hard muscle beneath his skin.
“I want to touch it, Baylin. I want to know what it’s like to stand in the water and feel the waves. ”
Something shifted in his expression—a softening, a deepening of that look he’d been giving her all morning.
“Then that’s where we’ll go.”
The path down the cliffs was treacherous.
She discovered this quickly, her bare feet slipping on loose rocks as the ground tilted sharply downward.
The tower had been built at the top of a steep escarpment, which was part of what had made it so isolated—and what had given her such a spectacular view of the distant coastline.
But what looked like a gentle slope from above was actually a series of sharp descents and rocky outcroppings that required careful navigation.
He went first, testing each foothold before letting her follow. More than once, he turned back to catch her arm when she stumbled, his grip strong and sure. Pip abandoned them both early in the descent, gliding down to the beach in lazy spirals that made her briefly, irrationally jealous.
“The tower’s defenses must have included the approach routes,” he said as they navigated a particularly narrow ledge. “Anyone trying to reach you by land would have had to climb these cliffs. It would have been nearly impossible without the right equipment.”
“Is that why no one ever came?” The thought had been nagging at her since they left—the realization that the outside world had existed just beyond her walls all along, full of people who might have found her if the circumstances had been different.
“Partly.” His hand found hers, steadying her over a gap in the rocks.
“The jungle is also dense and hostile. Most creatures avoid this area because of the predators that hunt near the base of the cliffs. And the tower itself was designed to be nearly invisible from a distance—the stone matches the surrounding rock formations, and the vegetation has grown up around it over the years.”
“But you found it.”
He glanced back at her, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’m very persistent.”
The cliff path opened up onto a narrow beach—a strip of pale sand wedged between the rocky escarpment and the endless expanse of blue water.
The sound hit her first, a constant rushing roar that was nothing like the distant whisper she’d heard from the tower.
Then the smell—salt and seaweed and something wild and alive that she couldn’t name.
And then the size of it.
She stopped at the edge of the sand, her breath catching in her throat.
She’d seen the ocean every day of her life.
She’d mapped its moods and memorized its colors and tracked the movements of the creatures that lived along its shores.
But standing here, with the water stretching out to the horizon in every direction, she realized she hadn’t understood it at all.
It was vast. Impossibly, incomprehensibly vast. The sky was huge, but it had boundaries—the horizon, the canopy, the walls of the tower. The ocean had no such limits. It just went on and on, blue fading into blue, until it merged with the sky at some distant point she couldn’t quite see.
“It’s so big,” she whispered.
He came to stand beside her, close enough that his shoulder brushed against hers. “It is.”
“I thought I knew. I thought—” She shook her head, unable to find the words. “I didn’t know anything.”
“You knew enough to want this,” he said quietly. “That’s more than most people ever manage.”
The first wave surprised her.
She’d been walking towards the water’s edge, her feet sinking into sand that was warm on top and cool beneath, when the foam rushed up and engulfed her ankles.
She shrieked.
The sound was sharp and high and utterly involuntary—a burst of shock that dissolved almost immediately into laughter. The water was cold, colder than anything she’d ever felt, and it moved against her skin in a way that made every nerve ending sing.
“It’s moving!” She grabbed his arm for balance as the wave retreated, pulling the sand out from under her feet. “The water is actually moving, it’s pulling at me—”
Another wave came, this one higher, splashing against her calves and sending droplets flying up to spatter her face. She laughed again, tasting salt on her lips, and gripped him tighter.
“More,” she said. “I want more.”
He was smiling—that rare, soft smile that made his whole face transform—but there was a hint of caution in his eyes. “The current gets stronger farther out. And there are undertows that can—”
“Please.”
The word came out smaller than she intended, almost a whisper. She looked up at him, her heart pounding, and tried to make him understand.
“I’ve been watching this water my whole life.
Every single day, for twenty-one years, I’ve looked out at those waves and wondered what they felt like.
I’ve imagined it so many times I lost count.
And now I’m here, and it’s real, and I can actually touch it, and I just..
.” She swallowed hard. “I need to go in. Just a little. Just enough to really know.”
Something shifted in his expression. He looked at her for a long moment, his green eyes searching her face, and then he nodded slowly.
“Together,” he said. “We go together.”
They walked into the surf hand in hand.
The water rose with each step—knees, then thighs, then waist. She gasped at the cold, at the pressure of the waves pushing against her body, at the strange sensation of the sand shifting beneath her feet. Her dress billowed around her, the fabric floating on the surface like pale flower petals.
“It’s so strong,” she breathed. “I never realized how strong it was.”
A larger wave rolled towards them, its crest white with foam. He braced himself, his arm coming around her waist to anchor her against him, and they took the impact together. The water crashed over them both, drenching her to the shoulders and sending spray into her eyes and mouth.
She laughed so hard she nearly choked on it.
“Again,” she gasped, blinking salt water from her lashes. “Let’s do it again!”
They stood there in the surf, letting wave after wave wash over them, until Liora’s lips were blue and her teeth were chattering and she still couldn’t stop smiling.
Baylin tried twice to coax her back towards shore, but she kept insisting on just one more wave, just one more moment, just one more breath of salt air.
Then the big one came.
She saw it building in the distance—a dark swell that was taller than the others, moving towards them with deceptive slowness.
She should have recognized the danger, should have remembered all those hours spent watching the ocean from above, cataloging the patterns of the waves and the way the largest swells often came in sets.
But she was too busy laughing, too drunk on sensation, too overwhelmed by the sheer joy of finally, finally feeling what she’d only ever dreamed about.
The wave hit her like a wall.
One moment she was standing, the next she was tumbling—water rushing into her nose and mouth, the world spinning in a chaos of blue and white and bubbling foam. The sand scraped against her back as the undertow pulled at her legs, dragging her towards deeper water.
Then strong arms caught her.
He hauled her up out of the surf, cradling her against his chest as if she weighed nothing at all. Water streamed from both of them as he carried her towards the shore, his jaw tight and his eyes scanning her face for signs of injury.
“Are you hurt? Liora, answer me—”
She coughed, spat out a mouthful of seawater, and burst out laughing.
“That was amazing!”
He stared at her. “You nearly drowned.”
“But I didn’t!” She threw her arms around his neck, pressing her salt-wet face against his shoulder. “I didn’t, because you caught me. You always catch me.”
For a long moment, he didn’t move. Just stood there in the shallow surf, holding her close, the waves foaming around his ankles. Then she felt his chest move—a huff of breath that might have been exasperation or might have been something else entirely.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he muttered.