Chapter 13
Phoebe
Castletide
I’d barely recovered from the afterglow of Kael’s thoroughly decadent claiming of me before Amber bustled in the next morning and I found myself alone.
My lady’s maid greeted me with a smile, kinder than the first day I’d met her, maybe because I got along with her son, Corin—and she announced the beginning of what she called the Seven Day Festival.
Seven days.
A week of celebration strung like pearls along the Tidal Lands’ coast.
Kael hadn’t asked me if I wanted it.
Of course he hadn’t.
Lord of Water, master of tides, master of me—at least according to him.
But when I step out into the torch lit square dressed in the traditional clothes of the Lady of Castletide—a long vest-like tunic atop soft leather pants, knee high boots, and a blouse with billowing sleeves—I feel kind of like a pirate queen.
Even better, Amber told me these clothes repel water.
So, I won’t get all damp and uncomfortable since the castle basically sits right on top of an ocean and the air here is always moist and tastes of salt.
And I’m almost embarrassed to admit, I don’t hate it.
Every article of clothing I wear seems to be made precisely for me and my body.
There’s no pulling or squeezing or revealing bits I want to keep hidden.
Truth is, on Earth, my clothes were sorely lacking. But that’s just because what’s typically on sale for plus size women isn’t exactly stylish.
Here, I don’t feel out of place or too big, and that’s, well, that’s hard to understand.
I should be angry. Fighting to get home.
But I know deep inside I won’t because really—what would I be going back to?
There’s no one waiting for me.
No one is wondering where I am.
I have no pets. No close friends. Or family.
And even if there was—could I really say with any degree of honesty that any of them hold a candle to Kael?
I already know I couldn’t.
I suppose I have some soul searching to do. I mean, it’s crazy to fall for the guy, er, Demon Lord, who kidnapped me to another world—or is it?
Anyway, for now, I’m just going to take in everything I can while I’m here—in this scary amazing place called Nightfall where the moon turns from purple to blue, the grasses go from brown to black, and the water is so crystalline and beautiful it makes me cry.
I have never seen anything like it. Don’t know if I could have dreamed it, either. But it feels right to me, somehow.
He feels right, too.
I haven’t seen him yet, and it bugs me that I miss him. Still, I go with Amber, and after I eat, we both walk outside.
The air is a living thing—salt and sugar and smoke from the festival fires.
Someone is roasting kelp cakes, and the smoke curls into the sky like a slow exhale.
A cool breeze lifts my hair, and the temperature sits at a perfect, ridiculous seventy degrees, as if Nightfall itself wants us comfortable while it shows off.
Something inside my chest loosens, like a knot finally giving.
People spill into the square in a tide of sea-foam eyes and laughter.
Stalls groan with sugared fruit that glitters like candy pulled from moonlight, nets of shellfish clack together, and children streak by with sticky hands, leaving little footprints of happiness in the dust.
Boats rest along the inlet, their hulls carved with curling runes and inlaid mother-of-pearl.
Amber explains those are kelp lanterns braided into the rigging, and along the rails making them glow. Each one pulses with a soft green light that makes the water look like liquid glass lit from within.
The lanterns sway, and the whole bay winks.
When the people see us—when they see me—they cheer.
Not a murmur but a rushing sound, like waves finding a narrow channel.
It’s overwhelming. Terrifying. Maybe a little wonderful.
“Smile, Telya,” Kael murmurs in my ear, appearing as if the night folded him up and set him down right beside me.
His hand is warm and heavy at the small of my back.
His fingers splay in that possessive way that makes my skin prickle.
The touch is steadying, like an anchor sliding home.
“They’ve waited for this union longer than you know.”
Easy for him to say. He was born to this. I was taken from an aquarium med pool and plunked into the middle of what looks like a royal coronation.
He waves and bows with a graceful, practiced motion as we thread through the crowd toward the pier, and I am still fumbling with the enormity of it all.
Greetings are called out—some in a language that sounds like wind through shells, some in halting English—and I answer with what I hope passes for a smile.
He helps me up the gangplank of the boat—a vessel fit for the Tidal Lands’ Lord.
It smells of salt and warm wood. The deck is a beautiful patchwork of dark driftwood and amber planks polished to a wet sheen.
Carvings of dolphins and curling waves run along the rail, their eyes inlaid with slivers of mother-of-pearl that catch the kelp light and scatter it.
A low canopy of woven sea-silk throws small, moving shadows across the deck, and the rigging hums like a contented animal when the wind tugs at it.
Beneath my boots, I can feel the boat breathing with the swell, a deep, slow inhale and exhale that mirrors the ocean itself.
I didn’t realize until I’m halfway aboard that my fingers have found Kael’s sleeve and they’re gripping it like a lifeline.
He notices and quirks one eyebrow.
“Fidgeting?” he asks, voice amused and low.
“You disappeared from bed, then reappeared out of nowhere and scared the crap out of me, so, yes, I’m fidgeting,” I say, though my voice doesn’t have the bite I intend.
A tremor of something—pleasure, fear, something muddled—runs through me when his thumb brushes the back of my hand.
“It’s alright now. I’ve got you, Telya.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
The voyage isn’t long, but the sea feels like a whole education.
It unfurls in colors I never knew existed.
A glassy turquoise that catches the sunlight like sugar, a deep teal that hides slow currents, and bands of blue so thin and green and electric—they make my eyes sting.
“I’ve never seen water in so many colors,” I muse, leaning on the rail and letting the spray cool my face.
“Nightfall has many bodies of water,” he says, watching me with that dangerous stillness.
“Not all are friendly. If you see water of red, or orange, stay back—the acidity is too great for your delicate skin. If it is purple, that means the devilfish are spawning, and they bite when in heat. And when it is yellow—well—” He shrugs, absolutely straight-faced.
I whack him on the shoulder with the back of my hand.
The rack of knives at the nearby stall would have been handy, but my little tap is enough.
“Funny,” I say, though the corners of my mouth betray me.
“Humor is my weak spot.”
He makes a face like he’s suffering for me, and I laugh out loud.
The sound surprises me—bright and easy—and he turns my way, his eyes catching the lantern light.
They go molten, and I feel my body heat in response.
Across the water, something bright and quick arcs up and out of the waves, catching my attention.
“What’s that?”
A flash of silver that looks like a sliver of moon with fins. Another follows, gleaming gold, and they breach together in perfect unison—dolphin-like creatures, sleek and laughing, each one catching the light and scattering it like coins.
“Curved fin whales. They’re showing off for you,” he tells me.
And I marvel at them as they pirouette and splash as if to say hello.
The boat coasts along, close to the shore and I can hear the children squealing and clapping their hands at the show.
The creatures’ skins are shot through with iridescence—silver, gold, a smear of teal—and when they dive again, the wake they leave behind glows faintly, like comet tails dragged across the sea.
I find myself leaning toward the rail, breath shallow, utterly captivated.
“They’re beautiful,” I whisper.
Kael’s hand moves to my back, pressing, and I feel the tide of me tilt toward him the same way the sea tilts toward the moon.
“You’re beautiful, Lady Phoebe.”
The pull is physical—an ache in my chest and a soft warmth between my legs—but it’s larger than lust.
It is a magnetic tug, gentle and inexorable, like the current that guides a boat.
He is so unlike anyone I have ever seen—Lord of Water, Demon Lord, the man with a bite in his throat—and yet my fondness for him is building in small, dangerous increments.
I’m beginning to care for him the way a plant leans toward sunlight.
“You missed me today, viyella?” he asks suddenly, but it feels like an accusation wrapped in velvet.
I want to be indignant.
“I—no. I am perfectly capable of not missing conceited men who get their jollies and leave their women hanging in the lurch.”
He laughs, a low sound that makes the rigging hum.
“Such eloquence. Correct me if I’m wrong, Telya, but you weren’t complaining last night.”
“Shut up,” I mutter, and he kisses the corner of my mouth—soft, quick—and the world narrows to that small, ridiculous contact.
My pulse stutters. I am both furious and thrilled.
The sound of footsteps has me turning where I stand, but Kael doesn’t loosen his arms, and I find I am actually moving more completely into his embrace.
A strange man walks onto the deck, and he looks every bit as formidable and powerful as Kael only his hair and skin are paler than moonlight, and he has enormous black wings protruding from his back.
He looks like some holy avenging angel, and shivers race down my spine, making Kael pull me more firmly against him.
The stranger simply snorts.
“You two are unbearable,” he says, but there’s warmth under the teasing. “Stop flirting like children and mind the tide.”
“It’s not flirting if it’s territorial,” Kael says, dry as salt. “It’s claiming.”
“Please, Kael, you know I can’t stand this incessant rocking. Steady the damn boat before I leave you something to mop on this infernal deck,” the stranger grits.
“And that, Lady Phoebe, is Dagan, Lord of Earth,” Kael introduces me with a roll of his deep blue eyes. Then he raises his hand, steadying the waves, and making the water less choppy for our boat ride.
“Yes, I’m his better looking friend, and you are entirely too good for him, Lady Phoebe,” the man, Dagan, says with a half bow in my direction.
I almost say something teasing back, but then a gust of kelp-sweet air hits me and I inhale the smell of the sea—brine and old rope and citrus from the fruit stalls—and the memory of fluorescent lights and antiseptic hospital air in the med pool feels like another lifetime.
My skin tightens where his hand rests on my hip. And the mark on my neck prickles with memory and heat.
In the hollow under the collar of my blouse, it’s as if the bite is alert, awake, whispering the same thing the creatures in the water say with their bright, coin-splash leaps.
She belongs here, too. She is one of us.
And for the first time since I arrived in Nightfall, I want that to be true.
We pass a line of small boats where old women fry tiny silver fish over coals and the scent is delicious.
“Look there, an elder is pouring a cup of salted wine into the hand of that visiting captain as a blessing. It is a good sign, Telya,” Kael murmurs.
Then I watch as he dips his hand into the water, and the kelp lanterns ripple toward him like obedient moths.
He hums something under his breath, and a current skirts the hull, playful and quick.
The boat rocks in response, and I think of how easy it would be to fall—off the plank, off the world—right into him.
“Careful,” I say, half to him, half to myself. “You’ll make me fall.”
He looks at me—really looks—and the hunger I’ve seen before flares and folds into something warmer.
“Then fall, Telya. I already have, and it’s not that bad. Besides, I’ll catch you,” he says, and the confession lands like a stone in my chest.
The pull between us answers like an echo. Older than either of us, louder than ceremony and politics, quiet and certain as the moon.
I close my fingers around his sleeve.
For the first time since the whirlpool tore my life apart, I no longer want to run.
I want to stand on this deck while the world unfurls and learn how to breathe in Nightfall’s air.
I want to learn the names of the tides and the customs and how the bright dolphin creatures—the curved fin whales—like to be greeted.
I want, more and more dangerously, to know him—this strange Demon Lord who keeps surprising me with small mercies and larger hunger.
As the boat slides out into the open, the kelp lanterns behind us wink and the sea opens ahead, a wash of every blue I can’t name.
Somewhere, a creature jumps, and the spray glitters like broken glass.
Kael’s tail slides along my waist, an unhurried reminder that he is here.
My heart answers in a rhythm I’m starting to recognize—one that syncs, irritably and wonderfully, with the rise and fall of the tide.
And I wonder if Kael means it when he says he’s already fallen.