CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Myra
For a solid minute, we sat in the darkness of his car and didn’t say a word.
The reality of what we’d just survived, combined with the finality of saying goodbye, slammed into me like a rogue wave, leaving me drowning in a sea of emotions and questions and fears, none of which I could seem to wrangle.
Instead, I looked over at Yael’s ruined clothes and bloodstained skin and dared to ask the question that had plagued me since I saw Argo closing in on him, ready to strike him down.
“Yael,” I murmured softly as I kept my gaze on the street stretched out before us, “why didn’t you use your shadows against Argo?” My voice was barely a whisper, but he heard me all the same.
Gentle fingertips hooked under my chin and turned my face to look at that impossibly green stare and the eddy of midnight within it.
“Because I feared that, beyond the cost I already explained to you, there might have been another—one that you would not have survived.” He looked at me with a note of apology in his expression as it begged me to understand the subtext of his words.
“Ravi,” I said, closing my eyes. “You think you would have killed Ravi, too.”
When I opened them, he nodded, then released my face.
I tried to ignore the way his absence jabbed me in the chest. Instead, I let my eyes drop to where his hands sat in his lap. The skin was covered in black, and I picked one up to see if it had been charred in the fight. “Are you hurt?” I asked as I turned it over to assess the potential damage.
“I’m fine, little mermaid,” he replied as he pulled away. “Never worry about me—I’m very hard to kill.”
Relief flooded me, washing away the adrenaline from the fight, which left me exhausted and craving any sort of normalcy between us.
I forced a smile and said, “I’m always up for a challenge.
” I watched him, waiting for him to crack a wise remark in return, then say something wildly inappropriate to get under my skin before we embarked on what would likely be our last mission together before our deal was fulfilled and we parted ways.
But that moment never came. Instead, he stared at me in the darkness, anger and worry warring in his expression.
“You didn’t run when I told you to,” he said in a voice so low it reverberated through the cramped space. “You could have been killed.”
“I know… but I just couldn’t leave, Yael.
I get that that isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s the truth.
” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the tiny silver ring he’d given me, handing it back.
“I couldn’t leave them in that building,” I said, trying to block out the image of The Riff Raff engulfed in flames with my friends inside.
“And I couldn’t leave you to face him alone when I had the power to stop him.
I had a window of opportunity, so I took it. ”
“With no regard for your own safety—”
“Oh, I had plenty of regard for my own safety, but what else could I have done? Sit back and watch him kill you?”
“He wouldn’t have let him kill me—”
“He who?” I asked in exasperation. He pinned me in place with a knowing glare, and my mind flashed to the version of himself who’d both saved me and scared me.
“I had no way to know that, Yael! Argo was beating you, and you weren’t using your evil shadow-daddy magic, and I thought that—” The fear I’d managed to repress bubbled over, and I saw no reason to try to stop it.
We were too far past that point to even bother, so I released that fear, the tears stinging the backs of my eyes, and the words I wanted to say.
“I wasn’t going to stand there and watch you die,” I told him as his stern expression softened.
“I may be many things, but a coward isn’t one of them.
I could never have run away and abandoned you to your fate. ”
For a moment, he said nothing, just stared at the rogue tears that had escaped; and when he finally spoke, his reply was far from what I’d expected.
“Because you couldn’t afford to lose your ticket back to the sea?
” he asked in an eerily deep tone that held an edge of vulnerability that shook me to my core. “Or was there another reason?”
I sat there, trying to read between the lines of what he’d said and would not say, hoping to find the right response.
One that would appease him as well as the tightening sensation slowly crushing my heart at the thought of his demise; one that wouldn’t give away the truth I was too afraid to admit, even to myself.
I couldn’t let him die—not because he was my way back to my home and my revenge, or the only thing standing between me and certain death—but because I cared about Yael Kristoris, and a part of me would have died alongside him.
But telling him that would accomplish nothing because, by the time the sun rose, our deal would be done.
He’d have learned what happened to his sister, and I’d be on my way back to the Deep.
The longer I hesitated, the more the midnight within his irises grew in response to my silence until they, and the interior of the car, were engulfed by shadow.
“Because I want to see you reunited with your sister,” I said, my voice shaky.
His piercing stare remained on me, searching in the darkness for something else—something missing from my reply he seemed to think he might find in my expression. “Is that the only reason?”
My heart pounded the inside of my ribs so hard and fast I was sure they would fracture. “Do you want it to be?”
Those eyes narrowed for a moment before he turned abruptly to face the road ahead. “I want you to remember that I’m hard to kill so you’ll rethink doing anything risky the next time your head gets filled with heroic notions.”
I exhaled hard and sat back in my seat as I turned away from him to wipe my face. All the while, an emptiness grew inside my chest. “I’ll do my best.”
We sat there in silence for a moment despite the urgency of the situation, the two of us hostages to our racing thoughts.
“If you’re having second thoughts about going back to the Deep, just say the word—”
“I’m not.” I dared a sideward glance to find his body turned to face me, his serious expression visible in the dim light of the car.
My knee-jerk response belied the growing uncertainty I felt at the thought of my return—and of leaving behind those I’d allowed myself to care about.
And the fact that he’d realized this before I had irritated me for a reason I didn’t fully understand.
With a slow movement, he reached over and cupped my face in his hand, stroking his thumb gently along my cheek. “The tear stains on your cheeks suggest otherwise, love.”
“All they suggest is that I’m not as heartless as you think I am,” I said as I pulled away. “Nothing more.”
“I have never thought you were heartless—quite the opposite, actually. The distance you try to keep from those you care for speaks to that fact. You do it because you think they’ll be better off that way.
Those are not the actions of someone who’s heartless.
And there is no shame in changing your mind…
or realizing that the life you’ve built here isn’t so easy to throw away.
” He stared at me as his hand fell away. “It’s okay that you love them, Myra—”
“I have to go back,” I said softly, hoping to drown him out.
“They love you. They want you to stay. I want—”
“I have to go back.” My words were stronger that time as I cut him off; more convincing. And yet, they still felt hollow somehow.
Yael’s eyes narrowed at my adamance. “For your vengeance,” he said in an acerbic tone. “I wonder what will happen when you get it and realize that it doesn’t fill that emptiness you feel in your chest.”
“Will getting Jemma back fill yours?” I countered. As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them, but there was no taking them back.
“A part of it,” he replied, “but at the expense of others.” The tension in his jaw was visible even in the darkness as he struggled against a surge of what I could best assume was anger.
“And I am not risking my life to accomplish that end, but you are by returning home, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a risk you shouldn’t take. ”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
Those penetrating eyes went black as the night around us as he looked me over, then turned to stare out into the darkness.
The harsh lines of his profile softened as he focused on the horizon.
“Despite your recklessness, you did well tonight on your own,” he said, dutifully avoiding my gaze.
“Maybe you don’t need me to help keep you alive as much as I thought. ”
“Maybe I don’t need you at all,” I replied, my voice bitter as I said those biting words I immediately wished I could take back. Because I did need him—I just didn’t want to. And I certainly didn’t want to admit as much to him or anyone else.
Once again, he turned to look at me. “Except to get you home…” There was a strange look in his eyes as he spoke; not sadness, exactly, but regret, maybe? Uncertainty? Guilt? I just couldn’t be sure.
The silence settled in the divide between us until the soft purr of his engine gave me something else to focus on. He put the car in gear and pulled away—to where, I wasn't sure.
“I think maybe now is the time to tell me about your sister,” I said as we sped through Serpent’s Tongue.