Chapter 13
Sadira
When the train pulled into the station in Belas Shores, I collected my bag and made my way to the street outside.
The faint salt air was all the greeting I needed as I exited the station, and I paused for a step to breathe it in.
A selection of carriages lined the road outside the station doors, but I passed them by to hail a small rixy—one of the single-passenger reindeer-pulled carts usually hired by the tourists—eschewing the larger wyvern-drawn carriages that my parents had always preferred.
Even though I’d passed my majority birthday and was now technically an adult, I still felt like a child running away from home.
I ignored the irony that I was currently running to the only place that had ever actually felt like home to me.
I didn’t want the imaginary specters of my parents judging me for what my mother would have referred to in my younger years as my “childish and impulsive” choices while seated in their favorite wyvern cart, so the rixy felt more comfortable.
Now I was sure she would have much worse things to say.
The sun was setting by the time the driver dropped me off, and the fading light left the summer cottage shrouded in shadow.
I’d never been here during winter, and the dark windows and dormant flowerbeds were an odd contrast against my memories of the small estate.
No one lived here when my family wasn’t here.
The staff stayed at my parent’s house in the city with them for the rest of the year.
The estate grounds were large enough that there were no neighbors nearby to witness my arrival or notice that I’d left my suitcase under the eaves of the porch as I walked past the house and into the forest beyond.
The darkness in the trees made the path difficult to see, but I knew these trails like the back of my hand.
Even when I wasn’t traversing them every day in the summer, I had followed them in my dreams every night for the rest of the year.
Bypassing the cove, I continued along the trail, past even our ‘secret beach’ when I came upon it.
Lorn might not even be in this area at all, but if he was, my best chance of finding him was from the far point of the land that jutted out like a talon into the sound where he lived.
I followed the network of sandy deer trails to this farthest point and dropped my handbag and my rain cloak on the beach, kicking off my shoes as well when I noticed that the tide was coming up over the top of the rock I planned to climb out on.
The salt air was strong here, and the spitting rain clouds that hung low in the sky made nightfall seem even more imminent than it actually was.
Waves that washed over the rocks were a little rougher than I was used to during the summertime, but it was always rougher out here on the cape than it was in our little cove anyway.
I stepped out onto the jut of rock we’d lain on just a few months ago to bask in the early morning sun, before it had risen too high in the sky to be safe for Lorn’s sensitive skin.
My steps were careful and slow as I found my footing through the cold water that rolled across the rocky surface, foam breaking around my feet as tears began to mix with the rain on my cheeks.
The sea was gray and agitated this evening, which fit my mood just fine as my mother’s words from this morning made a lump form in my throat, coming back to me as I reached into my pocket to feel the weight of the stone queen in my fingers again.
The betrayal I felt crushed me as I finally realized my worth truly was nothing more than a trading piece to my mother, or to either of my parents.
I had never been a queen to them. I had always been a pawn.
I took a deep breath and projected my voice out over the sea, pitching it high in our wordless song the way Lorn had taught me to over the years, as his voice had matured and his vocal cords grew stronger—hoping he would hear me, and fearing that he wouldn’t.
My voice climbed higher and louder, until it trembled and broke.
But it didn’t matter because he finally surfaced.
He was here, his beautiful sunshine-colored hair floating on the surface and his fair skin stark against the shadows of the great deep below him.
It was just as childish and impulsive as walking away from school had been this morning—I was fully aware of that—but I leapt into the waves, knowing he would catch me.
Knowing he would keep me warm and safe. The water was frigid, but his arms were around me instantly.
It didn’t matter that I was cold, or wet, or that I was missing school today.
Nothing else mattered because I was home.
“Silly girl,” he rasped, pressing his forehead to my cheek as he swam back to the rock with me and boosted me up to sit on the edge of it.
“Get your belongings,” he instructed in a low murmur, and then watched me in silence as I did.
I returned to him, and he gathered me back into his arms in the water, careful to keep my “belongings” dry.
I wasn’t sure where he was taking us at first, but then I recognized the inlet to our hidden beach as he propelled us to shore with forceful thrusts of his powerful tail.
He brought me all the way up onto the edge of the sand, beneath the little cave where I was sheltered from the rain by the rocky overhang, and pressed his mouth to my cheekbone as he laid me down. “You taste like sad.”
“I know,” I said, scrubbing ineffectually at my tears with my sopping wet sleeve, wondering at how many times he’d held me like this while I cried, that he knew the taste of my tears.
He was so gentle as he set to work—all business as he chafed warmth back into my skin with his palms. When that failed, he guided me even farther up the sand and away from the water, before starting to undo my dress buttons, chuffing with frustration at the way his claws fumbled with the fiddly things.
I tried to help him with my shaking hands, but my fingers were numb from the cold.
Eventually, between the two of us, we managed to strip my outer clothing from my shivering skin, layering it beneath me on the sand to keep me clean.
He seemed… bigger yet again this year, but maybe I imagined that.
He was a wall of muscle as he leaned over me, his wet hair dangling over his shoulder as he fussed with the layers of wet clothing, obsessing over making sure I was protected from the rough sand.
His body dwarfed mine compared to summers past when I thought about the children we had once been.
There was just so much of him now as he leaned in close, straightening the fabric and dusting off errant grains of sand and grit.
His shoulders were broader, but the cut of his muscles seemed too defined, which made him appear noticeably leaner.
His face was leaner, too. I’d always seen him in the summer, and he had told me in the past that sometimes food was scarce here in the winters, and now I worried that he hadn’t been getting enough to eat.
There was no trace of softness in the lines of his face, and none of that boyish impishness in his eyes now, either.
His gaze held only concern and an intensity that made my breath catch.
He pulled his necklace off and tossed it aside–an old fishing line newly strung with fishhooks and thimbles, sea glass and shell beads as usual–and wrapped his arms around me to pull me close.
His skin wasn’t exactly warm, but it wasn’t as cold as the water had been either, so he held me against his chest, trying to lend me what little warmth he could.
I wanted to tell him I didn’t care about the cold—I just wanted him—but I desperately enjoyed the way he held me nestled so close to him.
If his act of loaning me his favorite trinket had served to help me endure when I felt low, being held in his arms while listening to his heartbeat made me feel whole.
In that moment, with my head pillowed on his shoulder and my face against his collarbone, breathing in the thick salt air from his skin, I was a complete person.
I pressed myself closer, reveling in the feel of his skin.
I’d never understood how someone who spent all his time exposed to the elements the way Lorn did could have such soft skin.
He had a small smattering of scars here and there, but the rest of his skin was clear and healthy.
His chest felt so nice. Everything felt nice, even with the chill.
And deeply necessary. After being apart from him again for so long, being tucked in tight against him like this—so close I could feel his heart beating—I imagined it felt like being given water after wandering in the desert to the point of dying.
In our younger years he’d been such a skittish thing, always hesitant to let me touch him unless I was healing his throat or he was carrying me through rough waters, and so I’d been careful not to push him too far.
But now he held me against him like it was the most natural thing in the world, and I luxuriated in it.
“Sadira.”
My softly spoken name was both a chastisement and a prayer. His deeper voice made me shiver, though it was still raspy and resonant after all these years. I slid my hand up from where it had been pinned against his chest and pressed my palm against his throat to check for pain but found none.
He covered my hand with his palm and held it against his neck anyway.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” he whispered against my hair, his tone layered with concern, and my mother’s words came back to me.
I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.
“I just need you,” was all I could get out, and I could hear the bitterness in my voice. That was the crux of it all, really. I needed him and my parents would direct my life so that I couldn’t have him.
Lorn lifted his hand from mine where it rested on his throat and set his fingers under my chin, tilting it up so he could look me in the eye.
His gaze caught on the tear lingering on my cheek and he pressed his lips to it in his almost-kiss, tasting it.
Searching for clues to my early appearance in his own way, I supposed.
But as his mouth tracked another tear’s journey down my cheek, I turned my face just enough to fit my lips against his own.
He stiffened—not the response I was hoping for—and I pulled away, feeling embarrassed. But he reached out to take hold of my chin again with gentle fingers.
“Again,” he said, his breath unsteady and his eyes intent on my lips.
I lifted my mouth to his slowly this time, trying to gauge his response, listening to his unsteady breaths.
When I hesitated, he closed the gap instead, gently bumping his mouth against mine before taking my jaw in his hand to steady us.
It wasn’t our first kiss—that had been a fumbling experiment that confused him and embarrassed me, but at least I’d been able to laugh about his baffled expression afterwards.
This one was entirely different, a trembling thing made entirely of hope and desperation.
A shiver wracked through his entire body, and then there were soft lips and light touches.
Tender presses and encouraging tugging. My fingers tightened ever so gently on his throat, and my eyes drifted shut of their own accord so I could focus on the delicious caress of his silken lips against mine.
The warm, masculine smell of him in my nose.
The smoothness of his skin as I carefully dragged the pads of my fingers from his throat, over his satiny gills, and down to his collarbone.
He handled me as if I were the most tenuous of morning mists, a fragile butterfly whose wings might tear at the slightest provocation.
But to look at him, I would have thought he was fighting a battle within himself—his wild eyes reflecting that pale yellow in the dimness of our tiny cave at dusk, his every muscle pulled taut and trembling, the panted breaths that tumbled out of him as if he’d run a great distance.
Lorn shivered again and pressed even closer to me.
His hand moved from my chin to the front of my throat, his claws finally making their presence known with sharp pricks against the sides of my neck.
Down to my shoulder. My upper arm. Brushing his knuckles up my stomach as he deepened our kiss.
Caressing. Petting. My nose brushed against his with my pulse ringing in my ears.
I parted my lips to taste the seam of his mouth and was met with the unexpected hot slide of his tongue.
Startled and intrigued all at once, I couldn’t help the soft gasp that escaped.
His mouth and tongue moved against mine, gently sucking like he was sipping me, then growing hungrier and greedier.
I shivered again even though I began to feel hot all over.
My wet undershirt suddenly felt confining, and I pulled at the collar before getting frustrated and jerking it off over my head so I could feel his skin against mine.
My breasts felt heavy and aching as I pressed them against his chest, moving completely on instinct, my heart beating faster as he pressed me in against him.
I felt breathless and nearly dizzy as my body shifted against his, needing.
I was the one to break away for air, but he didn’t stop kissing me, moving to my jaw and then my neck.
The pricks of his teeth on my neck mirrored the prick of his claws as he slid a hand into my hair at the base of my skull.
He trailed the fingers of his other hand up my side, gently caressing the underside of my breast as he sucked at the tender spot below my ear.
I felt him smile against the side of my neck when I whimpered, before he finally, finally pressed his hand against my breast, giving it the weight that it needed.
Stroking and coddling my flesh with his palm as I arched against him. But it still wasn’t enough.