Kye
Ipaced the rocks, fists on my hips like the head chef in Laurier Palace when I was caught sneaking sweets from the kitchens as a boy.
I’d expected Maren to resurface. Like an idiot, I thought she’d duck underwater and realize she needed warmth before diving into the cold again.
I’d waited for her to come back. She hadn’t.
Cursing the sun and everything below it, I’d finally jumped in after her, only to find the barren seascape entirely too short of a singular dark-haired woman with a penchant for driving the sanity from my skull. I searched, diving as deep as I could, scanning north and south. She wasn’t there. She’d all but evaporated.
Blood humming with irritation, I climbed back up and yanked my sodden shirt and boots off, leaving them in the fading sun. A vain attempt at drying them. Nothing was dry here. It was almost dark, and everything was wet. The air lay thick with constant mist, the rocks often slippery, and the water...
This cursed fucking water.
Mind churning with impatience, I stole a piece of driftwood from a stone crevice, tossing it with more burning enthusiasm than necessary into a space I impulsively declared our fire. Whenever she decided to turn back up.
Aalto above, this woman. This woman and her hair. Her skin. Her legs and hips and neck. The way she moved, lithe and fluid, floating barefoot over the rocks while I grunted and stumbled behind her, unable to look away until she turned and laid those sun-forsaken midnight eyes on me, forcing me to realize I’d been staring. Eyes that lit into me like sparks from a flame, sending my heart rate into a mad sprint. Eyes that stole my breath and thoughts and fucking Aalto knew what else. A heist waiting under thick lashes. Hoarding secrets.
So many fucking secrets. My mind counted them like items on a list. The ones she’d given me, and the ones I’d discovered on my own. I threw them against the rock, mental darts into a wall, trying to connect them. The ability to hold her breath—and to suffocate another man’s outside his body. To clear airways. Something to do with scent. The way she often leaned in when I tried to swallow a thought, nostrils slightly flared, as though drawn by my smell…
I suppressed a shiver, shoving on wet fucking pants and boots again, unable to sit still.
She’d kissed me under the water, but as soon as she’d breathed into my mouth, the world had somehow lost color and grown brilliantly rich in vibrancy all at once. Fuck if I knew what she’d done. I should be grateful.
I sighed, snatching another smooth branch from my feet and turning it in my hands. There were all the things that had to do with air, and then there was seduction. It didn’t fit with the rest.
She’s a witch,Kimo’s voice whispered in my ears. The islanders of Leihani nodded inside my head. I waved them away, impatient, my lips pursed with thought.
But shewasa witch. She had to be. And so was Thaan.
Not for the first time, the beast that lived in my chest growled at the thought of the man. I somehow managed to wrestle it into a cage when Maren was nearby. But it chuffed and gnashed its teeth often enough whenever I let my thoughts wander. I’d somehow missed all the signs that Maren had been manipulated as much as I had. And without her here now, I let it give a sharp roar into the wind as I paced back and forth, no where to go and nothing to destroy to quench the festering anger in my bones.
Anger at him. Anger at myself.
The hardest part of losing memories was the question of my own sanity. And that vile waste of skin and bones had made me doubt every inch of my own intuition. Had driven me to dot tiny spots of ink along my wrist every hour when I'd found myself back in Calder, marking when I’d lost time. To arrange my shoes and jackets in certain patterns to see what activities I might have dressed myself for. To set a wire trap inside my door, refuse to eat the palace food, and then to worry my obsessions would take me someplace darker than ink and wires.
Some place that sent me overlooking steep cliff-sides and roaring tides.
Or, even worse, someplace that landed Maren there.
The beast gave a snarl as my thoughts returned to Thaan. No one liked him, not even the King, yet he’d wormed his way through the court, his mouth in the Crown’s ear as he sent his mute little fucking assistant all over the palace to spy for him.
I trusted very little other than the desperation in Maren’s voice as she screamed for Kriska to stop strangling me. And the glass of water I’d watched her drink to keep a garrote from my neck. Her worry was the only thing I trusted, though ironically, it was the thing that confused me the most.
I swooped for another branch, and then another. The channel sent a surge under my feet, foam dissolving as the surf fell outfrom the rocks, and I drummed my fingers against the velvet wood. Maren could keep time by the arc of the sun. I wasn’t as adept at it, but I was sure it had been almost an hour since she’d left.
In another hour, it would be dark. Shadows stretched over the rocks, growing longer as the sun escaped the day. My unease grew with them, banishing certainty with the slowly ceasing light. I glanced again out to sea. A vein pulsed in my forehead. She hadn’t taken this long last time.
The woman would kill herself from the cold. And if not the cold, this cursed channel. Waves of impatience licked my sides as I promised myself she’d surface any moment now. She’d come up blue and shaking, limbs frozen, and I’d strip her down and bury her in my own heat, which would be easy to do as I’d been full of Aalto-fucking burning irritation since the moment she left.
I shouldn’t have let her kiss me. I should have dragged her out of the water and carried her. I’d known what she’d been trying to do. Comfort and convince me to stay underwater. Undercursedwater. Water so cursed, Rivea hadn’t built any towns here. Didn’t send any ships through the shortcut the channel provided. Even irritated, I had to admire the strategy. She’d discovered a sun-damned tactic and used it against me without hesitation.
Next time I wouldn’t kiss her back. Wouldn’t put us both at risk just to be near her. But fuck, it would be hard not to.
Suns alive, where was she? If I had to drain this entire channel cup-by-tin-fucking-cup—
A scream pierced the wind.
My head snapped up, body freezing as I listened, the armful of wood tucked against my bare stomach.
