“Kye, I’m sorry—”
“You’re not getting back in the water.”
My eyes snapped to him, lying under his own arm, and without warning, anger blazed inside my chest. I smelled it on myself, a metallic heat rising in the air, and could have sworn the sky darkened in response. Something primal took hold of my arms and hands, sending me to shove at him, sending him sideways. He scrambled upright to gaze at me in shock.
“What in Aalto’s—”
“You can’t deny me the sea,” I hissed, fists curled and ready to unleash. My blood spiked heat into my face, a slight tremor in my voice. I was in little position to argue after he’d found me half-dead on the rocks and nursed me back to health. But he'dhave to tie me up in chains to keep me from the water. Electricity fizzled between my fingers, static lifting the hairs at the back of my neck.
His jaw gyrated in place. “Lay back down.”
I did, crossing my arms. Rage trickled down my spine, and somewhere far across the sea, thunder echoed from the dark sky. I wondered if all sirens ran feral at the thought of someone robbing them of the ocean. The waves. The salt.
Kye watched me calmly, his eyes reading the angry lines in my forehead, my hard-set mouth. My brows drew tight, a burn igniting the back of my eyes. “I had to do something,” I growled. “You would have just let us starve.”
“Aalto burn the sky and stars. If you’re worried about starving, do me a favor. Just eat me.”
“Ineedthe sea, Kye.”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Did nothing but study me for what might have been a lifetime. A woeful, irritating curiosity regarding what thoughts rolled around insidehishead seeped intomine. He still hadn’t asked me about how I’d saved Hadrian. How I’d drowned Aleksei.
How the pirate ship had ended up below a tidal wave.
His mouth worked on some private notion, and I waited for questions to come as the last remaining sparks of my fury died away. But he stared daggers into the rock beside my hip, war waging behind his eyes, then thrust his arm back over his face and heaved a sigh.
“We’ll reach Vranna by tomorrow night,” he said, voice muffled inside his elbow. “Earlier, if we’re lucky. I’m not going to let you kill yourself when we’re so close. You’re not touching a drop of water unless I give it to you in a cup. You're welcome, by the way.”
13
Maren
Sighting the first coastal bird in Rivea quenched a drought in my bones. I hadn’t realized how often I’d searched for signs of animals on land. How often I’d missed them. A sandpiper, sleek and brown, picked at rocks in a murky tide pool. It twisted to look at us, cocking its head sharply before flying away.
I smiled after it.
Trees propped up through the rocky outcrops. Beautiful, mystical trees, ordinary in every way, yet divinelyalive.
Though I pushed myself, I moved slowly. My bones shook with each step, my legs weak. When it became clear we wouldn’t reach the city before nightfall, we stopped at a rocky cliffside pond just outside of Vranna. Crayfish skittered across its floor. Kye netted them in a shirt, boiling them one at a time in the tin cup. We watched the lights of Vranna flicker, the houses still and somnolent like grazing flocks of sheep.
Kye leaned under a half-dead, wiry tree. I watched its sad leaves rustle over his head and wondered what kind of tree it was. Why half of it had gone skeletal, dead branches reaching to the sky like a corpse praying to the sun and moon.
A lack of phosphorus, perhaps? A disease set in by cold moisture?
The ocean thrashed against the rocks, hard and then soft. The skin at my scalp tingled, and I found Kye studying me. Arm resting carelessly over his propped knee, he gazed at me with his head tilted back, a picture of lazy confidence.
My eyes met his. We’d barely spoken since he’d told me I couldn’t enter the water, but clearly he’d been waiting for my attention now.
“Yes?” I asked, failing to keep the bite from my voice.
His chest slowly deflated. He rubbed his chin, adjusting his posture to sit higher. “We should make a list of things we need before we reach the Vranna market.”
A flare of disappointment cooled my irritation. From the way he’d been surveying me, I’d thought he’d carried a discussion in his mind that delved a bit deeper than a shopping list. I straightened my legs out from under me. “Alright.”
“If we’re preparing for a ride through the mountain pass, we’ll need warm clothes as well as gear. You don’t handle the cold well.”
He waited for me to argue. I simply nodded, wrapping one arm around myself and wondering if he might try to persuade me to take a ship instead. If this was the beginning of a conversation based on reasonable, sound choices, of which I was certain he believed I lacked.
Wooden walls rose around me. A ceiling hovered over my head, footsteps clanking across the plank boards. Someone’s breath tickled my ear, sour with the scent of stale liquor.
