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"Eventually, of course, Neptune forced my ancestor to release Arianne from the stone, though the statue remains."
As Mina spoke, David remembered the feel of the filmy material, the hair floating over his fingertips as Mina's was now. "Why did the witch despise Arianne so much?"
"Arianne had everyone's love." Mina shrugged. "She was a kind-hearted princess, beautiful as well. Neptune's favorite. Yet for all the love she had, she wanted more-the prince's heart. Such greed offended my ancestor, who didn't have love-just en-vied beauty and feared power."
She looked toward David with her unsettling red eye and scars. "Can you imagine being given something everyone loathes you for having? They're willing to take it, borrow from it, reap the benefits, but they hate you for having it, wondering why they weren't the special one. But the ironic thing is, it was no different for Ceruleah. She hated Arianne because she hadn't been given what the princess had. It's a never-ending cycle. I understand why in the end they felt a connection to each other, even though it has always been a destructive one."
"Until you and Anna."
"Anna broke free of it, through luck and an angel's love." Her grip shifted to his nape after that remarkably matter-of-fact statement. The increasing light and lessening pressure indicated they were getting close to the surface.
David paused a moment, not wanting to break the thread yet, sensing he was getting close to something important. "So you don't share your ancestor's view, that love is an illusion?"
"If your beauty and power shine so brightly that no one can see through it, the love is an illusion. Because if love is offered, it's only offered to the beauty and power, never to the woman behind it. A sham of whatever true love is."
"But true love can see through anything."
Mina made a derisive face, a disturbing effect with the scarring. "Like any weapon, it's only as strong as the wielder. And no one was strong enough to prove otherwise to Ceruleah."
"The hair-"
"My mother's," she said shortly.
"Hmm." He resumed his ascent, thinking about the dress, the witch who wore it. Thinking about Mina painstakingly weaving her mother's hair into a wig so she could reach out and touch it. Having lost her at such a young age, had Mina ever pressed her face into the strands, imagining her mother leaning over her, letting her hair cover her daughter's face? His mother had done that. He remembered it from when he was perhaps four, or five, still in a small child's bed.
Jesus. Not going there. Fortunately, Mina's fingers, pressing urgently into the cords of muscle at the juncture between his neck and shoulder, distracted him.
"Go slow this time," she said. There was a tremor to her voice he could tell she tried to mask. His brow winged up.
"You really are afraid of heights. How can you have the ability to shapeshift to a dragon and-"
"Welcome to the irony of my life," she said stonily.
While he tried to keep to a steady, non-alarming pace, he did have to increase his speed to make a smoother transition from water to air. As he did, he realized she'd made her own transition. What was twined around his body now was a pair of slim legs. When he'd first taken her to the spit of land, he'd done it so quickly there was no time to switch to human form before he speared her tentacles. Then, after she was freed, unable to shift to legs because of the wounds, she'd had to drag herself down to the water. Maybe she was remembering that, wanting to be able to stand on her feet on the land and not be hampered, or forced to crawl before him as she had then.
"I'm sorry about that day," he said.
She rotated her head toward him, her movements jerky. The way someone moved who was trying to deal with being nervous by appearing calm, the result being a slightly more animated form of rigor mortis.
"Sshh..." He rubbed her back, his other arm tightening on her waist. "You're fine. I've got you."
"You dropped me that day," she reminded him.
"Yes, I did. But you'll remember I caught you before you hit the ground. In my defense, you were still fighting me, not a smart idea when someone's got you five hundred feet or so in the air."
"The island's over there," she said, worriedly.
"I know. I want to do something else first. Hey." He eased a hand under her hair to cup her cheek, force her to look away from the land. "It's all right. I'm not going to drop you, I swear. If I did, I could catch you."
"Unless you got a cramp or something, and couldn't go as fast. Or maybe a stray missile shoots you out of the sky. Or a flock of birds gets between you and me."
"You are giving this way too much thought."
"We're still going higher. Why are we going higher? I want down."
"Can you let me try one thing first?"
Mina only had two alternatives. Stare directly into his face, confronting those vibrant and intent brown eyes, or look elsewhere, which would emphasize that they were not in the nice, solid net of her ocean.
"Aren't I a little exposed to Dark Ones here? Aren't you shirking your duty?"
"Mina."
"Fine. Do whatever it is and be done with it."
"Do you ever float on your back in the water and look up at the stars and moon?"
"Every once in a while. A long while."
"Okay, then. I need you to let go of me. I'll hold you, I promise. I just want to shift us."
Mina looked at him in alarm, her legs and arms automatically clamping, irrespective of the fact she had one injured hand.
"It's all right." He pried one hand off and brought it to his mouth, nuzzling her palm with his lips, stroking his thumb over it. "Trust me for just this moment. Just this one moment, remember?"
"I don't think I can let go."
"Okay. Let's do this, then." He shifted the daggers he wore from the front sheaths to the back, securing her with one arm throughout. Holding himself in the air during the process was effortless, and he was hoping she was noticing that, to help her confidence. Then he altered the angle of his wings so he was leaning back, back, taking her with him as he went to a horizontal position, floating. Instead of hanging in his arms, feeling like her life depended on how tightly she could cling, now she was lying on top of his body, her one arm still around his neck, the other still in his grasp, her fingers grazing his jaw. Her body was stretched full against his, breast to chest, hips nestled in the cradle of his, one leg still twined around him, only now her foot dangled over the bracing strength of his calf.
"How are you doing that? Birds can't do that."
"I'm not a bird. For angels, flying isn't entirely about aerodynamics."
Of course. Mina steadied herself with that thought, with any damn thing she could grasp. Angels weren't necessarily explained by the laws of science, any more than certain things about her were.
"Angels achieve lift not just based on their wings, but on their own powers," he explained further, as if reading her mind. "But the wings are vital to that lift. Controlling direction, hovering, things like that. And the repository of that lift magic is in the wings, which means if they're cut off, we don't have access to that power. Or if they're injured, it limits us. Now," he said, his tone lowering as he looked into her face, his lips so close, "turn over on your back. I've got you. Don't worry. Feel me under you. I'm not going anywhere."
"Why are you doing this?"
"You ask that a lot. Hasn't anyone ever just wanted to do something to make you happy?"
"If that was the case, you'd take me down to the land. Or back to the ocean."
"Mina." When he let go of her hand, he quelled her instant alarm by smoothing a thumb over her lips, slowly enough that he made them part and traced the wetness just within. Grudgingly, she found that was also an effective distraction.
"No," she said. "They haven't."
His eyes darkened. "Then let me be the first to do that as well."
Reminding her that he knew he'd been the first male inside her body. She could tell that knowledge pleased him deeply, in a way that made her swallow.
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