He stared back, eyes drooped and unseeing, his jaw a slacked hinge. He’d fallen back against a stalk of a taro, the wide leaves shading him from the sun.
“Maren. You have to go.”
I gaped up at Kye. His words landed on me like the beat of a hammer, too jolting to hear anything but noise. He darted his eyes to Naheso and back to me. “Did he try to hurt you?”
Disbelief drove me to shake my head, but he saw through it. I could see it in his eyes. His fingers curled into a fist, igniting the pale scars that ran along his knuckles, the veins in the backs of his hands peaking as they traveled up his forearms.
“Do you have another boat?”
“Yes.” My grandfather’s old canoe. Dented, worn, heavy. I hated the thing—it was like trying to row in a block of petrified wood.
Kye took hold of my elbow, pulling me to the side as he stepped in the way, shielding Naheso’s body from my sight. Isucked in a burst of air as pain flared up my arm, remembering the pop I’d felt as Naheso drove his knee into it. Kye released me, his jaw tight as he searched my arm for hidden injury. “Go to your island. Don’t come back. I’ll take care of this, then I’ll meet you there.”
I didn’t move.
His gaze fell to my throat. “Go,” he said, his voice a hardened line.
I don’t know why I listened to him, this non-island man with healed burns and gold eyes. But my feet carried me up the other side of the embankment, through the gardens, and down the hill. I unearthed the oldva’afrom under a cobwebbed canvas, my back arching as I drove it into the water.
And it wasn’t until I set foot on the remote island that I folded in on myself, a shaking ball at the water’s edge, and sobbed.
16
One long minute at a time, darkness swallowed the cursed island where I sat.
Only hours ago, I’d told myself I’d never come here again. My back leaned against the cliffs where I usually chatted with Nori and Olinne. I’d half expected to find them here, but neither had shown.
I didn’t know if I was grateful or disappointed.
At the sound of splashing in the surf, my head snapped up, eyes searching for the source of the disturbance. For the Naiads. For my father. For any one of the islanders who refused to come here out of respect for Nahli. The possibilities stirred a pool of bubbling nerves in my stomach, each worse than the next.
But it was Kye who stepped onto the shore, just as he said he would, his face bright under the silver moon. It had been nearly four weeks since I’d pulled him from the water on this shore.
“Kye.”
He almost passed me, trudging up the beach, arms shaking out the exertion of rowing during mid-tide. At the sound of my voice, he stopped, gaze roaming the beach for me.
I stretched a hand from the shadows into the moonlight, waving slowly. He caught it, his gaze narrowing on me. Fist curled into his hip, he cleared his throat and set one foot on a rock, seemingly thinking of what to say.
After having hours to decide.
And rowing here alone.
“They already know it was me,” I murmured.
He clicked his tongue, head bobbing in slow affirmation.
I’d expected as much. Of course, the island knew it was me. Who else would they suspect, if not the witch who lured sailors to their deaths? They’d only tolerated me this long because none ofthemhad ever died before.
What would they do with me now?
“Where is he?” I asked, though I knew. He was in my aunt or Akamai’s house, encased in salt and hau bark, awaiting his funeral pyre.
He crossed his arms. “Somewhere at the bottom of the channel, halfway between here and Leihani.”
My mouth parted. “You dumped him in the sea?”
Exhaling through his nose, Kye lowered himself beside me. Together, we watched the tide stretch and shrink, the sand blue under the light of the moon.
