He scratched his incisors along his lower lip. He always did that when hesitating. When choosing his words with care.
I crossed my arms.
“This isn’t a pond or river. Don’t swim in the sea. You don’t need toenterthe water to catch fish, do you?”
Caught off guard by the question, I stared at him. My silence must have been telling, and his eyes finally lifted, catching my gaze. “The channel’s cursed. Don’t enter these waters.”
I scoffed quietly. “I grew up in the sea, Kye. Named for Darkness or not, I’m not afraid of it.”
He didn’t move. His eyes drilled into mine, unwilling to let me leave without agreeing.
But we hadn’t eaten since the day before. The moon grew a little more each night, but it would be another week beforeMihaunafully bloomed again. The cured beef and hard-tack on the pirate ship had left my Naiad body malnourished. Kye might be able to subsist on nothing but algae scraped off rocks with the tip of his knife, though I doubted that was true—but I needed something more substantial if I was to make it through these cliffs on foot. Already, I felt my strength thinning as the days passed. My thoughts flickered to Thaan. How I’d never seen him in the sea. How his body seemed to have betrayed him for it. Dry and cracking.
I needed mercury and iodine. Salt on my skin. The pressure and weight of a deep dive and slow ascent.
I needed the sea.
“I won’t,” I lied, avoiding his eyes as I swiveled on my back foot and began climbing down the cliffside. My feet wandered just far enough I was certain he couldn’t see me. Grumbling quietly to myself, I shucked off my clothes. Then, with a quick glance at the edge of the cliff above, dove.
Ice immediately drank me whole.
In an instant, the cold hardened my muscles. It stifled my breath when I surfaced, leaving me to swim with my lungs and limbs in a vise. My tail, usually streamlined and fast, dragged with heavy inefficiency as I called into the waves, searching for the answer of swishing fins nearby. The frigid water delivered a cold pounding inside my head, my arms and hands inept, my fingers ceasing to work altogether.
Still, I pushed, determined to find fish.
Thirty minutes later, I climbed onto shore, huddling against the rocky outcrop, my arms empty.
My legs shook as I returned to our camp. Kye’s face hardened as he took me in, hair dripping, clothes plastered to my wet body. I curled into a shivering ball next to the fire, too ashamed at my failure to even attempt a reason for openly disregarding his warning.
He sucked his teeth and glared at the rock under his knees, the scent of molten iron ore seeping from him. Then, a moment later, pushed to his feet in a motion that was more like punching the ground. His footsteps faded, whether to try to catch his own fish or because he couldn’t bear to look at me, I wasn’t sure.
My eyes closed to the feeling of the sea, the climb and fall of gentle waves. Then I was sitting up, someone lifting my hands, tugging the back of my shirt up my spine. “Don’t fall asleep.” Kye’s voice wrapped around me, softer than I expected. “I have to take this off you. You’re blue, you’ve lost all color.”
Despite the resolve in his tone, he paused, waiting for my permission. My eyes met his. Quiet thoughts flew behind his gaze like a flock of birds, changing direction with the wind. The sea air nipped me as I arched my back, helping him draw the shirt up over my shoulders. He tossed it onto a tall, rust-colored stone, then came back to help with my pants.
I’d already pushed onto my knees, but numbness had taken control of my fingers. They trembled as I fumbled with the button, refusing to bend. I didn’t dare look at him. Humiliation washed through my bones as I shivered on the rocks, goosebumps raised over my bare breasts and stomach, teeth rattling.
Kye knelt on one knee, gently waving my hands aside and unbuttoning my pants for me. His heat drew me in like a cloud, and I found myself leaning into his chest as he reached around my waist, shuffling the pants down my hips. He paused as I burrowed into him, and I thought I heard his breath catch, but then he grasped my arms, gently peeling me away.
He cleared his throat. “Come on,” he said, inclining his chin at the divot in the rock we’d surmised would best protect us from the wind. Warmer than my skin, the hard stone ushered me in as I curled against it, watching as Kye turned around and wrenched his own shirt off, his Leihaniian tattoo stark even under the dim moon. He laid it over me like a blanket, his pants following next, stripping down to his underwear. Then gathered the sum of our stolen clothes on top of us into a small mound, nestling himself against my back.
He swallowed, his heart rate increasing as he pressed his skin against mine. His arm wrapped around my waist, drawing me closer, chin navigating to the surface of my damp hair.
I tried not to think about the places our bodies touched.
We’d crossed into unfamiliar lands with each other on our wedding night. Then again on the beach of Cynthus Castle.Maybe, if we hadn’t been interrupted—if we’dcordaedthen and there—the hesitancy I sensed from the both of us would never have come. But whatever we’d started on the beach had been impeded by a sword aimed at Kye’s throat. By a fight that left us captured, and two weeks of believing we might soon be dead. In all the time we’d spent chained inside the ship, Kye hadn’t brought up our near-miss at something more substantial than long stares and the accidental graze of skin. Neither had I.
Somehow, it felt like salt in a wound to mention that we’d come so close, and then lost our chance.
And it might not have even mattered. But Burien had changed everything that last day on the ship.
Keep your hands off my wife.
I’d thought about it often enough since we’d escaped. Kye had claimed me as his—but only to a pirate intent on our harm. In the days since, he hadn’t said anything about it. I wasn’t certain where that left us.
And I was too much of a coward to ask. Too undecided of which answer I was more afraid to hear.
I didn’t know how to return to the place we’d tried to go. I didn’t know if Icouldreturn there. Or if he wanted to.
