I’m not sure how long we stayed there, his kiss engulfed in mine. Long enough for his mouth to widen, for his tongue to sweep the surface of my lower lip, for me to recognize the taste of clean and minty rain on my palate. It was when he began to pull away that I realized he’d reached his limit, that the breath he’d been holding sought to escape his lungs. The world came snapping back. I sealed my lips over his and exhaled.
The breath I gave him was long. Deep. He froze, hands loosening from my hair, muscles slackening as his lungs expanded. I finally pulled away enough to look at him, finding his eyes open and dazed, and suddenly remembered how potent Naiad air was to human lungs. How it had left me disoriented not long ago. How the water in the sea had seemed to fracture and connect, foreign and familiar all at once. How, for a moment, I’d lost the ability to care that Nori and Olinne had dragged me under, or that Selena waited beside me to finish my first transition.
Kye blinked, watching with numb curiosity, almost as though he didn’t recognize me. I might as well have sung him a moon-damned song.
Guilt prodded the confines of my chest as my eyes searched his. Not dilated like avacous’s, but wholly unaware. My finger grazed the scar on his lip. I swallowed, wondering if he’d remember the kiss. If he’d remember what was happening now. Or if my siren breath had stolen it from him forever.
I couldn’t decide which one I hoped against.
A shadow passed overhead, calling my gaze to the surface. The wooden keel of a small boat headed for the rocks.
Still pounding from the feeling of Kye’s mouth against mine, my heart thudded in my chest, pumping in my ears. The boat stopped, rough voices penetrating the rushing tide.
I should have tried to sink their boat. But I didn’t have the energy within me to call a wave as monstrous as I had when I’d sentDarkness’s Hourglassto the black depths of the sea. I didn’t trust myself to try—the risk of failing, of giving our location away, felt too high. The water cut through my skin with its icy grip, but we couldn’t leave its safety until we’d traveled far enough to purge the ship from our view.
Shapes dropped into the water.
Two of them. A blur of legs and arms amid a sudden gasp of bubbles. They swam for us, and I grasped Kye’s arms before I even saw their faces, wrapping them around my shoulders and settling my back into his chest.
Transitioning, I snatched our pack from the rocks and struck for somewhere south along the coastline, as far as my waning strength could take us.
8
Maren
Twice, I caught sight of aquatic plants—only to swim closer and realize they were shield weed. My jaw hardened as I stared at them, defeated. They grew in narrow rocky crevices, too small an opening for me to reach in and snatch out. I couldn’t have eaten it, anyway. But Kye could have.
Even to my Naiad eyes, the seascape under the channel was alien. Dull water lay stacked in layers rather than a smooth transfer of color and light. The sides of the channel, like the countryside, were barren rock. Devoid of fish or wildlife. Stone walls dropped off into underwater cliffs and the light failed to reach the seafloor below, leaving the bottom black like a gaping hole.
I avoided looking down.
Born on an island surrounded by blazing volcanoes and turquoise water, I’d never realized how tortured the cold was. It had always seemed as distant to me as the stars in the sky. But now I knew—it was more than numb muscles and a slow skeleton. More than pins and needles along my skin.
I waited until I was far enough south that I could no longer see the ship, towing Kye along the rocks until I found some low enough that we could use to climb to shore. Then guided his hand to the corner of a ledge worthy of a decent grip, watching as his head met the surface, the sound of his lungs filling with air an unexpected relief in my chest.
He blinked water from his eyes, lashes wet and spiked, then turned his head to look at me, as alert as he’d been before I’d breathed for him.
I hadn’t transitioned back into my human legs.
It was one thing to let him witness water calling or to confess to my ability to seduce. And perhaps my fear was simply a relic of Nori and Olinne’s threats at the idea of my bringing a human to Neris Island. But instinct warned against allowing Kye to see my Naiad tail.
Fins curling into the rocks to hide, I watched his gaze rove the rough stone, jaw hardening as he took in our surroundings. Different from the line of cliffs we’d left. No ship within sight. And me, my lips probably beginning to blue, my shoulders hunched with cold.
He exhaled. “Did you do it? Take my mind?”
I grasped the rough stone as waves broke over my shoulders, pushing me into the cliffs then dragging me away with the undertow. My teeth chattered, and I ignored the icy barbs that sank into my back without his warm, hard chest snug against me in the water. “Do you remember anything?”
“Shapes. Shadows.” He pulled himself onto the rocks, a thin cloud of metallic heat lingering in his place.
So, he retained some form of memory. Not a fullvacousthen. But not really himself, either. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Alright.”
“And you told me to do it if I needed to.”
“I know I did.”
But despite the words, the scent of iron drifted from him. I tapped my fingertips against the rock, wondering what exactly had made him angry. The pirates? The swim? Our kiss? "You're welcome, by the way."
