We studied each other, him on his knees only inches from where I stood, ignoring the growing dark as the sun slowly fell below the treetops. Kye exhaled. “Show me.”
I hesitated. Then lifted my hand, palm facing the sky. He finally released my arm and pushed to his feet, taking the smallest step back, as though expecting another hard stream of water. But I summoned only a small sphere that hovered over my open fingers. It grew, absorbing the moisture around it, until it might have been just too wide to fit in a drinking glass. I forced the molecules together, watching it harden as ice fractured the smooth edges of the sphere, trailing to the center like veins in flesh. The ball shifted to bright white as frost invaded its surface, but I flushed out the tiny ribbons of air before it solidified completely, leaving it clear as a crystal orb.
I gently tossed it to him. Kye caught the sphere and brought it to his face, expression timid even as he looked it over with curiosity.
I waited, suppressing a shiver.
“Tell me why,” he finally said, his voice soft enough to surprise me.
“Why—why I can…” I gestured vaguely to the air where my stream of water had manifested the moment before.
He shook his head. “Why won't you take a ship? Why won’t you talk about what happened?”
I stared at him, humiliation threatening all over again. It gripped me in the chilled air, slithering down my scalp and across my shoulders. Ice ball in his fingers, he drove his fists into his hips and waited.
“Kye,” I sighed. My throat closed, and I cursed the weakness living within me that led me to me cry when all I wanted to do was rage. “I grew up talking to the moon. Tracking the stars. There were nights—many nights—that the sky and sea were all I had.” I stopped to pull a deep breath into my lungs. “And I’ve been on two ships now. Each time, I’ve been imprisoned below deck. My hands have been chained. I’ve been left in an iron cage. I’ve been spat on, slapped, starved, and drugged unconscious. I watched them torture you. And there was nothing I could do about it.”
The solid line of his shoulders deflated slowly, and though I didn’t meet his eyes, I felt them, heavy and sober, burning into mine.
“And each time,” I continued, gazing at the ice sphere in his hand. “Each time, I thought I might die before I had the chance to see the sky again.”
Kye’s jaw relaxed and clenched. The sphere dropped into a bed of moss, fuzzy green magnified through its walls. He reached for my hand again. Fingers cool and slippery from the ball of ice, he held my hand until I looked up at him, and then brushed the mess of waves out of my face, tucking my hair behind my ears.
“If it’s the sky you want, Leihani,” he said, thumb drifting across my jaw to land on my chin, tilting it slowly upward, “there’s no better place to see it than the mountains.”
37
Maren
We turned together to face the little inn, a wooden box nestled below us in the distance. Soft smoke puffed from its chimney, its windows aglow in hazy orange. A perfect picture of countryside bliss.
My stomach clenched at the thought of entering it again.
Night chased the last strands of dusk from the horizon. Darkness stretched over us like a thick blanket, wrapping us in quiet shadow.
Kye squeezed my hand.
I followed him down the forested hill, waiting for my nerves to get the better of me. He could sleep inside. I’d easily curl up next to Kolibri and wait out the morning. But at the bottom of the hill, Kye halted and leaned in.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered, the scent of garden rain falling across my cheeks.
I exhaled the air trapped in my chest, emptying my body of thought. The world faded into black, his amber eyes the last thing I saw. Kye waited a moment, perhaps making sure I kept them closed, then led me quietly forward.
Wispy grass between my toes ended as my feet shuffled over smooth wooden steps. Door hinges groaned. Kye’s boots scratched the floor, boards creaking under our weight. The scent of burning ash wood, sweet and balsamic. Fire crackled and died away, replaced by the faint grind of a second door as it opened. And closed. Curtains squealed on their rods.
A breath of air beside me, the soft glimmer of a candle through my eyelids vanishing into night.
Kye’s voice returned, smooth and low in my ear. “All dark. No more wood. You can look.”
He began to shift away, but I didn’t want him to leave. My fingers curled around the hand that tried to go, pulling him back. Tugging him in, where his chest loomed over mine and his warmth encased me. My heart battered my chest, my head scrambling to keep up with what my hands were doing as they slid up his arms and over his shoulders. Into his hair, still damp from my stream of water, his curls soft under my touch.
He met my hands around his neck, lacing his fingers between mine. The only light in the room snuck in under the door, and I watched as the shadow of his mouth hovered open. He pulled one hand from him, pressing something small and round into it. I paused, realizing what it was.
A ring. A ring smooth and thin. Simple and utterly unique. Stolen from my finger two months ago by a pirate with angry red claw marks over one eye as I sat chained to the wall.
In the dark, the soft cotton of Kye’s shirt stroked my arm as he transferred his weight between his feet. “I found it in Sero’s saddle. There’s something I need to tell you.”
My breath hitched as I folded my fingers around the band, the soft bite of shock clouding my thoughts. I thought I’d never see it again.
