He waited for me inside, arms crossed as he leaned into the wall. His head lifted. The smallest crack parted his lips like I’d startled him, though it wasn’t quite surprise that widened his dark eyes.
“You’re glowing,” he murmured.
I’m not sure that was true, but the words lit a small ember of warmth in me anyway. I made my way to him, feet silent over the wood floor. “Ano.”
His mouth dropped. His brows rose.
“I only have a day,” I said. Theia burn me, words came out like rust, but they tasted like wine, smooth and sweet, even if they were dry and scratchy.
Ano straightened from the wall, his wide hands engulfing my shoulders. Even if I had come to the island with a belly full of words, I’d never been a talker. Anowas.
But he was silent now, waiting for what I might say next with a hope and hunger that threatened to break the numbness inside me.
“After tonight,” I said slowly, “everything will change. I need you to know what to expect.”
A small knot between his brows. “Are you leaving?”
I shook my head. “I’ll stay here until the day I die.” His fingers relaxed a fraction, but my eyes slid away. “But I know what day that is. I know several things that will happen.”
He moved. I couldn’t decide how. Couldn’t decide if he’d suddenly tensed or relaxed. If that crease in his forehead suddenly loosened or deepened, if the shadow that hovered under the apple in his throat was more rigid or soft.
I forced a calm breath from my lungs. “Theia sent me here.”
“Theia,” he said, testing the Calderian word on his palate. “Mihauna.”
“Yes.” I closed my eyes. “She sent me to find a husband and bear a child. Just one. A daughter.”
A thick brow raised. I let him take his time absorbing that, aware the evening between us was unfolding more strangely than he'd expected.I’d been in Leihani for three months, and I’d never said a word. Then suddenly, I claimed I was sent from the island’s favorite goddess.
“I thought you were about to say you escaped someone,” he said, tilting his head. “That someone is looking for you.”
“Someone is.”
He leaned forward from the wall only to readjust his shoulders and rest against it again. “Another man?”
The words oozed a heat I didn’t recognize, though they made my skin tingle. “Yes, but not one that’s in love with me. One who wants the magic in my blood.”
Another long pause. He rubbed a thumb into his lip. “Magic in your blood.”
I lifted my chin, just slightly. “There’s a curse on your people, Ano. A shield of protection. Someone born on your island and someone like me… we weren’t meant to marry. That curse will only lift until I take a husband. After tonight, your island will hate me.”
He frowned, doubt pinching his brows. “Show me.”
I blinked. “Show you what?”
“Show me there’s magic in your blood.”
I sank my weight into my heels, considering the demand. It was more than fair, I suppose, given what I’d told him. What I planned to tell him next. “Come with me.”
Ano followed me back out under the night sky, to the sound of crickets and swaying leaves. We stole down to the water. Sidra’s water. Water I’d been so careful not to touch.
A hand hovering over the receding wave, I pushed the water gently away, leaving a half-circle of sand where the tide had shifted the moment before, no bigger than the breadth of his veranda. That might have been enough. A glance in his direction indicated it was, his body erect and his eyes sober. But I held out a hand to him. “Let’s go.”
Hesitation stretched his smile into only one side of his handsome face. “Go where?”
I laughed softly, and the sound cracked his smile through the other side. “To the bottom of the ocean.”
The sea was dark. Silent.
