So she swallowed them back and pushed herself even closer until there was no space. “Fine,” she said, “but let me try to save them first. Okay?”
“But—”
“I know,” she murmured. “I know. Of course it’s safer for you, but it’s my job. I can handle it. I can protect you.”
He kissed the top of her hair. “I wish you wouldn’t,” he whispered. “It scares me to even have you in the waves sometimes.”
She laughed, pulling back to look at him. “Really?” she asked, laughing again. “I promise you I’m not that fragile.”
But his eyes looked as if he could still see her from that first stormy night, limp and unconscious and pale. “I was worried you were dead too,” he said. “But you had just fallen in, so I figured there was a chance.” He stroked her cheek. “What if I had been too scared to saveyou? I never would’ve forgiven myself.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean you’re looking for your next me,” she teased.
“Never,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Never,” he repeated with a kiss to her lips. “Never.”
Her mouth opened, the words, ‘Have you considered us going any farther?’ on her lips, but he beat her to it with words that caused her heart to plummet: “But I still wish you wouldn’t. There’s a storm coming tomorrow, Daria. A big one.”
CHAPTER 52
She jumped to sitting upright. “What do you mean there’s a storm coming?”
“Exactly that,” he said, frowning a bit but reaching out to her. “I didn’t think you minded storms.”
“I don’t,” she said. Or she never had. But now she pictured waves hitting her boat sideways and bodies floating just above the surface.
“I don’t,” she said again, closing her eyes to steady herself and try and push away the memories of being helpless and tossed into a black sea. “Just the way you said it sounded ominous.”
“I’d never let you die,” he said.
As if he could truly promise that. He was good in the water, but it wasn’t like he could stop everything.
But still, she said, “I’m sure it will be fine.” With most storms, people didn’t even need to be rescued. “Willyoube okay?”
He smiled. “Yeah. I just go a bit deeper and it’s fine. But I’ll stay close enough to watch for you leaving the lighthouse.”
She wanted to tell him it wasn’t necessary, but something inside her stopped her and she nodded as she hugged him. “Okay.”
CHAPTER 53
Like before, Kallias was not wrong. It came in the morning. The sky turned practically green in advance, as if in anticipation, it was sick with worry.
And all too soon, the clouds rolled in, ominous and black and frothing. Rain quickly followed. She could see its silver wall approach like a charging army until it began pelting the windows of the lighthouse like it was trying to get in, like it was begging to like a man pursued banging at the doors of a church. Lightning cracked, fierce and angry, as if it and the thunder were quarrelling. The sea responded appropriately, churning and heaving like God was shaking a bowl. Waves slammed into the sides of the island, letting water explode upward like it had always wanted to fly.
And through the chaos and the madness, she watched. First, for ships of course, and then for Kallias. It worried her that he was likely closer than he would normally choose to be because of her. If he were to get slammed into the shore, she didn’t know what she would do.
But she saw no ships and she saw no mermaids, and the day dragged on in tense apprehension. Maybe it was because of Kallias’s foreboding tone, but the entire day her heart felt sure she would see a sinking ship she’d have to save. She dreaded it, which was silly really as she never had before, but she couldn’t help it. Last time’s failure still echoed plainly in her mind. If anything, that really meant that she needed there to be a rescue, just to prove to herself that she could.
But statistically, she knew it was unlikely. She hardly had a rescue a year, let alone two within the span of a few weeks.
But nature so rarely operated by logic.
So she waited and she watched and she dreaded.
CHAPTER 54
Nature really didn’t play by statistics, or perhaps, more likely, fate was cruel.
The lightning and thunder and rain had calmed as night had settled in, but the clouds did not cease to be foreboding and the sea still hurled and hissed. So she waited and watched further from high atop those angry seas.
