My brows pinch together, and I glance up. “Why? What happened to them?”
He drives himself out of the water in a torrent of long, tapered muscles, scales, and ...
I swallow.
Why am I only now noticing that my best friend has so much ...allure?It’s a wonder he doesn’t have females chasing his tail all day long.
“That’s a very long, very sad story,” he says, parking himself on the rocks beside me, silver tail sweeping back and forth through the water. “One I wouldn’t taint your pretty ears with.”
He pinches my nose, and I gaff him with a glare. “But you tell meeverything.”
All mockery drips off his face, and he cups my cheek like it’s made of glass. “Not that, Orlaith. Never that.”
It’s a common misconception that Ocean Drakes are tidal—easy to sway.
Not mine.
I know Kai well enough to know that when he says no, he means it. He’d sever his own tail before going back on his word.
I look at the picture again, choosing not to bring up the déjà vu it strikes me with. The fact that a little boy who wears the same eyes comes to me in my dreams.
Always reaching.
Never catching.
Ignoring the tightness of my chest, I turn to the page marked with a toothy blade of shadow grass. “And what about that?”
There’s something very unusual about the lithe, powerful-looking man emerging from the basin. I barely noticed his pointed ears or impeccably sculpted cheekbones. Even his guarded eyes didn’t strike me at first or the way they’re peering out of the page with some obscure war waging behind them.
There’s just an air about him. A sense of primal prestige that locked my spine the moment my gaze flew over the picture.
Some innate part of me wanted to close the book in the very next moment. Still does, like a flower closing up in the face of a blistering storm.
The silence between Kai and myself stretches on a little too long, and I meet his eyes, shadowed by a pinched brow.
“What?”
“Did your tutor have a bad case of selective teaching? How do you not know any of this stuff?” he asks, slashing his hand through the air. “Some of the races in this book forged your way of life!”
I stare at him blankly. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Well, take the Unseelie for example”—he indicates the picture—”pulled from the volcano by Jakar, God of Power. Thousands of years ago, they were the dominant, over-lording race, driven by their compulsion to sow seed and strengthen. To nest,fuck, and breed.”
I flinch at the rawness of his words, cheeks burning at the way he emphasized that crass four letter word.
“Theplagueof their archaic beliefs still echo in your society,” he continues. “For example; slaving was a very serious problem back then. As a result, bleeding one territory to bolster another is now forbidden, which is why changing one’s territory colors must be a voluntary choice.”
Tongue a chalky lump in my mouth, I shake my head, wondering if I should have waited to ask these questions when my brain is fully functional. “I don’t get it. If they were so transcendent, why aren’t they still around today?”
Kai lifts my hair, sweeping his fingers down the length of it, sending a shiver across my scalp. He tucks the weight over my shoulder so delicately you’d think he was handling a weave of spun gold.
“Their voracious hunger for control planted the seed of their demise,” he says, eyes bleak. “The Unseeliedevastatedraces, Orlaith. Even their own. Ripped each other to shreds in a great battle that destroyed an entire territory and threatened global extinction. Some believe Jakar himself tore apart the sky, unleashed bloody ruin, and exterminated what was left of his ...miscreations,” he growls, attention falling back to the page. “The reek of that wash of power still taints the sea in some parts.”
I frown, studying the picture again.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. My world, it seems, is getting smaller by the second.
I look upon the next marker, and a ball of tension gets lodged in my throat, making it hard to breathe.
