She looks round to where I am frozen, standing in the water, partially obscured by the curtain of steam. The springs are tiered into seven levels. The water at the bottom, wherewe swim, collects in a pool that covers my shoulders, and then climbs like stairs away from the water, until the top tier, the shallowest, water barely covering my waist. I wade and climb, I am momentarily lightheaded.Ascension is hubris, Andromeda.
I sway as I sit, my body mostly free of the water. Ceto follows.
‘Meda?’
I am trembling. I do not know how I had not thought of it before.
‘When the oath is declared void, I will be sent away.’
‘Yes?’
‘To some temple probably, to serve as a priestess.’
‘Yes. Is it not what you want?’
I stare at her. ‘But – you will be summoned back to the Coral Kingdom. To be by your master’s side.’
‘I will not leave you.’ Her hand finds mine.
‘You won’t have a choice.’
‘My sister will be queen. There will be some privileges. I will come to you as often as I can.’
She has thought of this already, of course. She is always ahead of me in this way. I am spoiled still in many ways, greedy with my present, indulging in her and thinking of little beyond the next kiss, the next night of holding her in my arms.
‘Promise me.’
‘I did not need to maim the boy. He might have kept his hands.’
Her words fill the air between us. I pause.
‘Your master did not order such violence?’
‘No. But that boy touched what is mine.’
There is silence then. I have never known her so declarative. I fear that the same words in my mortal mouth will be too small to convey what I so desperately need her to know. I press her to me anyway.
‘And you are mine.’ I feel her skin through her soaked linen, she melts into my hands. ‘I have wanted you.’
‘I have wanted you longer,’ she breathes into my mouth.
My hands are in her hair. I wind the thick dark coil around my wrist and tug gently, something fierce and new spreading in my chest.
‘Do not argue with me, worm,’ I growl. She whimpers, her eyes fluttering closed, and I feel the sound low in my belly. I touch my lips to each lid, to each cheek. ‘What is it about being called worm that so pleases you?’
She chuckles but her voice comes in low, ragged breaths. ‘If I were called it by another, I would cut out their tongue, for they would mean it as an insult.’
‘At first, I did. You did not cut out my tongue then.’
‘Worms are small and soft. Easily harmed. They must be kept safe and warm in damp earth. I like that you see me so.’
‘You are small and soft to me.’ The water has its own heartbeat, it throbs around us.
Her eyes open, striking me as I willingly endure the blow. ‘And you are not the pleasing princess with me. When you first swore at me, that day you leapt on me in the dirt, I wanted you then.’
‘I did not know. I did not know such things could exist between women.’
‘And that evening, in the hearth room, when your mother scolded you, put her hands on your face, I thought – I felt—’Her breath falls short. ‘My sister mocked me for it. She is older and has known of others. She could see that I was dying for you.’
