More, they needed more, but she didn’t think she could offer him any more pain, anything more to be angry about. Next onher mental list was bringing up his mother, but she didn’t have that cruelty in her.
So she’d switch tactics. They hadn’t discussed this one, but if it backfired, they’d simply have to start over, and she’d resort to whatever childhood trauma she had to. For now, she closed the gap between them, wrapped her arms around him, and came up on her toes to press her lips to his.
He didn’t object. His arms were around her in half a beat, his mouth angled over hers, and it took her a long moment to realize both hands were on her back, one moving up to her hair. She barely had the presence of mind to grab the wrist of his marked hand, to guide it away from her head and toward the crystal. She splayed it there, palm out, her own marked palm pressed to the top of his hand.
What if it was the end of them, this night? What if their escape attempt failed, if Stefanos took him from her, killed him? What if she didn’t see him for the next twenty years? Would this die away, this fire that had somehow been lit?
Maybe it was just emotion, fleeting and quick to fade. A reaction to the stress they’d gone through together, to needing to rely on each other. Maybe it was just a chemical reaction, or even the mixing of their blood. Hadn’t Perla mentioned her parents’ reactions to their blood mixing as exploding in attraction? Maybe that was the only reason she wanted to cling to him and never let go. His blood calling to hers, hers crying out for him.
But did that make it any less real? Seidon and Arden had been married for a century and a half and were still so much in love that Fodur had sneered every time he saw an image of them and called it a disgusting display. A weakness.
But it wasn’t. It was a strength. Together, they were something more than they were apart. Not just two people with compatible blood, compatible magic. They’d become an impenetrable force, one the entire world knew to respect.
Was it so wrong to want that? Couldn’t love make her stronger, too, instead of weaker, whether their blood magic was compatible in the same way or not?
Sensation whooshed in with a concussive force, so strong they both staggered under the weight of it. For half a second, she thought it was the kiss, breaking something, flooding something in her very soul.
And it was, in a way. She looked, dazed, to where their hands had melted through the crystal, blue light like Perla’s dancing around their fingers.
The water was everywhere inside her. Each iceberg, each current, each snowflake drifting down from the cloudbanks to the west. She could sense the ship cutting through it, the others around them, the waves lapping the shore.
Nik tipped her face up, smiled, and pressed one more soft kiss to her lips. “Next time, skip straight to that backup plan.”
She chuckled. “Deal. Time to go.”
With a weak point in the crystal, they could widen the hole with relative ease. Nik had to burn a bigger opening in the porthole too, but compared to the crystal, the hull parted like butter. She kept steady splashes of water from the waves coming up to smother the flames on the outside, to keep any smoke from reaching the noses of those on deck.
His hand gripped hers. “Can’t say I’m looking forward to this part.”
She gave his fingers a squeeze. “I’ll do my best to keep a bubble of air around your head. Just don’t panic and pop it, I’m not as good with seawater as I am with fresh. The salt messes with me a little—it’s not in frost or snow or ice, you know.”
He nodded, and they maneuvered themselves through the opening, then slipped silently into the water she brought up to meet them.
Perla had talked about her childhood spent swimming the waters of Daryatla Sound, diving down to the Sunken Cities to visit her friends and family among the mer, taking holidays on islands that were warm all year round.
In Fjordlandi, even the Blessed didn’t swim the oceans for fun, at least not often. Kyrja had grown up holidaying at the fjords and the waterfalls, where the waters were icy but fresh. The salt stung her eyes and felt like dust to her Blessed sense. But she’d manage—she had to.
Nik’s hand secure in hers, she guided the water into a sphere around his head, holding in the air that had been around him. It wouldn’t last long, but hopefully long enough. Feeling around for the natural current, she called to it, nudged it, pulled it, and rode it, silently whispering for it to head straight to land.
Nik’s feet kicked in time with hers, and when a whale joined them, singing a song that sounded to her ears like a curious hello, she laughed.
Perhaps the sea wasn’t so bad.
She knew it the moment they crossed into her territorial waters. Knew it because of the clanging symbol to her sense, her mind, the marrow of her bones.
Fodur. He was there, his magical touch, among those of the Blessed who’d taken the seas from her yesterday morning. They were still doing the work she’d let them do, not so much as a variance, but his magic was slithering through theirs.
She couldn’t let the fear, the dread slow her. It had to fuel her instead. She urged the current faster, faster still, until their knees hit sand and they staggered to their feet, Nik gasping.
Shore was still a ways off—they’d hit a sandbar. But that would suffice. She dismissed the current with a thank-you and tucked Nik’s arm through hers. “Hold on. We’re going to ride a wave into shore.”
He dragged in a breath and, shivering so hard it was more convulsion, nodded.
She had to hurry. Pulling the water toward them, she wrapped both arms around him and bade the swell carry them toward shore.
They were lucky—no, blessed—to have been near enough to this spot to aim for it. In most places around the island, nature and magic had built up the ices so far out into the sea that there were miles and miles with no beach at all, no land under the frozen surface. A security measure, so that they could break off icebergs to hinder any ships attempting an incursion.
Too bad the triremes had ice-breaking hulls.
