“I’m tired.”
“I know. Let’s go upstairs.”
“I want to stay by the sea.”
“Then we will.”
“You went through all this just for my power. Why aren’t you mad?”
The water laps around my knees. My drained arm hangs straight down, an unfamiliar weight that no longer supports itself. But Roiven’s grip on my left hand is warm and firm. When I dare to look up, I find his golden eyes watching me. His lips curl as a soft smile breaks through the pain still shadowing him after Lusern.
“You’re more than your bonds. And the kraken will come back.”
“What if…”
“You’re overthinking. All we can do is try. And right now we’re ahead.”
“How can you say that? They destroyed that village.”
“I know,” he says hoarsely. “But after everything they did to control you, you still woke up. You still chose to be who you were meant to be instead of who they wanted.”
I stumble after him towards the shore. I’m exhausted and broken. I’m only a mediocre swordswoman with my left arm, I can’t even find the familiar that the Empire tried to take from me, and I’ve lost everything that makes me who I am.
I turn and stare back at the ocean. My kraken is somewhere out there. I don’t know how to reach him, but I know that he’smine. My throat catches.
“Water?” I ask.
“Thirsty?” he asks. I nod. “Cup your hand.”
I frown, but I do as he says. Roiven reaches up towards the sky and draws his hand down slowly. A dawn-pink shred of cloudabove us condenses, darkens, and seems to vanish entirely as water streams down from the sky to fill my left hand. I gape at him.
“Drink,” he urges. The cloudwater is cold and tastes fresh. I have another handful, rinsing the sourness from my mouth.
“What if he doesn’t come back?” I ask.
“We’ll worry about it tomorrow.”
“Do wehavetomorrow?”
Roiven pulls me against him and presses his lips to my forehead. My eyes flutter shut and I rest my head against his chest. He’s warm, and solid, and I don’t have the strength to be mad at him anymore.
Having lost everything and everyone, I just want something I can hold on to. And right now, he’s holding me up against him so I don’t have to stand on my own. But tonight wasn’t easy for him either. He just lost hundreds of people.
“Are you alright?” I ask, and push myself back far enough to look up at him.
“I haven’t been alright in years,” Roiven tells me. He glances down and his eyes widen.
“What?”
“Cai, beautiful,” he whispers, and lifts a hand to trace the edge of my cheek. “Your eyes are burning.”
36
I draw a ragged breath, and I don’t look away as Roiven stares into my eyes. I can feel his heart swelling. There’s a yearning in his chest, growing from the heartbreak like a tree in rocky ground.
Because no matter how broken the world is, how broken we are, he’s right. The Empire turned me into a killer and kept me from my familiar. But I’m not theirs anymore. I’m not Roiven’s, either. I’m my own. I’m the kraken’s.
And I shouldn’t be a queen to these people, after everything I’ve done to hurt them. But I can at least use that power to fix some piece of what I’ve done.
