Page 77 of The Song of the Void

I let the knife fall to the carpet with a thud and grinned. “Killing you isn’t high on my list of priorities right now…and I know you’re not going to murder me, Reiven.”

He gaped at me. “How do you know?”

“You released the chain that bound us together. You could have kept me leashed to you and slain me after we retrieved the Voidtome, but you didn’t. Why was that?”

“Because,” he said, dazed. All of that false animosity, his own bluff to give me a guilt-free, bloody conclusion to what we shared—it was gone. Reiven reached out to cup my muddied cheeks with unnaturally warm hands. “I fell in love with you.”

Heat filled my eyes, blurring his face from my sight, but I managed an encouraging smile.

“When we first met, I thought it would be so damn easy to hate you. I had hated Sirens all my life. I kept telling myself that if I made sure you despised me, it would be simple to kill you when Ash didn’t need you anymore. But I knew from the moment you took away my pain the first time that I couldn’t—I didn’t have it in me to hurt you,” he choked out. Oh no, if he was going to get emotional, I was definitely going to cry. “Your touch was so gentle, I would have begged on my knees like a lunatic for another if I thought you’d ever actually want to touch me. Even if I reminded you of that fucking Human, you still took care of me. You were the one hurting, and yet you offered to take away my pain with a smile that tormented me day and night.” He stared at me in the exact same way he did on the island, with all the earnestness and warmth in the world there in his eyes. “The time I spent laughing with you, getting to know you, falling faster and harder every day…It was the most meaningful time in my life.”

Our gazes didn’t break as he sank to his knees. “I love you, Zephra of the Abyssal Deep.”

Tears streamed down my cheeks, but I couldn’t stop smiling. I joined him on my knees on the carpet, and gently pressed one of his hands against my chest, so he could feel the frenzied thud of my heartbeat. A melody that existed for him and him alone. “Reiven…do you hear it?” I whispered. “My heart…it sings for you.”

His chest hitched and he pressed his fingers into my skin, like he was afraid I might disappear into mist and seafoam if he didn’t tether me.

“The song started as a whisper I fought to ignore. But the clearer I saw you, and the closer I came to that void I was so terrified of, the stronger it became. Now it fills my veins with every beat of my heart, and it leads me straight to the man I love.”

With a strangled cry of relief, he pulled me into a hug, suffocating my silly protests about getting his white shirt dirty with all the muck covering me. I put my arms around him too, digging my fingers into the crisp linen to feel the coils of muscles that made up his body. “I love you, Reiven…even if you’re a pirate bastard, and a Mourner prince.”

He chuckled as I grinned up at him through my tears. “Former pirate bastard.” He claimed my lips. When he pulled away to let us breathe, he brushed away some of the tears mixed with mud that streaked together in a disgusting paste on my cheeks. The cocky bastard I knew returned for a tease after a moment.

“You taste like dirt.”

I laughed and smeared some of the mud on his face, too.

He didn’t even try to dodge, just knelt there grinning like a love-drunk fool. “Actually, I think the mud is really doing something for me. Not sure what exactly, but it’s doing something. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.” He pulled me over to a door beside the wardrobe that I assumed led to a closet or maybe a lavatory.

The room inside was covered ceiling to floor in smooth volcanic rock, and in the center of the floor was a drain. Tiny holes peppered a wide area across the ceiling. Towels hung on a rack just inside the door, and a basket fixed to the wall had been filled with bottles of soap I could smell from here. Citrus, eucalyptus, floral scents which evoked the image of flowers blooming out of the ashes of a long-burned forest.

Reiven pulled a lever beside the door as I cautiously entered, and something like a slab of metal within the ceiling scraped away. Steaming water flowed from the tiny holes above us in a steady pour, like a hot waterfall.

“There's a huge vat of boiled water above the ceiling, but you'd better hurry up and get in, because there's only around a half hour's worth of continuous use before it runs out,” Reiven murmured with a grin.

I stepped further inside the room to let the water run over my fingers, yelping in surprise at how hot it was.

Rei's smile widened as he stuck his hands in his pockets, leaning against the door jamb. “Sorry. We like our water scalding.”

“Oh, is that why you were so jumpy around the ocean? Because water and fire don’t mix well?”

“Yeah, until I fell for you and followed you into a tropical storm at sea. I still didn’t like how being crushed and somehow simultaneously weightless felt, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. Since you were there with me, I suppose.”

I spun to face him and backed up so that the water fell over my shoulders, drenching my dirty hair and clothing.

He chuckled. “Aren’t you going to undress? We don’t really bathe with our clothes on here.”

“Is that all you can think about, Reiven?”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sticking around to catch a glimpse, but I guess I’ll leave.”

Insufferable. But surely he knew that I’d call his bluff?

“Well, bathing is really a one-person job, so you’d better get a move on.” I smirked at the pout that shadowed his face for a moment, but then he good naturedly told me to enjoy myself. I hadn’t expected him to give up so easily, so I panicked and flung some more mud at him to keep him from leaving. “Oops. Well, since you’re dirty too…I wouldn’t mind sharing the water with you.”

I’d never get tired of his laugh. Or the way he smiled at me.

He came closer, stopping just outside of the water from the ceiling, but within arm’s reach for me. I yanked him close enough to kiss. While he was off balance and distracted, I switched positions with him so that he stood beneath the stream of water, and I stood just outside. The white fabric of his shirt darkened and grew more transparent the wetter he got, and I stared at him like a starved prisoner being served her last meal. Every ridge of his abs, every slight curve of his chest, every muscle in his arms was perfectly visible through the fabric, yet still, I wanted more.