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He pulls back, tugging my lower lip between his teeth. I whimper, forgetting where we are, what we were doing, as he gazes into my eyes. He looks away from me, up to his mother. All the love I saw when his eyes were on me is gone. His gaze is solid and hard and unforgiving of the woman who birthed him and ignored him.
“How can we contact you with our response once we’ve had a chance to discuss?” Xavier takes over, letting Essos be my husband and not a king or a son.
“If you insist on being stubborn, I will find a way to contact you.”
Octavia is gone in a blink, and the absence of her is staggering. I know that if Essos wasn’t holding me, I would have collapsed in on myself. The bravado that had me ready to face Posey is gone. Where did it go? Exhaustion and failure weigh on me. Given how I handled that confrontation, I can’t say I blame Essos for trying to shield me from it.
An unspoken conversation passes between Essos and Xavier. I catch it in how they look at each other before Essos scoops me into his arms. I don’t bother to object.
I cling to him, my arms thrown tightly around his shoulders as I bury my face in his neck. The need to be far away from here is burning us both, so strong that we’re caught in the pull of each other, trying to drive our destination as we wink out of Solarem.
Our landing is hard, and I spill from Essos’s arms. I scrape my elbow as I try to brace my fall. Essos scrambles to me right away and pulls me back to my feet. The panic attack is still holding me, and it’s enough to negate the nausea from transporting home. The pain keeps my mind from going to that dark place where there wasn’t enough air and the threat of Galen coming back was as real as the ground beneath my feet.
“Are you all right?” Essos checks me over, turning me around so he can get a better look at where I’m hurt.
I rub my elbow absently. “I’m fine,” I reassure him, trying to get our bearings.
“You’re not fine. You’re bleeding,” he’s quick to point out.
I stop looking around and face him. His attention is totally on me. I clutch his forearms, forcing him to look at me. It’s my turn to be the strong, reassuring one. When I look at him, I can see the evidence of his panic in the tense set to his mouth. “Essos, I’m an immortal. It’s going to heal.”
“Daphne—” He uses a condescending tone, which I amnotabout “—stop acting like you’re invincible. You’re not.”
I swallow all the things I want to say and change the subject instead. We’re both overly emotional and likely to say things we’ll regret. “Where are we?”
Finally, Essos looks away from me and surveys our surroundings. We’re near a beach somewhere on a road that runs alongside a cliff. There’s no one on the road, and below us I can hear the waves crashing.
There is something familiar about the cliff beside us, and I cross the road to touch the spot where metal is crushed against stone. I can almost feel the reverberation it would have made—feel it in my bones. I can feel it, because it’s part of me…a part of my memories. This mark made me who I am. The bus that touched here, that corrected too far and plunged into the ocean below, was the bus that carried me back to Essos.
“We’re in California,” I tell him, walking back to where he is.
His hands are shoved deep into his pockets by the time I get to him. “I did it again, didn’t I?”
“Did what, my love?” I ask, leading him to the scenic view pullout from which Sybil first collected us.
“I’m trying to force you into a box where I can protect you without considering what you want or need.” He sounds genuinely apologetic.
I perch on the guardrail, looking at the water below. Essos sits beside me, his arm wrapping around my shoulders.
“You are, and I get it. I’ll never stop getting it. And I reserve the right to get annoyed about it. But before that, getting me out of Solarem—that was the right call. I needed that.”
“All those scary thoughts that were going through your head when my mother was talking to you? I was having the same ones.”
“How do you know what I was thinking?” I rest my head on his shoulder. His head drops over mine, and I inhale the smell of the ocean and him—vanilla, cinnamon, and sandalwood. Home and comfort.
“My love, I know most of your thoughts, but when it comes to Galen, I could feel you change. I watched your shoulders slump in, and I don’t think you even knew you were reacting physically to the idea of him coming back.”
“I know we talked about it, briefly, when she first made the offer, but I think I was still so caught in the freshness of it that I never really considered it a possibility. Now that Xavier knows, I’m afraid we might have to do it. I’m not sure I can stomach it if we do,” I tell him, lifting my head so I can look at him.
“Then we don’t do it. We’ll find another way to beat Posey. We can and we will beat her. We don’t need my mother.” Essos wraps his arms around my shoulders, holding me closer to him.
“Don’t we? If we can end this faster, then why wouldn’t we? Why wouldn’t we do everything in our power to end this? Don’t we owe it to the people in the Underworld? In Solarem? Don’t we owe it to the lost souls wandering the mortal realms? I can’t in good conscience let this go.” I know full well I’m fighting with myself now. Essos will go along with what I need, but my needs and the needs of the Underworld are so different right now. Being queen means foregoing my personal comfort.
“I can. If it means your mental health? If it means my wife being able to sleep at night? Then we will absolutely not do this.Iwill sleep better at night knowing you’re safe, both of you.” He rests one hand on my stomach, a reminder that every decision I make is not made for me alone. I am deciding for Essos and for our child, and that scares the daylights out of me. I’ve spent thousands of years preparing to be a mother, waiting for this day, and now, as I inch closer to it, I worry that I’m not ready.
But is anyone ever really ready to be a parent? Are they ever ready to take that dive and be responsible for another life?
The thought of Galen coming back makes me break out in a cold sweat. A shudder racks my body, and Essos hugs me tighter to him, trying to save me from my thoughts. I’m not sure it’s possible to escape them at this point.
