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EVERLY
Day 6 in Atlantis
I sit next to Darcy and wait. I pounded on the door for hours last night. No one came. The sun set. Still, I sat next to her. As the sun rises once more, Darcy blinks again, the same sideways blink as before. Well, that's not freaky at all. When her little finger twitches, I just about shit my pants.
"Darcy?" Shaking her shoulder makes her blink again, so I do it harder. She comes alive with a gasp.
"Oh! Wow." She sits upright in one smooth move, colour me impressed.
"Dar, are you ok? What the hell happened?" I ask her as she pushes to stand. As she does, her toga gets caught under her foot. As she straightens, it falls away, landing at her feet in a heap.
Her whole back is covered in slash marks. Old and new scars crisscross her pink skin in raised, angry-looking red marks. Some look very fresh.
"Who did this to you, Darcy?" I stand too and run my fingers across one of the largest ones. Brown light flows from the tip of my finger, soaking into her skin, drawing a shudder from her. Before my eyes, the scar I just touched, fades away. It leaves behind a strip of perfect skin.
"What was that, my Queen?" Darcy asks while trying to look over her shoulder to see what I'm doing. She sounds out of breath slightly.
"Give me your wrist," I demand in a voice I hardly recognize as my own. Inside me, a burning instinct to give her my mark makes itself known. She turns, completely bare to me, and lifts her wrist while sliding to one knee. I take her hand and bring the soft skin of her inner wrist to my lips and kiss it. When I pull away, I recognise the mark I leave behind. The exact one I gave William. Soft pink, earth brown, bright blue and silver all intertwined into each other, the outline is a black circle with a graceful trident in the middle. It's my mark.
"Oh, my Queen! Everly..." Darcy fumbles for words as she looks down at her arm. Her fingers caress the colourful mark. "Thank you, my Queen. I am not worthy."
"Darcy, this," I pull her up and point to her arm. "It means you are worthy. What happened? What's with the freaky second set of eyelids?" I ask her as I stride into the bathroom, the pull of the ocean below the tub calls to me. If I could just be near it, maybe I might be able to concentrate better, figure out a way to escape.
Darcy follows, when I look up, I realise the tone of her skin has darkened a touch, she has put her toga back on, but curiosity gets the better of me.
"Turn around, love, show me your back," I ask her, she doesn't hesitate. She spins, pulls her hair to one side, revealing a mark-free back. "Wow. They've gone. That's fantastic." Her arm reaches over her shoulder to feel her back, she gasps in surprise when her hand meets smooth skin.
"Oh, gods. It's a miracle. You healed me, my Queen..."
"No! Ever. It's Ever. Remember?" She ducks her head and her cheeks redden. "Listen, I'm so glad your scars are gone but tell me, who did this to you?" Tears slowly run down her hollow cheeks and her eyes flick down to the floor.
I bend and twist the knob of the tap; water pours from it and begins to fill the tub. Steam rises as I strip off the awful dress Darcy brought on day one and slip into the tub. As soon as my skin touches the water I moan. Darcy takes off her toga and helps me sink into the water. When I lay back against the side, she joins me. We lay there in silence. Letting the hot water relax our bodies. Darcy doesn't have to tell me who hurt her, I already know. Add it to the list of reasons Poseidon will die by my hand. That mother fucker is seriously gunna regret every single thing he has ever done.
The water cools, but I don't get out. Instead, Darcy wordlessly empties some of the cold and fills it back up with hot. I turn to face the wall of the tub and watch small fish swim past me.
"Darcy, I feel this strong connection with the sea. I have an overwhelming desire to dive right in." I tell her while I fight against the desire to dunk my head under the water.
"Well, you're in the royal suite. You can." She replies as she dries herself, I spin to throw her a confused look. "Oh," she blushes, steps out of the tub and wraps her toga around her body, "I keep forgetting you didn't grow up here." She turns to the wall behind her and presses her hand against a seemingly normal section. The walls of the bathroom turn completely clear, giving me a view of being under the ocean.
"Wow. This is incredible." I utter as I stare out into the depths that call to my soul. I look up into the face of a stingray. Its mouth curls up at the corners, like it's smiling at me. The longing inside me to be within the ocean screams at me. "What happened to you, Dar?" I ask without turning to look at her.
"I was scared. I thought I was going to die. I didn't want that to happen. When we die, we are reborn. Our souls are... kind of recycled, if you will. I would be reborn in a new body. I'm sorry that happened." She answers quietly. "I let you down when you needed me."
"No, you didn't let me down at all! It was a shit plan, anyway. Have you been reborn before, Darcy?" I turn to her when long minutes pass without an answer.
"Yes, just recently, actually. Everly, my name is not Darcy, it's Amphitrite." Her admission shocks me so much, I slip under the water, drawing in a lungful. As I flail around, my arms pinwheeling, my mind is in turmoil. Darcy is my mother? Reincarnation is real? What. The. Fuck. I seem to sink forever in the murky water. My lungs burn for air, the pounding in my head intensifies and then the world around me goes black.