21

THE LITTLE
ROOM BY
THE SEA

The island of the Black Archives—Rel’donas, Yorl calls it—is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. But I said that about Vetris once upon a time, didn’t I? Maybe I’m just the sort of person to be easily impressed by shiny new places. Even taking that into consideration, Rel’donas does nothing but impress; Yorl leads us out through a door of the Archives that guards a staircase cut straight into the side of the black volcanic-rock mountain, zigzagging and switchbacking until it reaches a black sand beach at the very bottom, the emerald waves lapping at mollusk-eating birds with mind-bendingly long beaks and hordes of minuscule horseshoe crabs the color and texture of glossy pink confectionaries in a box. Thickets of mangroves guard the litmus between sea and sand, their roots like bark soldiers standing alert and waist-deep in gemlike water.

But it’s the sound I like most.

No one tells you the ocean sings. They say it’s there, and that it’s big and dangerous and deep, but never that it has its own orchestra, constantly playing a soothing symphony as the waves scrape across the shallows and back again. It’s almost like breathing, like the world of Arathess itself is breathing.

“It’s—” I pucker my lips, my hands wet with cupped seawater. “It’s salty!”

“Of course it’s spiritsdamn salty!” Malachite shouts from his place stalwartly far away from the water’s edge. “It’s the ocean! You were on a ship for like, three days! How’d ya miss that?”

“No one threw me overboard to taste it!” I shout. “That was your job!”

“Come in, Mal!” Lucien calls, his pants rolled up as he wades the shallows with me.

“So the two of you can pull me under and drown me?”

“With love!” I insist. “Drown you with love!”

“Ugh.” He wrinkles his nose. “Pass.”

Lucien shoots a sly look to me, and I to him.

“On the count of three?” the prince proposes.

“Absolutely,” I agree.

“One, two, three—”

We dash out of the water and make a beeline for Malachite, and he tries to run to the safety of the tidepool rocks, but with Lucien holding his arms and me grabbing his weak spot ever so slightly (ears), we manage to drag him down the beach.

“You little—” He quickly pulls his sword off and throws it in the sand as the water approaches, desperately trying to do the same to his chainmail. “The salt’s gonna ruin my armor—”

“And we’ve had quite enough of you ruining our fun!” I chide, helping him unhook his chainmail and tossing it in the sand. With his massive strength, he could fight us off anytime he wanted, ear-captured or not, and that’s how I know he’s all right with it. Secretly. Deep down. Where no one else can see.

With Mal shed of his metal, Lucien smirks at me in an unspoken plot as he cries, “Heave, ho!”

We crash into the water face-first, dragging Malachite down with us. Salt floods my ears, my nose, the ocean so much warmer with the sun on it. It’s not bathwater, but it’s close, and the sensation of the tide pulling and pushing is perhaps the closest my unremembering Heartless arse can come to recalling what being a child in a crib was like. Malachite squirms, and I let his ear go, Lucien releasing his arms, and we surface, the waves tossing us as playfully as we splash the beneather’s face relentlessly the second he comes up.

“Stop!” Malachite snarls, eyes blinking rapidly with the assault. “Stop, stop it! I’ll duel the both of you!”

“Revenge is sweet!” I tackle him from behind and smack my mouth. “And a little salty!”

Lucien stops splashing, and there’s a moment where Malachite glares daggers into him, me hanging like a monkey on his back and grinning around his shoulder. Lucien’s smirk lights up his handsome face as he dares to flick one last tiny bit of water onto Malachite with two fingers, and Malachite explodes, scrabbling for the nimble prince as he swims away. I’m too heavy to swim with, and Malachite claws for me.

“You flirty little shit! Get off me!”

My shrieking laughter echoes up the beach, Lucien’s light taunts sending Malachite into a hilariously frothing rage as he tries to swim after the prince with my added weight. At some point I decide to let go and allow the boys to kill each other, Lucien’s taunts turning to pleas and Malachite gloating as he gives the prince a terrible underwater noogie.

And I just…float. The sun beams in the blue sky, blue-green sea rising up to kiss it. The water in my ears mutes the world, covers it in a muffled, gentle blanket so that all I can hear is the sand swishing and the sound of the air in my body moving in and out. I feel so small, in such a big ocean. In such a big world. Vetris had been my everything for so long, and the forest before that. Always confined to cramped spaces, wasn’t I? But I’ve seen more of Cavanos now than ever. More of the world than ever.

I remember on the ship Fione said something idly about saltwater being easier to float in, and she’s right. Floating in the warmth of the ocean is nothing like trying to float in the bone-chillingly cold rivers of a Cavanos forest. The spring Lucien and I bathed in was beautiful, certainly, but the ocean has its own charm. I start to think, as my conniving brain is wont to do. If I could live anywhere, if at the end of all this death and destruction I could start over like I’d always wanted to, in a shack somewhere no one knows me, it would be on the ocean. Somewhere close to the ocean. I’d adore this view every day. To fall asleep to the sound of the waves, and wake up to the sound of the waves, to bathe in sun and sand and a sound that drowns out every worry—that’s my new idea of perfection.

The blue sky—Evlorasin’s up there somewhere.

Varia’s out there somewhere. Killing people. Causing suffering. Suffering herself.

The tide brings a soft something against the top of my floating head, and I look up. Dark, wet hair, a proud chin.

“Lucien,” I say, staying still. His smile is soft as he puts his hands beneath my back, holding me as I float and he stands, acting as a rock, a dock, an anchor to the world. My anchor. I don’t know where Malachite’s gone—probably to the beach to dry off like a disgruntled puppy. But really, I don’t need to know. All that exists now is Lucien’s comforting presence, the sweet warmth of the water’s embrace and his hands on my back. I can feel my hair floating all around my head like a halo, flickers of gold catching in the sun and in his dark hawk eyes.

My own voice sounds muffled through my submerged ears as I ask quietly, “What will we do? When it’s over?”

“A question for the ages.” There’s a beat, and then Lucien smiles down at me. “Eat? What’s the human food you like most?”

“Cinnamon sweetrounds,” I answer immediately.

“Then the lady will have a plate of them,” he asserts, then pauses. “We could always get married.”

“After all that fuss I went through being a Spring Bride?” I huff. “Absolutely not. We can do a few hundred years of trial runs, first.”

“I might not be around for all of it.” He laughs. My smile pulls at my lips, my eyes.

“And with any luck, neither will I,” I say.

It’s more than just a dry joke. It means, after it’s over, I’ll be human. No matter what, once Varia and the valkerax are stopped, I’ll become human. My life with Lucien after this, all human. All mortal. All pain and slow healing and wrinkles and old age and sagging. And I’m dying for every bit of it. Repeatedly. Until our goal can be achieved.

Lucien seems to always know when I’m getting too lost in my own unheart. I don’t know who taught him, or if he just knows me by now—my tells, my expressions. The price of showing him my best and worst moments, I suppose. He scoops me out of the water easily, arms straining but strong, and smiles down at me.

“Busy thinking, are you?” he asks lightly. My face heats, unbearably hot despite the water.

“Trying to,” I sniff. “But a certain someone with his hands on my thighs is making it very difficult.”

He leans in, dark hair dripping into his eyes, dropping cool water on my burning face as his lips skim mine.

“Shall I make it more so?” he murmurs.

“And why would you want to do that?” I ask innocently.

“Because you’re gorgeous, you silly thing.”

His fingers tighten into my legs, pressing the lush skin there like feather pillows under strain and all I can think about is a bed, with him in it, with me in it, and I give in first, for once. He tastes like salt, like honey and bread, and a flick of my tongue on his and the moment changes. His eyes search mine, and I search his face, looking for permission.

We give it to each other with wordless smirks.

And then I’m squirming out of his arms and both of us are racing for the sand, for our shoes, for the steps, Malachite calling after us but both of us ignoring it, ignoring everything but peering into each volcanic rock room of the Archives’ long hall looking for somewhere safe, somewhere just for us. A perfect room is the one with a bed— a cot, really—and a window overlooking the sea. When Lucien shuts the door, all our frantic energy suddenly closes in, solidifies, and in the quiet, the prince just stares at me, and me at him.

New God’s eye—he’s beautiful. He’s grown, somehow, from the boy I first met at the Spring Welcoming. It hasn’t been long, but experience has changed him. Magic has changed him. Or maybe it’s just my unheart beating for him that makes him look so devastatingly perfect. The edges of his sharp jaw, the curve of his proud nose, the deep dips of his thick brows as he looks back at me curiously, questioningly. The bright sunlight catches every raven part of him—his hair, his eyes somehow both darker and brighter than the volcanic rock of the room. The outline of him calls out to me from beneath his clothes. A tense knot vibrates in my chest, in the hollows of it, every hair standing on end as I reach up and, shaking but determined, pull my collar open.

It’s just a little skin. Barely anything, really. It’s a pallid move considering all the seduction techniques in the world. But I can smell myself—salt and cotton coming off my throat—and maybe he smells it too, or maybe it’s the sight of me doing it, because he’s stock-still one moment and then striding across the room in the next, pulling me in to him and kissing every exposed bit of flesh. Hard. Hard in a way I know will leave marks, and at the thought, the vibrating knot inside me suddenly feels like it unfurls, reaching its buzzing tendrils into my bloodstream at the idea of me welcoming his bruises on me.

A slow smile overtakes me. He’s been like this since he met me, hasn’t he? Wanting me.

wanting your body and nothing more.

I waver. Like he can hear it, feel it moving inside me, Lucien makes a snarl and a flood of magic pulses into me, so torrential and huge I can feel it move, spread rapidly, and it dulls the hunger to an insignificant buzz like a hand over a mouth.

“No more,” the prince pants. “No more hunger. You are not the hunger’s. You are yours. And you are mine.”

Of all the ways I’ve died, I’ve never been struck by lightning. But this is how it must feel—this hot, sweet relief lancing through my spine down to my softness, to the place between my thighs. We’ve kissed before, certainly, but the hunger I kiss him with now is all mine, all blazing, all promises and gratitude and love.

“Zera.” He pulls away suddenly, panting and putting his forehead to mine. “You— Please—”

He can’t even speak anymore. I want him. I can want him now, and the feeling is like flying. Like throwing off something incredibly heavy. I can take what I want, for myself. For my own happiness. And so it’s my turn to kiss his neck, beneath his ear, gently moving up to the shell of it and whispering, “All you had to do was ask nicely.”

The soft noise he makes at my words, the sudden breath he sucks in—it’s like music. The best music I’ve ever heard, all the finest quartets in Vetris paling to nothing in comparison. I’ve plucked a string in him and he sings and I do it again with a whisper, the better to hear him with.

“I’m yours.”

It’s a blur. It’s a blur of very pointed moments, sensations—his mouth on me everywhere, so furiously hot and eager; his hardness against my hand; our mouths in and out of each other’s, dipping and scraping like two valkerax in death dives. The smell of his skin, no, our skin. This belongs to us. To me and no one else. Not the hunger. Not Cavanos. Not the war waiting outside, not the world. There’s that moment, that moment, and we’re connected, and I understand what it truly means to have a heart, finally, when we’re moving together as one, the sea breeze and the silly little cot and the two of us making it happen, together, making this moment in time all our own.

Forever.