“Lia? Wake up.”
The voice reached me deep in the dreamthink, where I slept wrapped in the verdant cloak of Calanthe’s maternal embrace. For a moment, I thought all was well, that my realm was at peace, safe and protected—and that I was, too. That my world was as it had always been, and my ladies had arrived to wake me for the morning rituals.
But no … that wasn’t true at all. Calanthe roiled with restless anger and furious hunger. All that blood, violently spilled in battle, saturating the waters and soaking into the very bedrock of my island kingdom, had woken Her. And that same ravenous rage filled me. Rage, pain, and death. So much death, including my own.
I screamed. The bloodcurdling shriek ripped itself from Calanthe’s bones to rise from my stomach and rake my throat with rending claws as it tore from me.
“Lia. Lia, no.” Con wrapped himself around me—a man, not an island—human, made of sinews, muscle, and hot skin, stilling my thrashing limbs with his overpowering strength. “It’s me. You’re home. You’re safe. It’s all right now.”
I nearly laughed at how wrong he was, but it came out as a moan. None of us was safe and nothing would be all right ever again.
“Lia, please wake up.”
“I’m awake,” I said, cutting off any further empty reassurances and opening my eyes.
Con held me on his lap, cradling me there. Beyond the wind-ripped awning that stretched overhead, full night had fallen, blackness severed by lightning-streaked skies. Rain poured, the wind howled, and waves rose white-tipped in the torchlight. Calanthe had tasted blood and wanted more. Her longing was mine, intertwined. The insatiable craving filled me. The orchid burned on my arm, drawing life from me, the spindly new fingers of my regenerating hand clicking as I flexed them. They itched and needed flesh.
I had lost my ring finger, and then my hand. Suffered torture. Then, drained of blood, I’d died …
No, I couldn’t think about that. I needed to feed. Or Calanthe did. It didn’t matter which—no other thought could withstand that ravening appetite.
“Lia?” Con sounded uncertain, shadows haunting his face from the last few, eternally long days. He’d come for me and saved me—and he’d never looked more beautiful to my eye. Longing for him filled me, and I wanted. Mine. I was famished for him. I’d died thinking of him and here he was, for the taking.
His eyes caught the golden light of the torches as he studied me, concern turning to wariness. A blast of windblown rain shattered over him, but he didn’t seem to notice. I laid my intact hand on Con’s cheek, his pitted skin rough over his snarled beard, and I trailed my nails over the water droplets on his skin. He flinched slightly. That’s right. My nails had all broken. Untended, they’d been reduced to brittle nothingness, all ragged, sharp edges.
Just like me. An orchid can’t live on its own. I needed … something. Whatever it was, I would have it.
“Kiss Me,” I commanded him.
Con might have hesitated, his keen instincts whispering of danger, but I wound my fingers in the hair that trailed over his shoulder, pulling him to me. He lowered his head, arms easily lifting me at the same time, brushing my lips with his. Sweet, hot, so tender. Alive.
I bit. Like a snake striking, I had his lower lip in my teeth, hot blood flowing into my throat. He jerked, but I had him, holding him tight as I drank his life-giving vigor.
Then, instead of fighting me off, he growled deep in his throat and moved into me. Tongue coaxing me to open to him, he kissed me, sending salt and heat into the damp chill that lay deathly still in the marrow of my bones, the heat a melting caress. Needing me in return, he kissed me like a man desperate for a deep breath of air only I could give. His arms powerful around me, he held me against the furnace of his body, kissing me as if our lives depended on it. Maybe they did. Because somewhere in there, sanity returned—and I remembered who I was.
Euthalia, queen of Calanthe. I was Euthalia, not Calanthe. A flesh-and-blood woman, not an island made of soil and sea.
“Enough, Lia,” Con murmured against my lips. His big, rough hand gripped my jaw, gently but insistently coaxing me away from my prize.
Reeling into humanity again, I unclamped my teeth and broke the kiss. Con pulled back enough to search my face. Blood ran from his lip—swelling rapidly—and smeared in his beard. Abruptly, astonishingly, he grinned at me. “They warned me you were a man-eater, but I never thought they meant it literally.”
“Bringing the dead back to life can be a tricky proposition,” Ambrose observed, leaning over Con’s broad shoulder to peer at me. The wizard’s sunny curls were plastered with rain around his face, making him look even younger than usual. That deceptive youth made for an odd contrast with his eyes, which held the wisdom—and sorrow—of centuries. The clinical interest in them reminded me of the four wizards who’d tortured me so cheerfully in their pursuit of knowledge, and a shudder of animal terror shook me. “I do hope that there won’t be a problem with—well, no sense worrying about it now.”
“Explain,” Con demanded.
Ambrose smiled wistfully. “We’ll see if such explanations become necessary—or useful. Suffice to say, Your Highness, that it will take time for Your spirit to recalibrate to being in flesh again.”
“Unfortunately, time is what we don’t have at the moment.” General Kara, dark and lean, stepped into my line of sight and bowed from the waist. “Your Highness, we need Your assistance.” He grimaced, looking away to something. “Rather urgently,” he added.
A startling lurch threw us to the side, another wave splattering us with chilly salt water, though Kara, a longtime sailor, absorbed the motion easily. That’s right: We were on a boat. The name came into my mind. The Last Resort. Percy’s yacht that they’d sailed to Yekpehr to rescue Sondra and me. Though I only recalled waking on a couch under this awning, to sunset skies and Calanthe’s flower-scented breezes.
Now waves tossed the ship about, a storm raging. I frowned in puzzlement. There shouldn’t be a storm this violent near Calanthe, should there? But we were near Calanthe’s shores; I knew that like I knew my hand moved at the end of my arm.
“We might be fucked.” Sondra strode into view, her smile nearly gleeful. “It’s total chaos out there. Your Highness—good to see You awake. And alive,” she added as an afterthought. Self-consciously, she ran a hand over her shorn head, the tufts of pale hair uneven, fine as puffs of cloud. I didn’t know how she’d come to lose her beautiful hair.
I couldn’t remember much at all, except the pain, and that dreadful, nauseating weakness as my blood and very life drained away. And dying. Remembering that nothingness, the sense of my self dissipating, had me spinning down and away, the clammy claws of death reaching for me …
“Stay with me, Lia.” Con’s hand still on my jaw, he turned my face toward his. “We need you to get us home.”
Home. To Calanthe. I should never have left.
“What’s going on?” I asked, my thoughts clearing as I levered myself up. I had a duty, a responsibility. There should not be a storm like this. Con helped steady and support me as I tried to see past the pitching deck that filled most of the scene, but couldn’t. “I need to stand.”
I pushed to my feet but my legs gave way like wilted flower stems, and I collapsed back against Con. How humiliating. I hated being weak in any way, and now I was nothing but that.
“Let me,” Con said, sweeping one arm under my knees and lifting me as if I weighed nothing. Probably I did, after all I’d been through. He tucked me against his chest—a comforting place to be—and braced against a pole that held up the awning sheltering us from the storm. I scanned the night-dark sea. Our torches made a pitifully small circle of flame in the swirl of wind, seawater, and sideways rain.
In the distance, Calanthe shone with drenched light, crowned by the glittering jewel of my palace high on the cliffs. The home I thought I’d never see again.
Lightning forked through the sky with an immediate crack! of pulse-jumping sound, illuminating everything in a harsh, ruthless glare, thunder rolling after as Calanthe groaned her pain and hunger. Not far away—entirely too close—sea spray fountained dramatically from the waves churned into fury by the massive coral reef that protected Calanthe.
“That is our problem,” Kara shouted over the wind, pointing, in case I’d failed to notice.
“Why are we so close?” I demanded. “Your boat will damage My coral reef.”
Con snorted out a sound suspiciously like a laugh. Kara looked pained but inclined his head. “My apologies, Your Highness, but it’s true. Unfortunately, we may not survive the encounter, either.”
“I thought you said you knew the trick of navigating My reef and harbor.” I could remember at least that much.
He grimaced, wiping rain from his face. “It seems to have … shifted, Your Highness. And the wind is driving us straight for it.”
Oh. Of course. Calanthe had changed the conformation of the barrier reef. Not only was the coral a living entity, but so was the entire island, though in a different way. And where I’d thought of my connection to Calanthe before as trying to coax a sleeping cat to do my bidding, now She was awake and beyond my control, a raging lion savaging all in Her quest for more blood.
The storm was like a living thing, too, ravening and full of inchoate rage. Even when I understood little else of my abilities, I’d always been able to steer the worst storms around my island kingdom. Allowing the gentle, nourishing rains and sending the rending winds and waves out to sea had been as natural as breathing.
This, however, was no normal storm. Birthed by the thrashing of Calanthe’s abrupt awakening, the ferocious surf and driving winds ignored my call. And … something else contributed here. A magic not my own. But one I recognized. Anure’s wizards.
“I need to see the other direction,” I told Con.
He turned, stepping out from our dubious shelter, his body flexing, briefly shifting me in his arms as he looped an arm around the post and braced against the pitching of the ship. I peered into the gloom, seeking through the violent chatter of Calanthe’s ravings for what disturbed Her waters.
“Lia, I don’t know what—” A flash of lightning cracked, illuminating the night. “Great green Ejarat,” he breathed in horror.
Rearing against the horizon, an enormous wave rose against the stormy sky. Kara and Sondra shouted orders and—absurdly—Ambrose laughed. “Now, that took some doing!” he exclaimed.
Yes, Anure’s wizards were throwing power at us from the other direction, seeking me. Sick terror, rising like that enormous wave, wanted to swamp me. I battled it back with determined rage. At least Calanthe provided plenty of that to work with.
“We have to get below,” Con shouted in my ear.
“No.” I loaded my voice with all the authority I could, ridiculous as it might be from a bald, barely clothed, and sodden heap who couldn’t stand on her own. “I can stop it.” I had to.
“Then do it fast,” he answered without further argument, then shouted something back to Kara and Sondra.
I concentrated, feeling my way, the orchid ring stirring to life with brilliant connection to Calanthe. These were my waters, mine by birth, responsibility, and long familiarity. This sea belonged to me as much as my own blood did. Not a great analogy, as those wizards had tried to steal that, too. But it had done them no good. They’d ultimately failed to take the orchid ring, and they’d fail in this, too.
The waters were mine, but the wave that shaped them came from elsewhere. As wizards, they couldn’t bend my elemental magic to their will; they could only try to disturb it. Like dropping a rock in a still pond. The rock wouldn’t change the water, only displace it. The wizards no longer powered this wave. They’d started it—dropped the rock to swamp us—but it traveled on its own now.
The yacht plummeted down a slope, following the irresistible current as the powerful wave sucked the sea toward it. A roar of the tumbling water filled my ears. Con’s arms tightened on me, and he shouted some kind of prayer or exhortation.
Be still, I told my sea. Shh. Lie down.
The wave stalled, shifted, and simmered, blacker than the sky as it reared above us. Then, like a shattering bowl of water, it splooshed down and outward. The swell caught us, lifting us high and tossing the yacht down again. Con bent over me, holding us against the post as the ship hurled up one wave and down another—and shuddered to a screeching, bone-jarring stop.
We’d hit the coral reef.
Another swell—smaller, but still huge—hit, and the boat leaned to one side, grinding against the rocks ominously. The Last Resort shuddered, as did my bones, the living coral beneath us screaming their small deaths as the yacht crushed them.
The boat lurched again. Something broke beneath us with a loud bang, the Last Resort tilting precipitously. Agatha and Ibolya had joined us on deck, clutching each other for support, their faces pale, but calmly turned to me, trusting in me to save them.
“We need to get off this boat, now,” Con barked in his rough voice. Not so much trust there. “Can you swim?”
I needed to be firm, and I couldn’t do that while cradled like an injured babe in arms.
“No, but I don’t need to. Take Me to the prow.”
“What? No. We’ll be swept over onto those rocks.”
“Take Me now or put Me down so I can walk,” I commanded coolly.
Con muttered something but began forging uphill toward the leaning prow, powerful muscles working against the incline. Sondra came up beside him, using an odd-looking walking stick to dig into the wooden planking of the deck, steadying herself and then Con with a grip on his arm.
“Close enough, Your Highness, or would you prefer I dangle you overboard?”
I ignored Con’s sarcasm, concentrating on reaching through the tempest to the waters of Calanthe.
“I have to stand,” I told Con.
He huffed out a sigh but set me down, bracing me between his bulk and the railing, one arm around my waist—and pretty much supporting my entire weight—his other hand gripping the rail. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now. If the ship breaks apart, it will get ugly.”
A smile stretched my lips, the dry skin cracking painfully. Being dead left a body in less-than-ideal condition. Layering metal into my spine, I reached out to Calanthe’s churning seas once more. They responded less sluggishly this time, and I directed the currents to calm, to follow my bidding. With a mental twist, I reversed the direction of the waves. No need to be anything you are not. Simply flow the other direction.
The Last Resort lifted, shifted, then shot off the coral reef. A wave curled over us, dousing the spontaneous cheers as we hit a trough. I had the sea catch us, encircling the yacht in a pool of calmer water. Con laughed, a belly-deep howl of relief and delight.
“We’re on the wrong side of the reef still!” Kara shouted over the wind as he clutched the rail on our left.
“Shut up. She knows what She’s doing,” Sondra, on our right, yelled back.
I wouldn’t put it that strongly, but I did have a plan. During my abduction and imprisonment, I’d spent so much time and effort trying to reconnect to my lost Calanthe that She roared into me now, as if in trying to reach Her again, I’d given up all reservation to Her will. The orchid ring fluttered on my wrist as the dreamthink flowed like blood, infusing my lungs like air, and the coral reef spoke to me. Millions of small voices created a symphony of information, singing of their place, the movement of the water around them. I let them inform the waves, who then took us around and between the crevices.
Calanthe wanted me home as much as I wanted to be there, hurrying us along. With the sea carrying us into the harbor, I diverted my attention to the storm, inviting it to turn its savagery on the open water, away from land.
The fury of it lessened. Not abating entirely, but the rain no longer slanted sideways, and the wind no longer howled. The Last Resort glided into the harbor without sails, more or less upright, though with a definite list to one side.
“We’re still taking on water,” Kara reported, “but we should make it before she sinks.”
Percy would never forgive me if I sank his boat, so I encouraged the sea to flow back out again. Slowly, the yacht righted. Kara glanced my way but said nothing.
The harbor sat quiet in the drumming rain, the docked ships tossing in their berths, lights on in only a few houses that wended their way in spirals up the hill. No one waited to greet us. Not surprising, I supposed, as the hour was late and everyone would be hunkered down to wait out the storm. Still, returning from the dead seemed like it should be an occasion for a bit of celebration.
“Your Highness.” Lady Ibolya stepped into the place Sondra vacated, curtsying deeply. “I brought a cloak for You, in case You wanted to return without fanfare.” The cloak had a deep cowl and long sleeves with draping cuffs that would cover my hands—and lack thereof. My nobles and courtiers often wore that sort of thing to secret assignations, and I’d worn this one before to sneak out and visit Con in the map tower, back in my previous life.
“They don’t know, do they?” I asked Ibolya, then tipped my chin up to Con. “What did you tell everyone?”
“We kept the news as quiet as we could,” he told me gravely, a hint of doubt in his face. “I know how hard you’ve worked to keep your—our—people from panicking. Not many know you disappeared from the Battle at Cradysica.”
“What do they think happened to Me?”
“That you were injured and needed time to recover,” Con replied.
“Your other ladies went to the temple, Your Highness,” Ibolya added. “They’ve gone into seclusion, and we let everyone believe You went with them. To heal.”
The way she added that last, so tenderly and hopefully, sorely tested my precarious poise. To heal. It sounded as far beyond me as the sky.
“Lia.” Con at last let go of the rail and gazed down at me very seriously as he ran a gentle hand over my bald scalp. “You should know—Tertulyn is with them.”
I nearly staggered. Would have, if Con hadn’t been supporting me still. “I didn’t see her,” I managed to say, “at Yekpehr. I looked for her in Anure’s court, but she was here all along.”
Con nodded, then shook his head. “It’s a long story, and you’re weaving on your feet. Let’s get you inside and take this slowly.”
I looked past him to the horizon I couldn’t see, the night and storm obscuring it all. But I felt the gazes of those wizards streaming through the distance, the hot glare of their obsession following me. I’d vanquished their wave, but they’d be back with more and better.
“Taking things slowly isn’t an option,” I observed. Ambrose stepped into my line of sight and inclined his head in apparent agreement. “Unfortunately,” I added with a nod to Kara, “time is what we don’t have.”