Between love and hate, there was Bone Island, and on Bone Island, there was a man. A tremor existed in the space within. It wasn’t love, but a tremor all the same. And the entire way back to Cantini Castle, this was where my mind was: Bone Island, the man, and the tremor between us.
As soon as we walked through the doors, I didn’t bother to say a word to Cyrus. I walked graciously up the stairs to my bedroom as if I didn’t intend to climb out of my window as soon as I entered.
“You sound like a crazy person,” Alice said, following my every step around my room as I searched for my boots. “You can’t possibly think of going to the lighthouse at this hour.”
“They will find him,” I reiterated, urgency dripping from my words. I thought there would be more time. Another few weeks, at least. I had to get to Stone before the Heathens did.
“Let him go and have the Heathens find him!” she whispered-shouted, and I spun with wide eyes to hush her. She lowered her voice. “Let it be a problem for Norse Woods. It’s for the best.”
My jaw snapped shut, my teeth grinding. “They will kill him, Alice.” Gravity had seeped into my voice. Emotion. All the heavy things that didn’t belong. “He can’t be found. He can’t.”
“Why?” She gripped my shoulder to stop my frantic movements and forced me to look into her brown eyes. “What did you do that was so awful you’d risk your life?”
I bit my lip to keep my secret, but it was pointless. “I used magic to save him,” I finally admitted out loud. “Alice, I healed him. And it was remarkable. I’m not supposed to ascend until my birthday, and I was able to heal a man.” I walked to the window and peered out at the lighthouse. “And I may or may not have had sex with him. A lot. This stranger I hardly knew. If one doesn’t land me in the cell, the latter certainly will. You know what they do to those who commit treachery, let alone use magic without permission.”
“You foolish girl.” Alice scrunched her nose when she looked out the window at the lighthouse. “Then you must go, and for your sake, Miss Adora, you must kill him and leave nothing behind. As the ocean does, let it take his body and all traces of him. It is the only way to save yourself.”
I looked at her stunned, my stomach in knots. “I can’t do that. I can’t kill him.” How had murder crossed her mind at this moment and not mine?
She took my hands and straightened her spine, appearing taller. “Then you stay, and I will do it for you.”
I suddenly saw her differently. Deceitful. Cunning. Crazed. Was this how Stone saw me? “I never took you as a murderer.”
“I made Cyrus a promise and it’s my job to protect you at all costs, so either way, it must be done. Otherwise, he will follow you back to town if he cares about you. And if this stranger shows up in Weeping Hollow, he will get both of you killed.”
I sucked in a breath, nodding. If I disagreed, I had no doubt Alice would follow me to Bone Island to take his life or bring this information to Viola to protect herself. How deep did her loyalties lie, and to whom? “No, if he has to die, then the only person who should do it is me.”
Alice walked to the dresser and opened a drawer. When she returned, she was holding my sheathed dagger delicately with both hands as if it were an explosive. I withdrew the dagger, and my gaze trailed the intricate silver scrolls along the blade’s spine. Emeralds decorated the handle.
“Get it done, and don’t make any mistakes,” she said with finality.
There was no time to be careful. I escaped into the night, feeling the cold wind piercing my skin as I ran and ran under the pitch-black sky the entire way to the docks. There was no moonlight to give me a path, and every frosty breeze burned my eyes, the inside of my nose, and slipped into my mouth, skinning my throat. My breathing bellowed in my ears, the dagger’s sharp point stabbing my thigh with every stride. I clutched my bag’s strap around my shoulder. Inside it held a change of clothes should something happen and the letter for the new moon trapped inside a bottle.
When I reached the dock, the air in my lungs bottomed out.
The jon boat was missing.
Quickly, I turned on the flashlight.
The light flickered, and I hit the side of it until a steady stream cut through the fog and beamed across the water’s surface.
Half of the jon boat was sunken and filled up with seawater. An earlier storm must’ve slammed it against the dock. The only thing keeping it up was the single rope tied to the back of my Finneuma. The rest of the rope securing it to the dock had come undone.
Panic sank inside me and spread.
I channeled it, determined to get to Stone in whichever way I could. I headed to the stern of the Finneuma and crouched down to untie the jon boat. With a held breath, I let the small boat go.
I stood, watching it sink into the black ocean.
With it, memories flooded my mind. Ones of Dad teaching me how to drive my first boat, my sisters and I drinking and laughing in the middle of the night, taking Stone to Bone Island and the way he watched me under the flapping hood, then myself sneaking away every day to see him. They were there, then gone. Until the boat hit the ocean floor.
I only allowed myself a second to grieve, then released the Finneuma’s ropes from the dock’s cleats, pulled in the bumpers, and dug into my pockets for the keys.
With frozen fingers, I turned on the ignition. It would be my first time driving the boat alone. I walked myself through Dad’s steps as if it were a silent chant, hoping there would be enough gas to get me to Bone Island and back.
With the bow pointing toward the island, I steered the wooden pirate helm. It was dark, and the moon’s light reflected off the top of each wave, making the ocean look like it was holding all the stars.
The ocean breathed too—my only adored song. And I was suddenly a girl who believed she really did belong in the water. I was suddenly a girl who believed she could one day swim away if she wanted to. If only for a moment.
Stone’s silhouette appeared on the shore.
He must have heard the boat coming.
My heart shook when I switched the gear to neutral, lowered the anchor, and turned off the ignition. He watched me from afar with a fur blanket wrapped around his shoulders, but I couldn’t see his features.
My feet wobbled on the boat’s portside before I jumped into the water.
At first, shock from the icy temperatures instantly numbed me, but I fought through it and swam to Stone. The fur blanket fell from around his shoulders as he took defeated steps closer.
The distance between us was disappearing with every free-handed stroke.
As I drew closer, I noticed disappointment carved into his face.
“Stone,” I gasped, water coming up to my chest.
I trudged against the midnight tide that was pulling me back.
Stone walked into the freezing water, splitting the fog, meeting me where the waves slapped his knees. He kept a hardened gaze on my soaked face until he was clutching both sides of it. There wasn’t time to speak. He was pulling me into him, sweeping me up in an ardent kiss.
Stone’s tongue curled around mine, and I soared from it.
But I ached too. A painful shake as if my heart detested the idea of us ever parting. This was it for us.
“Stone,” I said upon an exhale.
“No,” he said, shaking his head as if he didn’t want to hear it. Knowing that these were our last moments, his actions were hopeless. So, he was forceful, stripping off my sopping pants and discarding my sweater before almost throwing me onto my back at the shoreline.
I should have known this was how he was going to react.
Stone only had two settings: desperate and quiet. And sex was his battle cry. We didn’t have time, but Stone was eager in the way he thought he could get me to stay. If this was the last time, then so be it.
It happened gravely and all at once. In the cold, in the night, my arms and legs shivered until he came down on his elbow. He hovered me, the heat from him blanketing me, despair soaking his eyes.
I undid his trousers until my fingers wrapped around his hot and heavy cock. Stone’s kiss turned deep and fervent, his monstrous thing grinding into my hand as he rolled his hips, desperate for me, for warmth, for connection.
I stroked him, and Stone’s expression dissolved.
“You’re killing me,” he said, restraint cracking in his voice.
A new wave came, wrapping its arms around us.
And after the tide pulled back, my legs were wrapped around his hips.
Then he plunged himself inside me. The sand felt like concrete at my back and a cry tore from my lips, my body jolting upward from the pressure.
Another wave came, another deep thrust, and I grabbed fistfuls of sand and skin.
Stone didn’t speak. He pressed our foreheads together, pushing his lips against mine with strangled emotions raining down his features.
His sand-covered hand slid down to the space between my thighs where we were connected. Then he grazed the skin around my opening that was hugging his cock as he fucked me. Feeling me, marking me, marking himself, memorizing us, this moment, and when he thrust into me again, his thickness in all its entirety shoved to the hilt.
The sensation tore a cry from my lips, and Stone swallowed it with a kiss.
I pressed myself closer to him, begging him never to stop touching me, never to have his warm naked fingers leave me.
And while we fucked, the ocean made love to us.
On the shore of Bone Island, he came quickly. Without warning.
I was filled with Stone, sand, and the sea all at once.
His body shuddered in my hands. I pulled his chest to mine, my nails sinking into his back with each jerking plunge inside me. Stone dropped his head into the curve of my neck when a moan tumbled out of him. His beautiful cock convulsed inside me, and I tangled my fingers in his hair, kissing his neck and tasting brine at his pulse as he came.
And when he lifted his head to look at me, he dropped to his side, taking me with him and swinging my leg over his hip. My head lay in the crook of his arm as he sucked my bottom lip, his cock sliding in and dragging out.
“You weren’t supposed to let me go,” he pushed into my ear, fingers curling into my flesh as he fucked me slowly, small waves crashing into us.
I thought the intensity of the moment to be unbearable, but neither one of us dared to pull away first because the thought of being without it was painful, too. What a war to be fought—a war neither of us wanted to win.
“I wish—” I started to say, finding myself in his eyes, then emotion robbed my words. I sighed, looking for something that could make this easier. “I wish I didn’t have to choose.”
“Spare me,” Stone muttered, pulling out and slipping out from under me.
He was standing by this time, yanking his wet trousers up until they hung from his hip bones. Then he walked to the dry part of the beach to snatch up the fur blanket.
When he returned, he dropped it around my shoulders.
I looked up into the black sky, trying to catch my breath with an orgasm on the edge that I wouldn’t allow myself to have.
Stone had become the balm to my twisted life, and I knew, without a doubt, I’d surely go mad without him.
But the Heathens were coming, and there wasn’t much time.
“The Heathens will be on this island by morning. If these monsters find you here, they will kill you. You have to get in your boat and leave, Stone. You can’t stay here anymore.”
Stone looked at me, his gaze hard, his expression resolved. “Monsters do not fear other monsters,” he said with such defeat that I almost didn’t recognize his voice. “Let them come.”
“Don’t say that.”
He was standing over me, shirtless and trembling, with his fingers digging into his hip bones. “So, this is it then?”
“Wistoragic,” I blurted, unable to stop shivering as Mom’s book dawned on me. “Sadness following a great story. This is what it means, and maybe I’ve always known, and that’s why I’ve been writing it in my sleep. This is the last chapter of our story, and it hurts because it’s ending, and there is nothing we can do about it.”
Stone looked at me with hollows in his eyes.
The rest of his face held sadness and despair.
His chest was rising and falling rapidly.
“It doesn’t have to be the end,” he said slowly, matter-of-factly. Like a last-ditch effort. “We can be together.”
“No. It was never meant to last forever.” The harsh truth hurt as it spilled from my lips. I hated this masterpiece I’d painted of us, created with brushes of pretty lies and these ugly truths.
“You’re a puppet,” he spat.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve read your letters—the ones in the glass bottles.”
“My letters?”
“They were scattered on this island as though they were waiting for me. I’ve read every single one, and they only reminded me how you’re a servant to that town and a whore to your mind,” he said with a voice like he was both walking away and standing right here, and I couldn’t form words. “You were never mine, but you were never even yours. You will always belong to all the things that haunt you, and there was never space for someone like me, was there? Only a momentary escape.” His expression was dead, but his black eyes were chilling. “But I still fucked you, Circe. For a forsaken month, I fucked you harder than both your head and that town has been fucking you, and you cannot erase it or pretend it never happened.” His chest caved, and he took a step closer, looming over me. “I fucked you, my darling siren, and there is no escaping that.”
Anger climbed the stairs of my spine. The blanket fell when I jumped to my feet and slapped his cheek. “I hate you.”
Undisturbed by it, he grinned. “No, you don’t. You hate yourself.”
I slapped him again, this time with enough force that his head swung to the side, and I instantly regretted it. In truth, I didn’t want him to leave me, and I didn’t know what else to do. It felt like I was going crazy.
His chest heaved when he looked at me again. “You are absolutely fierce.” He touched his fingers to his cheek to find that he wasn’t bleeding. “I wished you cared for me with that much passion.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, shaking my head.
“No, scratch me, beat my chest, scar my skin all you want, Circe. That was the deal, wasn’t it? Me giving you my body to do as you please.” He stepped forward, lowering his head to meet my gaze. “But no matter how much and how hard you hit me, this anger inside you will not go away. Pain doesn’t take away pain.” Hurt seeped into his voice. He paused to drop his head and clear it before facing me again. “But if you cannot control it, and it means you hurting me rather you hurting yourself, please use me,” he said. “Take advantage of me, as always, and afterward, you will walk away, and I will leave this island, and we never have to see each other again. I’ve suffered far worse, so losing you will not break me.” His words were catching in his chest, his eyes glassy and wild. “You cannot break me.”
It burned behind my eyes. Refusing to cry in front of him, I held my head back to keep a tear from falling. When I looked at him again, I took his hand.
“I can break you, Stone,” I said, pressing my thumb into the scar in his palm to remind ourselves of where our story began. “Maybe you won’t feel it tomorrow, or even the day after that, but it will hit you when you least expect it. Because while you were spending those few forsaken weeks fucking me, I was loving you,” I admitted, my chin trembling. “I was loving you, and that’s something that breaks you from the inside out.”
But as I said these words, I believed them to be true for me as well.
My letters had found Stone.
He’d been my Beloved Black Sea all along.
Stone
Everything became quiet except for the waves.
Like the entire ocean was waiting.
My eyes shifted between Circe’s green ones, feeling as though she was slowly cutting out a piece of me.
I took a breath to tell her she had me completely, but the confession sank to the bottom of my throat. Like footprints in the snow, the words caved under too much pressure. Even though I never said them, these words were still too heavy. In my heart and in my head, they weighed me down.
So, we just stood there.
We stood there in the dark on a cold winter night with our secrets.
We stood there in the shallow waters staring at each other.
We stood there, feeling our book close and our story end.
Then Circe tore herself away from me and took off into the ocean, leaving her clothes behind. I was stunned still, my feet unable to move as I gazed upon her descending silhouette.
“Circe, wait.” It was a whisper at first—a croak—as I tried to resist the urge to chase after her. It was no use. “Circe, wait,” I shouted that time.
With every step she took away from me, it felt like my heart was tearing from my chest, as she had said. I took off in a sprint after her. This could not be the way our story ended. “Circe!”
The ocean felt like it was pushing me away from her. However, I pushed forward, determined to reach her and tell her I did not mean to say all the things I had said. Once the sea clapped against my waist, I dove in.
She was only a few feet ahead of me when I came up for air.
The saltwater burned my eyes and the walls of my throat.
“Circe, stop.” I wrapped my arm around her waist, but a wave slammed into us, tossing me to the side and ripping us apart.
Seconds kept passing as I tumbled with the wave, my lungs burning.
My head slammed into the ocean floor, and then a current swept me away. It lasted like this for longer than my body could handle.
What if she were trapped in the current, too? What if she didn’t make it? I fought to regain control to make it back to her and finally was able to catch my footing.
My head broke through the surface, and I gasped for air.
But only for a moment.
There was no Circe.
I dove back under, sweeping my hands all around, hoping it would catch on to any part of her.
It’s been too long, my thoughts cursed. She would be out of breath by this time. I was under for too long too, but the image of her dead body floating with the current propelled me forward until I caught a glimpse of blonde hair. Like a sun in the sea’s night sky.
But another wave came and dragged me down deeper.
I remembered the view from down here as my body jerked for air.
When you died a thousand deaths, somehow the ache was just an ache.
I scraped the sand, searching for oxygen, and when my fingers raked the ocean floor, they hooked on to something unusual.
Then Circe surrounded me. Salt burned my eyes, so I couldn’t see her. But I could feel her as time stretched and choked me. She grabbed my face and pressed her lips to mine, breathing into me. I closed my eyes until our heads broke free from the water.
We clutched on to each other, and I was full of breath, inhaling and exhaling. Water droplets clung to her lashes as the two of us bobbed in the ocean.
“You were under for too long,” I said above the sound of the waves, stunned. I took another bitter breath as droplets fell from her features and slid down the bridge of her nose.
The sea sprayed my face. I wiped the mist away with my forearm as my body trembled and my teeth chattered.
“It had to have been at least five minutes, Circe,” I said, and she narrowed her eyes as though I was discovering a secret she’d never shared with me. “How long can you hold your breath?”
She looked at me for what seemed like an eternity.
Then— “For as long as it takes,” she said.
All I could do was look at her.
Circe pushed off of me. “Don’t come after me, Stone.”
She dove back underneath the water.
She didn’t stop swimming or return for air until she reached the boat.
When she climbed aboard the Finneuma, the ocean slipped off her flawless bare body like she’d been wearing it. She looked right at me one last time, and I was afraid this would be my last sight of her. So, my eyes never left her.
They followed her all the way to the other side.
It wasn’t until after she was gone that I realized I was still clutching something in my fist. And when I looked down in my hand, it was a bracelet made of black pearls.