“What do you think?” Arcus asked, his voice teasing. He was holding her hand, and was only just now letting her sense and feel where he’d led her. Annie was wearing a blindfold, so she couldn’t see.
But the minute Arcus let go of her hand, she smelled it. The salty air. She felt the wind in her face, heard the waves crashing and the birds calling in the air. Felt the sand beneath her feet, wet and smooth.
“We’re at the beach,” she said, laughing. Reaching up, she tore the blindfold away.
“Surprise!” Arcus spread his arms wide. He was wearing loose cotton pants and no shirt. He was also barefoot. His silvery hair whipped around his face, and he grinned at her.
Payne elbowed him in the ribs. “Idiot, she’s not surprised.”
“Oh, I am!”
Payne gave her a disbelieving look. Of course, he knew she was lying.
Shush, you, she sent to him on a tight thread. Don’t spoil it.
“I swear!” she continued out loud. “When you said you were taking me someplace special, I had no idea where you could mean.”
“That’s good.” Dante planted a kiss on her cheek, his arm around her waist. “Sometimes it feels like you’ve seen so much of our lives together already, it can be tough to surprise you.”
She hugged him. More conservative than Arcus, he was fully clothed, but the wind tugged at his shirt, pulling it tight against his chest. Annie pulled away from him and ran across the sand until cool water rushed over her feet. With a laugh she danced back and tripped, falling on her butt in the surf.
“Now you’ve done it,” Arcus said.
He was right. Water washed over her, drenching her lightweight skirt. She didn’t mind though. The beach was one of her favorite places on any planet, something all of her men knew. She studied that sand beneath her. It was gray, not golden, but full of other myriad colors, too. White, blue, green, brown — the sand was all of them and more. She dug her fingers into it, and watched the impressions fill with water.
A flash caught her eye, something deeper blue-green tumbling through the surf. The water carried it almost to her. It felt familiar. So much so, that Annie used her Talent to draw it up out of the ocean and over to her.
It was stunning, about the size of her hand, and deep teal in color, but translucent. Heart pounding, Annie lowered the rough piece of crystal into her hands. It looked like a natural formation, one end rough where it had clearly broken off from a growth.
“Where did you say we were?” she heard herself ask.
“Look up,” Dante said. She did, and he pointed behind them. She turned and looked. There, up on a plateau was a derelict building. An empty shell of the bustling shipyard it had once been.
“Omaris,” she whispered. “We’re on Omaris.”
After it came to light that Laripim had used child labor in their production line, investors had pulled funding, and the company collapsed. Annie thought it was a too-slow demise, but they filed for dissolution just three months ago.
“Payne thought you might want to see it,” Dante said quietly. “To put it fully behind you.”
“I’m glad. I—” Annie looked back at the crystal in her hands. She felt its warmth, a faint vibration. “I think I know how they made their power crystals. Would that be worth something to the rest of the pirates?”
Arcus crouched in the water next to her. Waves rolled up over them both, and then back out again, drenching them from the waist down. “Yes. Not worth as much as you, or the children we saved. But yes, it would be worth something.”
She leaned forward until her lips touched his, and kissed him. She let the crystal fall back into the surf as Arcus pulled her closer. Her hands thread through his silver hair, his mouth moving over hers. Her heart pounded.
This was her life. Sometimes it still didn’t feel real.
After a moment, Arcus pulled back. “Do you want to take it back home?” he asked her. It took her a minute to realize he was still talking about the crystal.
“Later,” she said. “Right now I just want to be right here. With all of you.”