Текст книги "In the Veins of the Drowning"

Автор книги: Kalie Cassidy

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

With fumbling steps, I walked out of the waves and onto the wet sand. The girl in my arms moaned, her head lolling over my forearm, but I could only stare after the two nekgya. They had turned to walk back into the lagoon. On either side of their spines sat two grotesque knots of flesh.

Wing stumps.

Theodore was at my side. He scooped the girl from my arms, speaking to me in low, commanding tones, but I couldn’t grasp his words.

I could only think of the prayer I’d spoken over and over again, the blood I’d given. Shame stuck through me like barbs in my pitiful flesh. My knees hit the sand, mind spinning.

Bound to Eusia. To all the nekgya. That was why they didn’t hurt me. Because it was my power that ran through their decaying veins.

“Imogen, help.” Theodore had laid the girl on the wet sand behind me. His hands rested on one of the wounds on her arm that spilled red onto the sand. My stomach turned at the gruesome sight, at the heartbreaking way her mother dragged herself across the beach to be at her side. More villagers had filled in around them, torches in hand.

Even in the harsh, unsteady light, I could see how the crowd watched me. Carefully. With suspicion. On unsteady legs, I rose and set myself beside Theodore. I avoided the scornful glares of the onlookers, but I deserved each and every one.

My fingers shook as I touched a gash on the girl’s stomach and closed my eyes. With my heart racing, and my own power still pulsing through me, Theodore’s was easier to find and hold. It vibrated down my arm. Heat cascaded to the tips of my fingers. When I moved my hand away from the wound, the villagers gasped.

I’d healed it, leaving behind only a small white scar.

The girl’s mother looked up at me, aghast. A man behind Theodore asked, “What is she, Your Majesty?” The distrust in his voice was clear as the cloudless sky. “Is she a Mage? A spell woman?”

The teeth-bared, fear-drenched question told me precisely how fearfully a spell woman was regarded. There was only one Mage Seer permitted per kingdom, their magic and spell work heavily restricted. What could I tell them? I was Ligea’s daughter. Blood-bound to both their king and the monsters that hunt them. There was no way to explain who I was, what I’d done, without earning these villagers’ ire and sending a ripple of contempt through the surrounding villages.

Theodore was calm and collected beside me. “She’s your queen.”

My head snapped toward him. “What are you doing?”

He ignored me, tending to the last of the girl’s wounds instead. “Your daughter will be just fine with rest and care,” he said to the astonished mother. He took my arm, helped me to stand. “We need a hut for the night,” he said to one of the older women in the crowd, “if you’d oblige us.”

The request moved the entire party on the beach into action. The villagers voiced their thanks and their welcomes. Some rushed back toward the huts to prepare for us. Others held their torches high, lighting our path.

“Are you mad?” I whispered at his side. “What the hell are you thinking?”

His face was impassive as ever. Ever the king, he held himself straight as he went to the water to wash the blood from his hands and forearms. Then he was pulling me along, trying to keep some distance between us and the crowd as we made our way back toward the huts. “Not now.”

“Yes, now.” My guilt was too tremendous to shake. “I’m not their queen. I did this to them. I’ve given my blood—”

There was a jerk on my arm, a grunt of frustration, and then Theodore’s lips were on mine. They were soft, warm, but the kiss was forceful, laced with command. He pulled back just far enough to glare at me.

A quiet, forlorn moan rolled through my chest. “What are—”

His hand hooked around the back of my neck, and he spoke against my lips. “I am keeping you safe.”

“But—”

He kissed me again. This time it was gentle, lips moving against mine painfully slowly. When he pulled away, taking my bottom lip between his as he did, he spoke in a clipped, heated whisper. “Gods, you don’t know when to shut up.” Then, as quickly as he’d kissed me, he took my hand and hauled me toward the village with determined strides.

My only response was a breathy, involuntary protest.

A gray-haired woman led us to one of the larger huts. Theodore urged me inside before requesting that our horses be cared for. I blundered across the packed dirt floor, toward the quaint hearth. My eyes burned and I squeezed them shut.

“Bloody fucking Gods, Imogen.” Theodore forced the door closed and dropped the strip of wood into the metal anchors to bar it. Then he went about shuttering and locking the three little windows. “When I tell you not now, you listen.” He’d worked to rein in his volume, but not a bit of his anger. “The sea villages are superstitious and zealous. They honor the Great Gods wholeheartedly. They shun whatever power they cannot understand. If you were not under my explicit protection—if I hadn’t made a show of my care for and trust in you—they would have gone after you.”

The lingering heat of his lips went cold. That was why he’d kissed me. I swallowed past the mass in my throat. “I’d deserve it.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s because of my cowardice, my selfishness, that these people live in fear. It’s because of me that they’re killed and taken.”

Theodore scrubbed his face at a washbasin. “Keep your voice down, Imogen.”

I kicked off my wet boots, skin crawling at the touch of the seawater. “Don’t be gentle with me now, Theo. Tell me what a coward I am. Tell me how I am a shell of what I should be. Aren’t you disgusted by me and what I have done to your people? To my people? Don’t you want me ripped from your blood as soon as possible? I am the reason the nekgya exist at all!”

He rounded on me. “Keep your Godsdamned voice down.” His wide eyes reflected the hearth flame. The effect was wholly fitting of his quiet rage. He pulled in a breath to steady himself and his gaze fell to my lips. He took a step nearer. Another. He tilted his head like he might kiss me again. “I won’t punish you. You are doing a fine job of it yourself.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.” My voice was sharp, but I couldn’t deny the pull he had on me. I wanted to be soothed, consumed by him, but I forced a step back. “It’s false,” I said. “Whatever we think we feel for one another—that burst of warmth we feel in our stomach when we touch—it’s a trick of the bond. I am everything you said I was. Fearful, and irresponsible, and you should give me what I deserve. Don’t let the bond make you neglect to show me the same penalty you would any subject who caused harm to your people.”

His gaze was impossibly dark, brows low, jaw severely set. “You want me to blame you? To punish you?”

My chest tightened. “Yes,” I whispered.

He swallowed hard. “I blame Nemea,” he said, voice dangerous. “It’s Nemea who has used you since you were a child. Nemea who knew what you were and carved fear into you. He bent you into the shape he desired. And even after all that mistreatment you did not break. In spite of him, you are alive. I’d wager you are braver and fiercer than any Great God or Goddess ever was.” His own voice had risen, and it boomed through the little hut, but he caught himself and stilled. His gaze cut straight through me. A slow breath pushed through his lips. One step, another, and he closed the little space between us once more. He spoke softly now, with awe in his voice, in his gaze, as if he were uttering a prayer. “You are peerless.”

Amid the heaviness of my guilt and shame and terror, for a moment, he made me feel weightless. “No, I’m not—”

“I won’t argue with you, Imogen.” Theodore reached up and, so slowly, wrapped an arm around my waist. “Not tonight.” His other arm encircled my shoulders and then he pressed my body to his.

A shaky exhale fell through my lips. I clung to him, willing my heart to slow. “Can the Mage Seer sever both bonds? Ours and the one I share with Eusia?”

After a long beat, he nodded. “We’ll ride all day tomorrow. I’ll get you there as fast as I can.” His hand drifted up and down my back, fingers playing through my ratty braid. I let myself soften against him, let my head rest fully on his strong shoulder. A breathy, longing sound rose in me, and I couldn’t tell if the resplendent heat flooding through my center was our bond or my desire. I looked up, noted the nearness of his lips, how hard and hot and inviting he was.

Our breaths slowed and knit together between us, and then with a final, remorseful exhale, Theodore released me. He took a deliberate step back. Color had bloomed on his cheekbones; his mouth was soft and parted. He adjusted his shirt and gestured to the little bedstead in the corner. “You need to get some sleep, Imogen.”

I looked to the bed, then back at Theodore. It was comfort I wanted. Oblivion, distraction. I wanted to lose myself in him, wanted to let him burn away the scourge of despair that grew within me. The feel of his body still lingered over my own. I opened my mouth, the request just forming on my tongue: Come with me. I am weary and empty, and you can make it right.

But I stopped myself.

He stared at me with unreadable intensity, and the thought of him seeing me as some desire-riddled creature, unable to control myself after a night as awful as this one. You are peerless, he’d said. I couldn’t stomach him thinking less of me again.

My gaze dropped to the ground between us. “Good night.”

There was a tense, drawn-out silence. He gave a curt nod, took a cushion from the bedstead, and settled himself before the little hearth, curled up on his side. “Night.”

A pit tore through my stomach as I crawled into the pillows and blankets. It gnawed and grew, and I wished I had a vial of nepenthe. I wished I’d dragged Theodore into the bed with me by his collar. I stared up at the ceiling, listening to his breathing.

It was a long while before either of us fell asleep.

With our horses at a gallop, we devoured the rest of the journey in two full days.

Night had fallen hours before we finally reached the northern shore of Varya and the cluster of little rocky islands on its coastline. A stormy gust clawed through my hair. Cold drops of rain began to prick at my cheeks. Even knowing the pain that awaited me, I was eased to have finally arrived.

Aching, I dismounted and made my way over the black sand beach, toward the glowing, foamy shoreline. A narrow strip of water separated the little islands—the Sacred Holms—from the rest of Varya. On the largest and closest holm, dark against the storm clouds, stood a tiny shack.

“How do we cross?” I asked Theodore, who rummaged through saddlebags at the tree line behind me.

“She pulls back the water.” He sounded oddly hollow.

“How long will that take her?” Now that I stood within sight of the hut, the anticipation was too much. “How will she know we’re here in the dark?”

“We’re not going in until sunrise.”

“Why not?”

“Because I refuse.” His words cut like a whistling axe. He’d gone still beside the tree that the horses were tied to, and though the details of his face were lost to the night, I could imagine his glower. Could picture the unease tugging on his every muscle through the cool air and rain.

“You refuse.” I crossed over the black sand, wanting to look into his eyes. “You raced me here for two full days, only to have me sit on this beach, and wait for the sun to rise?”

“The Mage Seer is dangerous. We’ll wait for the added safety of the sun.”

It was a kingly command, but I knew him well enough now to note the fear in his voice, to see that the rigidity of his body did not come from a full day in the saddle but from something worse.

“What can she do to me by night that she can’t do to me by day?” I closed the rest of the space between us. “I suffer either way. It’s you who doesn’t want to enter her hut now. Tell me why.”

The only sounds were the tapping rain, the crashing waves. They drowned out his heavy breaths. Drops fell into my eyes, trickled down my neck.

“I need to get us out of the rain,” he finally said.

“You’re changing the subject.” I crossed my arms. “First, tell me what’s wrong. You won’t set foot on the sand. Why?”

He thinned his gaze. “Let me build us a shelter. Then we’ll talk.”

“Fine.”

He moved with efficiency, pulling food and a bottle of wine from a saddlebag, kicking away twigs and fallen branches from the sandy soil. Disquiet pulled his shoulders toward his ears. It clamped his jaw.

Movement at my side made me jump back. A single blooming vine had unwound itself from the trunk of the tree and hovered in the air. New vine shoots grew out of it, like little wriggling worms. They thickened and wove into one another until a small domed shelter took shape. The leaves broadened, each growing larger than my spread hand. White flowers yawned into existence, emitting their own faint light in the stormy darkness.

“Charming.” I bent low to crawl into the little nest just as a bolt of lightning cleaved the sky. Theodore followed when the thunder cracked around us, so loud that my hands flew up to cover my ears.

Warmth rolled off him, filling the little shelter with the scent of rain and green earth and sweat and dust. The space was small, and Theodore was… not. His shoulder pressed hard against mine, and through the thin, wet layers of our shirts, his skin burned like a brand.

I pressed my eyes shut for a few breaths.

Soon I would feel the absence of him, and the thought sent sorrow cutting through me. I dug my teeth into my bottom lip and tried to focus on reason.

The low echo of a cork leaving its bottle grabbed me from my thoughts. Theodore brought the wine to his lips and tilted his head back, and back. So far that the bottle knocked into the vine roof above us. He took long pulls, like he’d come upon a spring after days in a desert.

“I’m out of the rain.” I took the bottle by its neck and tugged. He let me have it. “Now you can tell me what’s wrong.”

A nettled grumble filled his chest. “You won’t let me keep this to myself, will you?”

The light drops of rain had become a deluge. It roared against the leaves. I took a sip of wine. “You always panic when the Mage Seer is mentioned. Lachlan told me you were scared before we left. And now you’re guzzling wine from the bottle like you wished you were at the bottom of it. It’s unsettling. And I don’t need to be unsettled before this ritual. So, no. I will not let you keep it to yourself.”

“My story won’t settle you in the least.”

“That won’t get you out of telling me.”

He blew out a long breath. His fingers brushed my own as he reached for the wine and took one more gulp. “I was last here seven years ago. At my father’s behest. He hid it, but my father was born with very little power. And he was not very skilled in wielding what he did have. Only the Gods know why.” He brought the bottle to his lips, took another deep drink. “It was a source of deep shame for him. And I can understand why now—he was the only son of a Great God. By all accounts he should have been his father’s equal, or close to it. I, on the other hand, was given a great deal of power… like his father. It was always a sore point between us. He pushed me to master myself, my power. None of my hard work seemed to be enough. It took years for me to understand that he envied me, perhaps worse. When I was twenty, he decided he wanted to perform a ritual of transference. He wanted to give me what little power he had, add it to the power I already possessed, and have me ascend to the throne. He said he was unfit compared to me.”

He sat so quiet, for so long, that I thought he’d decided against telling me more. I leaned against him in encouragement.

“I didn’t want to be king,” he finally said. “But he dragged me here anyway, to the Mage Seer. We performed the ritual.” We sat in silence. “The ritual of transference… it takes the life of the giver.”

My body flexed in surprise.

Hurt laced his voice. “I left that little hut in the middle of the night, having watched my father die a horrific death, with a crown I did not want, with power I did not want—and with a stolen bottle of the Mage Seer’s poison in my pocket. The poison she uses for the prophecies and rituals she performs.” He stared through the shelter’s opening, to the dark shore before us. “I couldn’t take his body back with me. I… I drank the bottle of poison empty, right there on that beach while my head was still clouded from the ritual smoke.”

I didn’t realize I’d gripped his leg until his fingers bumped over my knuckles. He turned my hand over and ran a finger over the web of white scars on my palm.

“Days later I woke up in a room I didn’t recognize. An older couple—Hector and Antonia—nursed me back to health. They live not far from here. Eftan ruled in my stead and allowed me to convalesce for a handful of months out here.” He held up the wine bottle. “I learned to make this wine. Learned to cook Varian wildland dishes. Gardened, and mucked horse stalls, and washed clothing. I mourned my father. My freedom. But I’d also never been so content. I still visit them often.” His voice snagged. “They’ve become parents to me, in a way.”

“And now you’re back here because of me.” My stomach sank low. “I’m so sorry.”

“No.” He shook his head emphatically, twisting to face me. “Don’t go searching for more guilt to pile atop yourself.” His eyes were intent on mine. “I chose this. I agreed to it. Neither one of us knew it would have come to this.” His free hand rose to my jaw and the tips of his fingers dragged across its edge. “And even if I had known…”

The space between my racing heart and ribs squeezed. Even with his pretty words, I felt scheming and selfish and wicked. Utterly undeserving of the understanding and care that Theodore bestowed upon me. I reared back, away from his touch.

His look hardened. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s nothing wrong,” I said quietly. “I’m tired.”

“Imogen?”

Something in me snapped. “I’m going inside the Mage Seer’s hut alone. I’ll get the draught, and then we’ll find a safe place to perform the severance after I’ve left her.”

His handsome face, that had been open and tender, broke into a scowl. “Is this a joke?”

“No.” I blinked frantically as a sting began at the back of my eyes.

The rain beat loudly. His brows lowered; his jaw ticced once, twice. “If you think I’m letting you walk into that hut alone—” He scraped a hand through his wet hair. “What’s come over you? Is this some twisted form of pity?”

“No.”

“Are you upset I touched you?”

“What? No.”

He stilled. Only his broad chest rose and fell as his gaze dragged over my face. “No?”

“I’m…” I shook my head. “I’m embarrassed. You have given me so much care when I haven’t done a thing to earn or deserve it, and I’ve hurt you in return.” I clamped my mouth against my rambling. “But, no, I’m not upset you touched me.”

“There are no more transactions between us, remember?” he said in a husky whisper. “You’re deserving because I say you are.” Slowly, he raised his hand to my face. His touch was feather light as it dragged from my cheekbone, to my neck. I leaned into the warmth, relished the sensation of his touch.

“Are you upset I kissed you? On that beach by the village.”

I closed my eyes, remembering, then shook my head. “No.”

Relief enveloped him. A low, hungry groan filled his chest, and in one swift movement, he scooped me into his lap. He wrapped my legs snugly around him. Heat cascaded through me as his fingers twined through my hair, curled into a fist, and tugged. “Good.”

For a moment, we sat like that, his strong body held between my thighs, and stared. His eyes were torrid; his breath rolled over my sensitive lips. I was a heartbeat away from begging when he lowered his mouth to mine.

His kiss was decadent, slow, and the world around me fell away.

I was lost to the softness of his lips, the firmness of his body, the languid heat of his tongue. I made a desperate moan when his teeth scraped over my bottom lip. He showed no restraint, and still, I wanted more. I rolled my hips over his and went nearly mad from the sound he made. His strong hands roved to my back, and lower, then to the front of my shirt where he raced to undo the clasps.

“I need to see you.” His lips met my shoulder, my neck. He nipped at my earlobe and made his way back down toward my nearly bare chest when an icy shock of water wrapped around my buttock, my thighs.

We both gasped. Our bodies jerked. “What the fuck—”

Out of the shelter opening, the dark gray sky glowed with the faintest morning light. The storm still raged, but through the rain, I could make out the Mage Seer’s grass-roofed hut and the outline of a small, hooded figure on the rocks. Her arm was extended toward the sea. The wave she’d sent to us began to flow back in a curve of white foam, like a beckoning finger.

Theodore gripped my shoulders with determined force, as if he meant to keep me.

The sun had come. It was time to sever my bonds.

OceanofPDF.com