The Kiss That Saved Me (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 2) (14 page)

I turn, past the gasping figures and swim as fast as I can from the room, past a smirking Saturnus.
What the hell are you looking at?
I snap internally, working my tail against the surrounding water, moving from the room at a speed I have never reached in my life.
Oh my Goddess, am I actually doing this?
I ask myself, but I don’t have time to think it through, I just know I can’t answer him. I can’t humiliate him by refusing, but I can’t say yes! Who the hell ever heard of an eighteen-year-old marrying someone she’s known for just four and a half months! What was he thinking?!
 

I swim, out the double doors of the Alcazar Oceania and out into the city streets. They’re deserted except for the odd patrolling Knight, everyone else is inside. I move up under the heat of the morning sun, the water protecting me from its rays. I long for its heat on my skin, something familiar and comfortable but know that’s suicide. I move up through the sea, getting as close to the surface as I can, skimming in thoughtless rhythm away from the city. Away from the crushing pressure that has been mounting. Apparently proposal is my breaking point.
Who knew?

I move with increasing speed away from my problems, until I see a Commerson dolphin in the distance. It stops me in my watery tracks. The memories come at me like a tidal wave of arctic proportions, chilling me to the bone. Orion filling the buoy with air, Orion smiling, Orion laughing. Orion bending me over the kitchen counter in our beach house, Orion kissing me, Orion loving me, Orion needing me.
 

“No!” I cry out, trying to stop the flood of nostalgia that is making me short of breath. I move my hands up to my throat, clutching at my gills which are rapidly opening and closing, pulling in water which floods my gullet, but still can’t quench my thirst for air. I start moving again, fleeing from the memories, the cascade of horror that is making my heart ache with the uncertainty of my return to the other half of my soul. I say I don’t believe it’s true, that I think it is all crap, but swimming out, roaming the water and the barren expanses of sand, I have never felt my longing for him more. I have never felt him so necessary and yet I cannot give him my vow of eternity. I have never felt so alone.

The sun falls from the sky as I feel my muscles clenching, enjoying the pain of each stroke that my tailfin makes, pushing me through the water. My mind is racing wearily, struggling to put the jumbled pieces of the puzzle together. Orion getting down on bended fin, Orion looking at me, Orion asking me to marry him. It just doesn’t make sense. Or does it?
 

I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve missed something, whether that’s what his aggressive desperation since Atlas’ death has been leading up to. I feel myself wilt slightly. Looking at the fish stirring around me, darting in hues of yellows, greens, and blues. I watch the moon rise over a bloody horizon and continue to ponder.
 

ORION

“I don’t care if she’s not in the city! Find her!!!! I want every stone upturned, every inch of every cave searched. I want her found!” I bellow, slamming my fist down onto the wooden armrest of my father’s throne; or should I say my throne now. It sounds wrong no matter how many times I think it. Ghazi is kneeling before me, nodding with a look of puzzled pity knitting his brow together. Cole is beside him, his eyes darting between myself and Saturnus who is floating next to me, unmoving and inexpressive. The water is stirring, vibrations of displaced air rippling in my surroundings. They look too afraid to move, afraid of what I might do. “Well? What the hell are you waiting for? GO!” I feel rage move up through me. They don’t bow in respect but instead bolt for the exit.
 

“Might I suggest you calm down?” Saturnus comes before me in an effortless momentum.

“May I suggest that you shut up?” I bite out. He looks surprised, but then the mask of calm falls over his features once more.

“It is not my fault the girl was not as pliable as expected, Your Highness.” He takes a formal approach and I find myself unreceptive.

“The ‘girl’ was just cornered in front of the entire city’s population on a piece of advice YOU gave me Saturnus,” I accuse him, suddenly realising with whom this fault belongs.
 

“I swear to you; I have heard her speak of engagement. I have heard her long for such a vow,” Saturnus runs his hand through his hair, looking concerned but I see that it is a faux gesture. I cock my head, looking at him, suspicious. I feel my eyes narrow.

“Yes. Well. I suppose these women can be temperamental. She is young,” I speak the words and watch him with careful intent.

“Indeed Your Highness. Of course it is no surprise she has swum out into the open ocean. She is not a creature with much regard for her own safety, I’m sure you’d agree,” Saturnus smiles slightly, almost sympathetically toward me. I nod.
 

“Agreed. I want her found,” I mutter.

“Let your men do their job. It’s what they’re there for,” Saturnus reminds me.
 

“Will you go and watch over them. Make sure they are taking necessary precautions for mobilisation?” I request and he nods. Slamming his fist into his heart.

“Of course. It would be my honour,” he responds, bowing his feathered mane of bloody hair and turning swiftly, leaving a trail of refracted rainbows in the wake of his diamond encrusted tailfin. I rise from the throne, moving to suspend myself inches from the panoramic glass window, surveying the city.

 
I watch the horizon as the moon rises, light falling over everything, dulling it by comparison to sunlight. How can Callie not want to be here beside me? I wonder, feeling my heart fragment.

 
I watch the Knights of Atargatis, few in number now, depart the city to find her. I wonder if she’ll come back willingly. Then I think to myself about the notion of marrying her. I can’t help but know now, despite my nerves about asking her, that I need her to be my wife. Is that unreasonable? Perhaps. But what is there to stop us? She may only be eighteen years old, but when you know someone is who you want to spend eternity with, why should that matter? I know she feels the connection, the pairing of our souls, so why would she run? I let a sense of foreboding ambivalence settle over me. The emotions within pull in different directions so I silence them, stopping them from pulling me apart. I need her. Physically, emotionally, and soulfully and I always will. Does it matter if we are wed?
Yes. She must be mine and mine alone.
I whisper internally, this confession of need so sacred I shudder at the vulnerability it sets loose within. I feel my shoulders hunch as the prospect of her absence, anger and pain looms like a dark cloud over me. My own anger simmers beneath my slouched exterior as I curse all women. What the hell are they playing at, being so fragile but refusing protection? So loveable and yet so unwilling to be loved? So coveted and yet so unattainable? Why won’t she just let me love her for Goddesses sake? Then I feel my own pride vanquished as I wonder if it’s not her at all, but instead me. Am I worth marrying? Has my sordid past been bothering her again? I wish she would talk to me. I want to read her as an open book, splay out her pages and study all her intricate calligraphy. Trace my fingers across her inky curves and study her intricate gliding lines. As I look out over the horizon, into the stormy shadows, I cannot help but wonder if she can be found. If she will return to me. I am still, suspended in a state of waiting, my back to the throne I have just taken and as onyx dusted clouds begin to swirl overhead, a single diamond falls in pitted silence.

CALLIE

The dark clouds above puff out like the chests of peacocks, asserting their majesty. I watch the waning moon disappear behind them and continue to move through the waves, breaking the surface every now and then, letting the water carry me wherever it wills. I find clarity above the surface, the dryness of the air clinging to me and encasing me in a blanket of acute thought. The situation begins to become transparent in my mind, easily foreseeable. I wonder why I didn’t see this coming. It is in fact the single most logical way for Orion to assert absolute ownership over me, and that in its entirety is why I could not say yes. The next problem I am faced with is the fact that I have just left him standing in front of his people without an answer. I wonder if I have made the right choice as my tailfin flicks upward, sending salt spray up around me and I feel the first drops of rain begin to fall on my back.
Can I go back now? Will he be contented us being together as just Orion and Callie, not man and wife?
The word wife makes me irrationally angry and I clench my teeth, riding through the increasingly tumultuous waves, enjoying each bite of the ocean’s white capped surface, stinging my skin as I bury myself within it once more.
What the hell was he thinking? I’m eighteen for goddess’ sake!
My own internal monologue reminds me of his motives.
He thinks we’re destined.
I want to spit the word, slam down on it hard with my fist. I hear an inward sneer, a cajoling bite that whispers to me, stirring my anger. I feel my blood boil as I break the surface again, without direction or reason, riding the waves of a growing storm and enjoying my insignificance against the trembling waves, the beating of the rain against my scales, the darkness of the depths beneath. I watch the fish stirring, moving in time with their frantic, fearful heartbeats.
Pitiful.
I think a thought that isn’t my own and shake it off. Eventually I find myself looking upon a shoreline I hadn’t even realised I had been heading for. It was the root of my problem, so it was no wonder really, but I had returned once more to the beach where Orion and I had first kissed. Where I had died in his arms.

I bob up and out of the water at increasing intervals of nearness to the line of the sand. I feel the wicked currents pulling at disjointed angles beneath me so I continually move my tailfin, left then right, correcting my position. I can see the light from where I am, even though the rain is coming down in sheets.
 

The beach house. The life I’ve left behind. I wonder if my friends are inside. If they’re giggling, laughing, watching a movie without me. I miss them now more than I can say I have since I died and was reborn. I miss the warmth of their bedrooms, the simplicity of quilted bedspreads and bowls of popcorn. I long for their company, for the simplicity of their lives. A simplicity I had all but taken for granted once. I had thought my life was so hard. Had I known what was to come, I can’t help but wonder if I would have been slightly more grateful for Carl and all his bullying. I’m not saying he wasn’t a bastard, of course he made my life difficult, but he was nothing compared to the armies of Psirens and the demons I had seen rise from the depths of the ocean. I longed for his critique. I longed for my mother. I longed, for just a moment, to be human.
 

I move forward, sloshing water up my back in a cold cascade, allowing my head to immerse itself once more in the ocean. I swim, desperately, quickly and wanton toward the shore. I climb up on my haunches, moving my slickened scales against the grain of drenched sand. I haul myself, the weight of my tail immense now on land, toward the life I had once lived. I find myself out of breath quickly, heart hammering, waves lapping over me in a chilling realisation that I cannot go back. I look up at the lights of Chloe’s beach house, the place where I once had so many human problems and collapse onto the sand, letting it catch me and the waves climb over me like a sodden blanket. I roll onto my back and let my tears fall, exasperation and grief overcoming me like a tsunami. The rain continues to fall down over me and lightning illuminates my broken form as the storm washes my tears back to the sea, hardening them into something eternally cold. I lay there, under the intermittent sparks of the raging storm, stuck in the place between my old life and new. Wanting to go back.

I slowly curl up, pulling my tail up to my chest and place my chin on the aquamarine scales. I let the waves pull me back to where I’ve come, back into the ocean’s depths. I surrender to the movement of the storm, surrender to the idea of being alone, surrender to my inner tumult and let myself be taken by the rage of the water.