The Kiss That Saved Me (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 2) (18 page)

Callie frowns, leaning back in the sand and unfurling her aqua scaled fluke, it’s short compared to mine but stocky, too pretty almost. This girl should seriously consider pairing that aqua with black, she needs the edge. I mean, let’s be honest, no one ever takes a fairy Princess seriously.

“No. He wouldn’t tell me even if he knew. He hates my father,” she breathes and I nod. Wanting more than anything to high tail it out of here. Suddenly, she looks like a wave of inspiration has hit her, she straightens her spine, letting her hair tumble back over her shoulders.

“I do know someone I could ask. But I don’t know how to find him. He’s a Psiren.”

“A Psiren?” I look at her, shocked at the audacity of the idea.

“Yes, Solustus,” she answers and my shock deepens. Is she stupid? What the hell is she thinking?
 
Is she thinking she can get Solustus to sit down and take her to tea, gab about good old dad when his first instinct is going to be to slit her throat?

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea… Solustus is more than you can handle. Trust me,” I snort, unable to hold back the absurdity of her trying to negotiate with the likes of Solustus alone.

“Tell me where he is. I don’t need your approval. I can handle myself.” I watch her rage snowball as I falter in my response and roll my eyes. Her independent woman routine is almost as believable as a Christmas pantomime dame, no wonder my brother has problems trusting her. I think back to my eavesdropping on their arguments through the thick crystal floor of the upper turrets of the palace. Orion will kill me if I get her hurt. I mean with actual beheading.

“Callie… you really don’t want to be going in there…”

“I said TELL ME!” She screams out again, flying forward and placing her hands around my throat. She knocks me back into the sand and I cry out, feeling her weight crushing me.
 

Oh Hell NO!
I scream internally, flipping her onto her back using my weight and years of experience to out-manoeuvre her. She’s beneath me then, laughing and cackling as her eyes turn black once more.
 

What the hell is this girl’s deal? Seriously? She’s not a Psiren… and when the hell did she get so violent… she’s acting like, well, my ex.
 

The questions make me stare at her, creating a moment where my arms slacken their hold and Callie wriggles free. She gets up, turning around and hissing like a pissed off cat.

“Fine! I don’t need you! I don’t need anybody. I’ll find them on my own, and tell your asshole brother that I approve his request. I’m never coming back.” She turns and moves away with a speed that she didn’t seem to possess not twenty minutes ago. I am knocked back by the force of the water displacement and watch her disappear. I could follow her, but somehow it seems like too much effort to invest in someone I a) don’t like that much and b) don’t really want to piss off.
 

I watch the speck of her, insignificant in the azure hugeness and wonder if she really will find the Cryptopolis. Something tells me that she will, and that something was a tiny spark of recognition, of severed connection in the back of her ocular darkness.

CALLIE

I’m thrumming, vibrating with rage that overcomes like nothing I’ve ever known, addictive and jagged like broken glass, grating within me, and its edge is providing a clarity unlike anything I’ve experienced. What the hell was up with my life? What the hell was up with Orion and his screwed up family? When had I become a pawn in the plans of a Goddess I had never believed in? When had I started being the one that everyone looked to for hope, comfort, and reassurance? Where the hell is my hope, comfort, and reassurance? Why is it always me that gets the shit end of the oar?
Ugh, I am so sick of this crap.
I mutter internally whilst gritting my teeth. I wonder now whether I am naïve, thinking Orion and I were going to ride off into the sunset on Philippe and never have so much as a harsh word. Well maybe I am naïve, but he was also stubborn, overbearing, and controlling. I am not about to put up with that for eternity. I realise soon that I’m swimming with no end destination in mind, I seem to be doing that a lot lately so I slow, closing my eyes.

Hello Callie.
The voice echoes in a flash across the backs of my eyelids. I snap them open in fright.
What the hell was that?
I stop, turning around. I wonder if Azure has been stupid enough to follow me in my current mood. She’s not there. I am alone. So I haven’t been imagining the voice speaking wicked nothings in my ear? Or have I? I close my eyelids again.

Sssstupid girl. Don’t you know what you are?
The voice is there, I hear it. I decide to try answering, feeling impatient. “No! I don’t know who I am! Who are you?”
I speak the words aloud feeling incredulous. A few moments fade into the past as fish pass me, moving through the invisible rat race of evolutionary purpose. I shake it off, it’s hardly surprising that all the stress of the last few days is getting to me, making me imagine things.
 

I think about the loss of Orion, the man I thought I would spend the rest of my days with. It infuriates me even further. I wonder if I would have hated being married to him.
No of course not,
I remind myself of the fact that it wasn’t what he’d asked that had infuriated me, of course I was flattered. It was rather the way in which he asked, and how little time we’d known each other. This makes me even angrier and I wish I had someone to yell at.
 

I think about my father, about my identity and the longing I’ve always felt toward the idea of meeting him. I know now that I need to find him, I need to meet him. I need to find somewhere in this ocean to call home. Somewhere I belong.
 

I find a small reef to rest by, letting the ebbing fractures of my heart pulsate like they’re infected with misery. Mortally wounded and bleeding.
 

The fish provide little comfort as wrasse and flame angel fish scurry, leaving streams of red and orange in their wake. My anger is still there, behind it all, seething and writhing, growing with each moment that I go over the argument with Orion in my mind. My anger morphs and I feel suddenly restless again, I need to find Solustus, I need to find the Psirens.

Let me help you with that.
 

The voice creeps from within the shadow of my psyche, like it’s stepped through a locked door, using my anger and impatience as the key to gain access to the forefront of my mind.
 

Suddenly I see images flash by, like a mental map to a city I couldn’t have imagined in my deepest nightmares. I don’t know where it’s come from. Maybe it’s something I picked up from Starlet when I stole her visions at the masked ball all those many months ago, or maybe something I absorbed from Azure when I had tackled her to the ground.
 

I let the images continue to flow, a graveyard of sunken ships and submarines, doomed before they had even begun, and a giant crack in the bedrock of the earth. These are the things I need to seek out.

 
I’m instantly grateful to the voice inside my head, for giving me my next step, giving me an aim, a destination, anything to take my mind off the absence of Orion. I need to funnel my energy into something productive, I need to heal, be free and have fun. Find myself again.
 

I’m smiling to myself wildly as I feel the images begin to ingrain into memory, like they’re my own. I turn to begin my journey, not knowing the path I’m taking will even lead me where I want to go. Rising from the ocean floor I begin to undulate against the waves once more, in search of sunken ships and a crevasse to abyss. I hear the voice calling to me in an eerie whisper.
 

You’re welcome.

Once I know where I’m headed it doesn’t take long before I start to find more and more traces of Psiren behaviour. Scattered along the dusty ocean floor are remnants of human sailors and transportation that have met a grisly end. I swim, more cautiously than I have before in these new and continually shadowy waters as I keep myself parallel to the sloping sand. As I pass a ship that is half buried in sand and consumed with crustaceans and algae I notice a hammerhead shark, teeth bared with its odd shaped head moving from left to right. I move away from it, feeling anxious as the hairs on the back of my neck rise, wondering why I hadn’t thought to bring a weapon of some kind or at least some armour.
 

Because you were pissed and careless, that’s why
! I remind myself, wondering what it is about my whole relationship with Orion that made it almost impossible for me to think clearly. I mean, isn’t that what had gotten me into this mess? Falling in love with a man I’d known a matter of days, knew nothing about, and who I couldn’t stay away from? As I move over the increasingly sparse sea-life, consisting of bottom feeding plecos and sharks, I wonder what my life would be like now if I hadn’t given Orion the time of day, if I hadn’t returned to the beach as we’d agreed. Would I be happier? Would I be watching Kayla grow up and fixing my relationship with my mom? I push these thoughts aside as I come to what I’ve been seeking.

It lies next to a sunken submarine, one that looks as though it’s left over from one of the world wars. The sub has been severed in half by whatever sunk it and is stuck out of the sand like some kind of statement about the killing nature of these waters. The sub though, with its water filled bow and jagged, metal protrusions, is not what I have been looking for. What I’ve been looking for is the crevasse, which it teeters next to.
 

I move forward, no longer worried about the hammerhead that, I can see now, has turned back on itself and is going back the way it came.

 
Huh.
I think,
guess it must be bad down there if even a shark’s swimming away scared.
 

I hover above the edge of the fissure in the seabed and can see the monstrosity of its size. It is around a hundred metres across, and a mile long. I wonder how deep it goes, floating above the almost impenetrable darkness that hangs, as I continue to push myself through the water, directly beneath me. I let myself be suspended for a few minutes, looking up at the sun, which is high in the sky above the surface. Even from this depth its rays struggle to reach, so I wonder what it’ll be like down inside the fissure. I look down into the blackness and the blackness looks back into me, I feel a chill run through me and I gulp, trying to calm myself. I wonder momentarily about turning back, but I can’t quite bring myself, after everything I’ve been through and with the rage still burning in my chest, to go swimming home to Orion. I take one final look up above, at the silvery undulations of the water’s surface tension, refracting the light from the human world above and I turn myself so I’m facing downward, away from the brightness and the day. I grit my teeth and squeeze my hands into fists, ready to lash out at anyone or thing that may try to take advantage of me in the dark and slowly but surely, begin my descent into the shadows.

As I begin to swim downward through the crack in the earth I feel eyes on me, but from where they originate I don’t know. As I delve deeper I feel my ribs struggling to expand and my lungs becoming constricted. My ears pop with the increasing pressure, leaving me with an ache in my jaw that only increases my irritability. The darkness is making me anxious too, and I keep staring back up from where I came, trying to make out anything that could possibly be out to bite me, or worse, against the dying light of the surface. It isn’t long before I notice other changes in the water too, like a slight smell of rotten egg, a taste of ash and metal in the normally tasteless water and a chill that is seeping into my bones.
 

Among the darkness further down, not all light is lost as a pyrotechnic display of sudden and fleeting flashes are created by wildlife trying to lure in their next meal. After around twenty minutes I begin to see a glow from beneath me and I move toward it, perhaps just as helpless as the tiny pulsating fish being lured in by local anglers.