The Kiss That Saved Me (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 2) (23 page)

Vex is watching me as the beat of the drums changes again, picking up. He smirks at my hesitation, making me angrier than I’d thought someone who wasn’t Orion could make me feel. I look at him, narrowing my eyes, and then back to my palm before closing it. I bring my hand up in a sudden and brutal movement, before I strike down, ramming the tapered end into my skin. I feel the spine hit a vein and inhale deeply with the sharp pain as I think:

What the hell, right?
 

AZURE

“Get the hell off me, silent man!” I yell at Ghazi, his hand is gripping at my arms, which he has pulled behind my back, pushing my breasts forward.

“Azure that’s enough,” my brother’s voice is cold, and I immediately know that he is the reason I’m currently bound like an animal.
 

At request of the Crowned Ruler. Perfect and easily predictable. I should have known my stupid brother was behind this.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I snap at him as my tailfin trails along the crystalline floor of the small council chamber.

“Well, I did ask Ghazi to ask you to come and see me. I’m assuming you weren’t up for the idea?” he cocks a brow looking slightly amused.

“So, what? You just let your staff manhandle me? I’m not some bitch that’ll come at beckon call!” I exclaim, feeling rage take over my motor function. I continue to struggle.

“Let her go, Ghazi,” Orion mutters with a flick of his hand. He looks back to Saturnus, who I now notice is skulking in the corner, observing me with scrutinising emerald eyes.

“Get gone!” I bite at Ghazi, turning on him as soon as his vice grip slackens and then vanishes from my wrists and elbows. He doesn’t cower, he just blinks a few times, looking unimpressed and turns to leave the room after slamming his fist over his heart and nodding to the stupid Crowned Ruler.

“Azure, I’d ask that you don’t treat the Commander of the Knights of Atargatis like slime off a slug, but I know that won’t happen. What I will ask you is where the hell you get off letting Callie swim off alone to the Psiren city, and not telling me about it.” His face is stony, Saturnus moves out of the shadow towards us, an irritating smugness creeping across his expression.

 
I should have known this was coming, it becomes really hard to hide anything when your sister, the notorious, pink, sparkly suck-up, shares your mind’s eye and can’t keep her nose out of other people’s business. Goddammit, Starlet!

“I didn’t know you cared all that much about Callie’s comings and goings. She said you told her to get out and not come back. I assumed that you say what you mean, being Crowned Ruler and all,” I purr, twizzling a lock of my inky hair around one finger.

“Don’t play stupid with me, Azure. You know full well how I feel about her. I proposed for Goddess’ sake,” he puffs out his chest, like some pathetic display of manliness. How the hell we are even related I’ll never know.

“I think it’s a good thing you sent her away, Orion. Something in that girl is broken. I felt darkness coming off of her like smoke.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Orion looks taken aback and his dull, familial irises glower at me, demanding a response.

“I wouldn’t tell her where the city was, so she went all Queen of darkness on my ass. Seriously. She tackled me… her eyes went like mine. You aren’t telling me you haven’t noticed the darkness in the girl you claim to care so much about? She’s practically vibrating with it. It’s just below the surface but even I can feel it.” Orion looks to Saturnus but he shrugs.

“So you’re saying what exactly? That Callie has been bitten by a Psiren? I’m pretty damn sure I’d have noticed that, Azure. She’s barely been out of my sight since the Psiren attack when Titus died,” Orion looks at me, his eyes searching for an even an inch of the lie that he thinks I might be spinning him. But why would I spin a lie, when the truth was so much more unthinkable?

“Titus…” I say the name aloud and my gut curdles like sour milk. “You don’t think…” I muse the possibility for a moment, the cogs in my brain slick against each other beginning to whirr with inspired imaginings.

“What is it?” Saturnus has spoken this time, he is coming forward, suddenly interested in what I have to say.

“Well… Callie is the vessel right?” They both nod and I continue, my mind all the while going back to the depths of Callie’s pupils, the darkness within, the darkness I had only once experienced with such gravity. “So she can absorb powers from us, and our powers are a blessing… light magic right?” I say again and Orion’s eyes widen. God, I wish he’d stop gaping, he looks like a fish out of water. I mean, I know it’s shocking but he’s supposed to be the Crowned Ruler.

“So what if she absorbed Titus’ powers… his darkness?” I drop the bomb and Saturnus remains expressionless. It makes me suspicious.
 

Orion on the other hand looks like he may throw up. No one knows how to undo you like family. I chuckle to myself internally.

“She… she… hurt me,” Orion stutters and then looks up at me.

“Like say, Titus would be able to?” I ask him and he nods, shell-shocked. What an idiot. If you thought a magical beam of light energy with the power of thousands of bolts of lightning was enough to stop Titus, well then you were just stupid.

“Yeah. We were arguing and she hurt me. I don’t think she knew what she was doing. It wasn’t intentional,” he looks so sure of this and I wonder why, I’d say he deserved some pain if he was trapping me like some kind of bird in a cage. “So what do we do?” He looks to me like a small child and I’m taken back, so far back that I can’t believe I’m getting the memory, to when we were kids.
 

He was waving to me from father’s fishing boat. I watch him, waving so enthusiastically he sways and loses his balance, tripping and then falling face first into the water. He comes up laughing with seaweed in his hair, careless and young. My heart constricts and I want to hurl. Being around family was making me soft. I need to get away.

“How the hell should I know?” I ask him, crossing my arms across my breasts.

“You saw her. Did she say anything?”
 

Oh so what, this is an interrogation now? Well next time I’m staying the hell away from little miss perky darkness, I can tell you that right now. I so don’t need this hassle.

“She said she wanted to find her father. Said Solustus knew where he was. I don’t know where she got that idea but she seemed pretty sure about it.”

“Well I have to stop her. Can you take me to the city?”

“No,” I mumble and he looks like he might slap me.

“You’re telling me you’re not going to tell me where the Queen of this city is? That’s treason,” he pulls rank and that makes me even angrier. What the hell is his problem? If he knew how to keep a woman happy this wouldn’t be happening.

“Kill me if you want. It’d be better than hanging around this crap-heap anyway,” I feel the truth of my words hit me. I am sick of this half-life. So many centuries and I’ve burned every meaningful connection I’ve ever had in the most spectacularly pyrotechnic way I can think of. What do I have left besides sarcasm and my anger? A whole lot of nothing.
 

I feel the air wave hit me before I see it as Orion expels me from the room. I am rushed with the newly born, manipulated current through the double doors, smashing my head on the back wall of the corridor outside the chamber.
 

Goddamn my sister and our so-called ‘blessing’.

CALLIE

I am floating through a darkened milky way, ecstasy pulsing through me with the delicious thickness of blood and clotted sweetness of cream. Everything is sensational, sound that beats, making light flashes in certain places and dark holes in others.
 

I shake my limbs, feeling them, lighter than air, extended like an angel’s wings. I wonder if I can fly away, through the green stars of phytoplankton that vibrate, shaking with the weight of their own existence. I feel crushed velvet enveloping me, wrapping itself around like twisted honeysuckle vines, climbing, exploring like I’m some kind of tropical forest, moist and hot. I turn around and there he is, head hung back in surrender to the dark, the thing that is making me wonder how anyone lives any other way.
 

How do they live never knowing this ecstatic abandon of the real, being given over to nothing but what is? The feeling of his flesh on mine, my hands running through his silver skull cap of hair and down the contours of his jagged cheekbones.

His arms wrap around me and he moves with blurred speed, though I can’t tell if it’s the Lionfish venom coursing through me or if he’s suddenly developed superhuman speed. I find myself with my back to his chest as he grabs my hand and moves it up so it’s draped around his neck. The beat of the drums is hypnotic and I close myself away, letting my eyes roll back into my head.
 

I feel Vex’s breath hitting my skin, his exhale of water hot on my flesh. I tremble and I feel his breath hitch as he takes both of his rough palms and runs them down the front of my body, torturously slow, settling them on the top of my tailfin and moving my hips with his, swinging them in and out of his grasp, grinding my scaled buttocks into him over and over. There are no thoughts in my head, only feeling in my body. I hear his sentiment, whispered in my ear, moving through my mind like a snake in tall grass.

“You are so ripe.”

I surrender again to the tsunami of sensory assault that is taking me, moment by moment, away from who I was and toward a place where nothing seems to matter but my own pleasure.

CALLIE

I stir hesitantly from a dreamless tranquillity I have not felt in a long time. I know mermaids can’t sleep, so maybe I had found unconsciousness through other means. It’s with this thought I remember how I had come to pass out, I remember the poison that ran through my veins, taking me away from myself. I open my eyes and my head is thudding like someone has been using it to break rocks all night.

“What the hell happened last night?” I exclaim loudly, too loudly. I regret making any noise at all instantly, bringing my palm up to cradle my throbbing temple. I notice the faint scars, already healed from my first Lionfish spine… and then my second, before I’d taken another in palm and thrust it into my spidery veins. I remember the night before in flashes, Vex’s fingertips and tentacles trailing across my skin, the rabid electricity coursing through me as the drumbeat got louder and louder. I remember the high with relish and immediately crave it again.