Page 132 of I Summon the Sea
“Let me go,” I whisper, pretending not to know what he’s insinuating and that my voice hasn’t come out in a croak.
“It’s not just the scales,” he goes on. “You know what I am getting at, don’t you? I know what you are.”
“Let me go,” I try again. “Please.”
“I can’t do that,” he says, his pale eyes brightening, “because it’syou. I thought it couldn’t be. That it was impossible, but this world is full of strange wonders. You changed. But I knew you right away. I know who you are.”
“You can’t know who I am,” I push out through my gritting teeth. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“We fae find it hard to lie. I am telling the truth.” He keeps watching me, head tilted to the side, like a bird. “Athdara betrayed you. Did you know he was the one who killed your family?”
“You’re lying.” He’s only trying to distract me, and it’s working. My hands are shaking. “He didn’t.”
“And yet, he controls a great Eosphor, Phaethon, who is a gate-opener. And opening gates means he can bring back the dead. My dead, your dead… He could bring them all back, but he refuses to do it.”
No…
“He’s only interested in his own interests. Why do you think he obeys me, has linked himself to me? He doesn’t care about you or me. He’s on a mission, and to the hells with the rest of us.”
Flynn… My parents… He could bring them back and won’t? He could have broughtmeback and didn’t?
“Shut up!” Snarling, I fly forward, lifting my hand to slap him. “You’re a deceiver. Shut up, you?—”
But he catches my wrist easily, deflecting the blow. “We know one another, Rae, you and I.”
“No, we don’t.” I try to free my wrist, but he holds on tightly, the fine bones in my arm grinding together, sending agony up my injured arm.
“Cast your mind back to older times, lovely thorn,” he says, and shock blasts through me. “You are the thorn, not the flower.”
No!
“Say something.” He’s gazing at me, and the world has fallen away, leaving us alone on this strange shore. “You know what I’m talking about.”
My eyes sting, but I shake my head. “No…”
“And you know me, too. Don’t you? Stop resisting the truth.”
“I don’t know you,” I bite out. “I don’t know?—”
“You are a thorn,” he repeats, and the words cut me like blades. “Not a flower. You don’t bend. You don’t wilt. You are full of anger, pain, and beautiful promise.”
Skies. No.I sag, my knees going from under me as if all my strings have been cut at once. This can’t be happening.No.Those were the last words the boy I’d loved told me on the river shore. Or maybe they were the first. Memory blurs time. Memoryhurts.
He’d called me that. A thorn. He’d said it affectionately, as if it were a compliment. He’d spoken those exact words, and nobody else had been around to hear them, know them.
My mind insists that it can’t be him; he can’t be my Jackal… But the king’s third name, I now recall, is Jeridwen. Isn’t that a fae word for a wild animal? Could it be…?
I’m kneeling there, frozen, lost in the memory, confused, as the fae king kneels beside me and takes my hand, turns it, and lifts it to his lips. “You’ve always been mine, Aethre. If I may have this honor…”
His kiss on my wrist stings. It feels cold. Icy. With a hiss, I snatch my hand away and then stare down at it.
Holy gods, what in the worlds…?
A mark. The kiss has left a mark on my wrist. I recognize it as the emblem of his House, edged in black, branded in my skin.
When I lift my head, I find his gray eyes regarding me calmly. “Why do you act so surprised? We made a promise to one another.”
“One day, I’ll put my mark on you, and you will put yours on me…”
An engagement mark? Incredulous, I lower my hand, my mind whirring away. Is he serious? Did he just declare his intentions to me and ask for my hand in marriage?
It’s impossible, unfathomable, but as I gaze back into those pale eyes, a crystal gray reflecting the sky, it slowly sinks in.
King Rouen, this handsome fae king, must be the boy I once loved. Mars, the Jackal. The love of my life. He has to be. He doesn’t look the same, granted, but I had been in love with a boy. This is a man.
It’s him. He’s here. He’s alive.
And I can’t do it. I can’t fulfill my mission and let death take him from me.
Not again.
