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No one is wondering where I am.
I have no pets. No close friends. Or family.
And even if there was—could I really say with any degree of honesty that any of them hold a candle to Kael?
I already know I couldn’t.
I suppose I have some soul searching to do. I mean, it’s crazy to fall for the guy,er, Demon Lord, who kidnapped me to another world—or is it?
Anyway, for now, I’m just going to take in everything I can while I’m here—in this scary amazing place called Nightfall where the moon turns from purple to blue, the grasses go from brown to black, and the water is so crystalline and beautiful it makes me cry.
I have never seen anything like it. Don’t know if I could have dreamed it, either. But it feels right to me, somehow.
He feels right, too.
I haven’t seen him yet, and it bugs me that I miss him. Still, I go with Amber, and after I eat, we both walk outside.
The air is a living thing—salt and sugar and smoke from the festival fires.
Someone is roasting kelp cakes, and the smoke curls into the sky like a slow exhale.
A cool breeze lifts my hair, and the temperature sits at a perfect, ridiculous seventy degrees, as if Nightfall itself wants us comfortable while it shows off.
Something inside my chest loosens, like a knot finally giving.
People spill into the square in a tide of sea-foam eyes and laughter.
Stalls groan with sugared fruit that glitters like candy pulled from moonlight, nets of shellfish clack together, and children streak by with sticky hands, leaving little footprints of happiness in the dust.
Boats rest along the inlet, their hulls carved with curling runes and inlaid mother-of-pearl.
Amber explains those are kelp lanterns braided into the rigging, and along the rails making them glow. Each one pulses with a soft green light that makes the water look like liquid glass lit from within.
The lanterns sway, and the whole bay winks.
When the people see us—when they see me—they cheer.
Not a murmur but a rushing sound, like waves finding a narrow channel.
It’s overwhelming.Terrifying. Maybe a little wonderful.
“Smile, Telya,” Kael murmurs in my ear, appearing as if the night folded him up and set him down right beside me.
His hand is warm and heavy at the small of my back.
His fingers splay in that possessive way that makes my skin prickle.
The touch is steadying, like an anchor sliding home.
“They’ve waited for this union longer than you know.”
Easy for him to say. He was born to this. I was taken from an aquarium med pool and plunked into the middle of what looks like a royal coronation.
He waves and bows with a graceful, practiced motion as we thread through the crowd toward the pier, and I am still fumbling with the enormity of it all. Greetings are called out—some in a language that sounds like wind through shells, some in halting English—and I answer with what I hope passes for a smile.
He helps me up the gangplank of the boat—a vessel fit for the Tidal Lands’ Lord.
It smells of salt and warm wood. The deck is a beautiful patchwork of dark driftwood and amber planks polished to a wet sheen.
