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Then I watch as he dips his hand into the water, and the kelp lanterns ripple toward him like obedient moths.
He hums something under his breath, and a current skirts the hull, playful and quick.
The boat rocks in response, and I think of how easy it would be to fall—off the plank, off the world—right into him.
“Careful,” I say, half to him, half to myself. “You’ll make me fall.”
He looks at me—really looks—and the hunger I’ve seen before flares and folds into something warmer.
“Then fall, Telya. I already have, and it’s not that bad. Besides, I’ll catch you,” he says, and the confession lands like a stone in my chest.
The pull between us answers like an echo. Older than either of us, louder than ceremony and politics, quiet and certain as the moon.
I close my fingers around his sleeve.
For the first time since the whirlpool tore my life apart, I no longer want to run.
I want to stand on this deck while the world unfurls and learn how to breathe in Nightfall’s air.
I want to learn the names of the tides and the customs and how the bright dolphin creatures—the curved fin whales—like to be greeted.
I want, more and more dangerously, to know him—this strange Demon Lord who keeps surprising me with small mercies and larger hunger.
As the boat slides out into the open, the kelp lanterns behind us wink and the sea opens ahead, a wash of every blue I can’t name.
Somewhere, a creature jumps, and the spray glitters like broken glass.
Kael’s tail slides along my waist, an unhurried reminder that he is here.
My heart answers in a rhythm I’m starting to recognize—one that syncs, irritably and wonderfully, with the rise and fall of the tide.
And I wonder if Kael means it when he says he’s already fallen.
Chapter 14
Kael
Aboard the Lordof Water’s Ceremonial Ship
I can’t help the small, ridiculous part of me that wonders if I’ve been doing this all wrong.
Seducing Fate by force of will sounds noble in tavern stories—less so when you say it aloud to yourself at dawn.
Trying to trick the Fates into believing I have made a true zareth with a human woman because her heart is soft and I need a boon from the old magics?
It sounds insane when I let it sit in my mouth.
And yet the hunger between us isn’t a thing I invented.
The passion we’ve shared is a thing that leaves the taste of salt on my tongue and the after-echo of her laugh in my ears.
For one who has kept watch over tides and treaties for as long as I have, that is saying everything.
Phoebe is an enigma.
She’s feisty and stubborn, and she can bite back in a way that still startles me.
She’s also gentle, trusting, and unguarded, giving in the small ways that take longer to learn.
