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Around us, drums and flutes fill the air with celebration, but under the music there is another sound I can nearly hear.
It’s the quiet, steady thrum that seems to bind him to me.
Amber says it’s like that between true mates. Something she callsthe zareth.
I need to ask him about it, and I will. When it seems like the right time.
I mean, for all I know, it might only be my imagination.
We step off the path and onto the slick black rocks, the ones warmed by sun and pounded by spray, and the handlers are waiting—two elders with hands like driftwood and eyes the color of storm glass.
Below them, the water is a moving mirror, and where it trembles the surface breaks into slow, deliberate arcs.
The curved fin whales.
I gasp but feel my lips tilt into an inevitable smile.
Up close, their skins are the color of coins—silver with veins of gold—and when they rise, the whole inlet sings in a low, whale-deep note that makes my teeth hum.
“Lady Phoebe,” one of the handlers says, voice worn soft from years of shouting over surf and wind, and for a stupid, joyous second the title makes me dizzy.
He smiles as if he’s been waiting to see me try something brave.
“They’ll show you everything if you know how to listen.”
I edge closer, heart bumping, and Kael stays a half step back like he’s giving me room to be brave and, also, to make a spectacle of himself by being exactly the domineering Lord he is.
His hand brushes my elbow, and the electricity that shoots through me is embarrassingly loud in my head.
“Are they dangerous?” I ask first, seeing the handlers’ knives and ropes and the way they move with practiced caution.
The older woman—more seaweed braided hair, her sunburnt skin shiny like wet rocks—laughs.
“Only if you make them so. They are gentle in their need. They eat big fish, crusted prawns when the season calls, and the youngsters like the tender belly meat we throw them. You never throw into the blowhole—always beside the head, with a little bow. Show respect and they answer.”
“How do they sleep?”
I ask, suddenly curious about everything—the way they breathe, the way they tilt in the water.
“They rest in slow drift,” the man says, tilting his head to show me the eddies near the kelp beds.
“Not deep sleep like you think. They surface, hang in the current in pods, half-dreaming with one eye on the world. They sing to each other while they sleep. That song you feel in your ribs? That’s thesleep sung. It keeps the pod together.”
He points, and my gaze drops beneath the surface.
There—shadowed like a moving island—are two larger backs close together, and a smaller shape riding between them, flipping in a clumsy, joyful way.
A calf.
It rolls onto its side and splashes, sending a shower of glitter into the air.
My breath stops.
The handlers exchange a look that is all soft pride.
“They mate for life,” the older woman says, watching me watch the family.
“Pairs stay together. They guard their young with a patience that makes heroes of us all. Here—” she hands me a fish from the basket, wrapped in kelp to keep my hands from slipping. “When you feed, you do it like this. Toss gently, step back, bow. Never touch the mouth.”
