Page 64 of Of Songs and Silence

In a desperate move to distract myself, I pull some seaweed from the side tray, hastily throwing together memorials. I’m so lost in the familiar actions of weaving the seaweed into intricate patterns that I miss the telltale thrumming in my veins, the instant relief that signifies Ari’s arrival.

“They do not deserve your memorials, Kala, when they were fighting for the right to own you against your will.” He is closer to me than he usually stands, the heat from his chest emanating to my back.

His wording strikes me as interesting. Own me against my will, as opposed to owning me with my permission.

Isn’t that what Ari does?

I spin around to face him, and for once, he doesn’t move away. Has the day worn on him the same way it has me? The constant threat of me belonging to someone else when it feels so impossibly wrong to belong to anyone but Ari.

Just as he belongs to me.

I know this like I know my own soul, and he is getting worse at hiding the fact that he knows it, too.

I haven’t bothered to shield my thoughts since he walked in. Some part of me recognizes that I’m trying to goad him into action, into speaking, acknowledgement, literally anything but this gut-wrenching, infuriating game we’ve been playing.

His hands clench at his sides, but I don’t back down. My shields are stronger, now. He has no need to hide this anymore.

Slowly, I lean forward, pulled toward him as surely as a fish caught on a line.

“Kala.” The word is a warning.

A demand.

A plea.

And I ignore it, all the same, crushing my mouth against his.

Whatever self-control he has been holding fast to dissolves the moment our lips meet. Lightning surges between us, a heat that burns deeply from his soul to mine. Instead of sating the part of me that all but begs for him, this kiss only illuminates the yawning void he hasn’t yet filled.

This is right. I know it is.

We are supposed to be this way, his skin on mine, his mind melding against my own.

His hands snake around my back, fingertips digging into my skin as he tugs me even closer to deepen the kiss. His tongue presses against the seam of my lips, parting them so he can taste me.

I don’t hesitate before opening them further, his tongue dancing against mine to a symphony only we can hear. Fireworks explode behind my eyes, reverberating through my body at each point of contact.

A dam has broken and all I know, all I can see and feel and taste is him. He glides me back against the wall, his mouth never breaking contact with mine—claiming me just as surely as I have wanted to claim him.

He shifts his attention to my neck, his lips and tongue leaving a trail of fire in their wake. I can hardly breathe.

“Tell me what this is,” I say as my hands snake up his arms, latching around his neck and toying with the ends of his silken waves. “Please.”

On that word, his walls come crashing down.

I see everything, then.

The moment I hit the water, when my thoughts came cascading into his. The surge of ownership, of protection, of pure, unadulterated longing that he was so unprepared for, even when he had long since figured out who I was to him.

The dance. The way he almost murdered the man who dared to approach me.

A song.Thesong. The same haunting melody that I heard for weeks, pulsing through him, leading him to the cliffs just outside my window. The moment that he saw my face in the tower. The recognition.

Each agonizing moment since we’ve been here, tinged with fear and panic andwant. His sleepless nights. His unending frustration.

It’s all open to me, a barrage of emotion and memories I seem to be pulling directly from his mind. I greedily sort through them, looking for the word. The definition. The confirmation.

And finally, there it is. A conversation with a woman I don’t recognize, bits and phrases flitting from his mind.

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