Page 59

She could feel every pulse of her heart like an earthquake.

She could hear Ora lead the hawks in a chorus so piercing that it felt her eardrums would rupture.

She saw light burst open before her eyes and blind her, felt the water spurt up, only to be caught by the wind that ripped and raced and wove solid fingers around her, through her, into her.

Something crashed, but she couldn’t see it.

The only thing she could see as the light faded again was Seidon’s face.

Seidon . She could feel him, feel his blood in her veins, feel the fire of it race through her, burn her, consume her—though rather than make her jerk away, it drew her closer, until her cut finger pressed to his, until the throb of his pulse filled her veins, until her love for him spun like a hurricane around them.

Until her arms were around him and his were around her, and water and wind spiraled and sprayed and whirled.

His lips were on hers, her free hand pressed to his cheek, and she felt water there too warm to be from the bowl or the ocean.

Warm as he was. Only when she felt him quake against her did she realize those droplets were tears.

“Seidon.” Why was he crying? She blinked, trying to clear her vision enough that she could see more than him, trying to calm the frantic beat of her heart, but how could it still when the wind was twirling around her with the force of a gale?

“It was you.” Both his hands moved to frame her face, and when his finger left hers, the pulsing eased. Normal sensation began to edge out whatever that explosion had been. The wind calmed. He rested his forehead against hers. “It was you all along. Not Jade. It was you I felt that day.”

The words were little more than noise in her ears.

She shook her head, pulling away enough to draw a breath.

To realize that chaos had descended on more than the stage—chairs were overturned, people were standing in terrified huddles, Storm had leapt back to the dais, his stance saying he was ready to attack, though he stood frozen behind her father’s outstretched arm.

Her father—face ashen. Frozen as he stared at her.

Her stomach lurched, and she shook her head again, moving her gaze back to Seidon’s. “That can’t be. I told you I was cut by their Blade—but it didn’t leave a mark. It would have, wouldn’t it? If I were…?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why it didn’t.” He reached for her hands, turned them both up, as if at this point he hadn’t learned every crease and bump and whorl. But her palm looked as it always did. No mark had drawn its circle on her flesh.

Another round of keens from overhead.

Storm pushed past Papa, moving to Seidon’s side. “Your arm.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

He reached over and pushed up the light fabric of her sleeve. “That Blade wasn’t the only thing to cut you that day. Ora did—remember?”

Of course she remembered. How could she forget the cut that had made her arm sore for days?

She’d barely had the stomach to look at the wound, beyond dousing it with antiseptic twice a day and rewrapping it until it had healed.

No doubt it had scarred horribly, but she hadn’t actually worn anything to show it in the last month.

Seidon sucked in a breath, even as Storm and Papa did. She glanced down, toward the scar she’d done a fine job of avoiding all these weeks, not so much as examining it in the mirror because she knew it would make her sick.

This time, she didn’t have to voice her question. She saw it just as they did—that the scar wasn’t just a scar. It was a pattern ringing her arm, a pattern of swirls and flourishes that almost looked like Seidon’s Awakening mark, but…not. Not waves. At least not from this angle.

“Geysers.” Seidon ran a finger over the mark, making her shiver. Then sliced an impatient gaze into her. “You didn’t think to mention this?”

“I…” She couldn’t even think to glance away.

Frustrated amusement crept into his gaze. “You haven’t even looked in the mirror in the last month, have you?”

“Other than to braid my hair?” She shook her head.

He breathed a laugh and pulled her against his chest again. “I don’t even care. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it was you.”

It was her. The words clattered, clanged this time. Tried to coalesce into sense.

They had no hope of it, not given the way the crowds on either side of them shrieked and pushed back against the dune. She looked away from Seidon to see what was scaring them—but it was only Ora, circling low in her landing pattern.

Seidon pressed his lips to hers once, fiercely. “I’d like the record to reflect that I told you I loved you before I realized whose blood it was I’d felt. That I proposed before all this. And also—I told you so.”

All this . Her blood. His. All that power, the gale that had whipped around them, the fire that had pulled her straight into his arms— magic . That was what this all meant. She narrowed her eyes. “You did not tell me I’m—”

“I told you the Triada would make a way for us.” He smiled, thumbs stroking over her cheekbones.

Skies, but every simple little touch of his hands or lips felt like electricity now—the pleasure she’d always felt multiplied by a thousand.

A million. By infinity itself. Was that the result of this…

magic? But how? There were countless Awakened in the world, and she’d never heard of any of them having heightened sensations.

They rather described it as an extra sense, awareness of something new.

But then, they’d all had a mark left by the Blade on their palms, not one ringing their arm where a hawk cut them.

She looked to where Ora was flapping down to the sand near the water’s edge.

Arden heard the shriek of fear from the gathered crowd—because of course they didn’t know she’d been riding the hawk for the last month, that Ora posed no threat.

Children screamed and climbed their parents like trees, mothers shouted for someone to do something.

Men surged forward, hands on the hilts of the ceremonial blades so many wore to the Awakening as a memorial of the Blade.

Panic flamed through her even more fiercely than Seidon’s kiss had done. She sprang forward, off the dais, arms flying out. “No!”

A column of wind shot down from above, pushed out into walls on either side of her. She felt it rip at her hair, whip at her dress—she felt it in her fingers, tingling the tips like Seidon’s blood. A few of the quickest men it knocked backward. Most it turned away.

Had…had she done that? She dropped her arms. The wind died down. “What in the world?”

Seidon was apparently only a half-step behind her. His hand settled on her waist. “I believe that’s what we’re calling ‘sky magic,’ Wind Rider.”

Sky magic . What the mer thought Jade possessed—that was what Arden had? But then that meant…her sister…

More noise kicked up from the crowd, but she felt Seidon lift an arm. “Hold! The hawk is a friend of the lady’s. She will not hurt anyone.”

Ora took two of her awkward bird steps forward. Then…Arden didn’t even know how to describe it. She…shook. Shivered. Shimmered.

Shifted.

One moment she was looking at the Great Golden Sea Hawk who had become her beloved companion…

the next she saw a—a woman. Taller even than Arden but a fraction the size of the bird, with hair the same strange pale gold, features too sharp and, well, hawkish to be called beautiful, but too symmetrical to be called anything else.

She wore a gown that at once looked like clothing and feathers.

Arden’s fingers settled over Seidon’s. “Am I hallucinating?”

“Pretty sure I am,” he murmured into her ear.

Something clattered to the dais. Then, a moment later, Papa stumbled to her side. And his single word shattered the world anew. “Angelica?”

Angelica . She knew the name—how could she not?

And she’d seen old images of her mother, of the two of them on their wedding day, of the three of them on the day Arden was born.

But in all those images—which she honestly hadn’t even looked at in years—the woman had been ordinary.

Dull, even, especially in the ones with Arden.

Her health had already been failing. She’d already been dying.

The woman who strode their way now was alive, vibrant, all but glowing. Her feather-gown ruffled in the breeze—and strapped to her back, Arden now saw, was a wicked-looking curved blade that resembled a talon. She was no delicately crafted lady—she was a warrior.

Skies above. This made no sense. Hawks and women were two separate things. Not…she…this…

Absolute silence fell behind them. Or maybe it was that Arden couldn’t hear anything above the rushing of her own blood.

As the…creature…drew nearer, her golden eyes moved over Arden’s face, then shifted to Papa’s. Over to Seidon’s. Even to Storm’s.

She knew those eyes. She looked into those eyes every day. It was Ora. Somehow.

It was…her mother. Arden eased a step forward. Ora—Angelica?— Mother? —opened her arms. “My precious girl.”

The words broke something inside her. They were words she heard all the time from Papa, from Sapphire.

Words she couldn’t ever remember hearing in this voice.

And yet she knew the voice. Knew the words in it.

Felt them resonate in the center of her bones.

She stepped forward, rushed across those last few feet, and let the woman’s strong arms close around her.

She smelled like feathers and wind and sea—like Ora. So familiar. So strange. “Mother?”

Her mother’s arms held tight for an eternal moment, and then one of her hands lifted to rest on Arden’s head. Ora pulled away enough to send that familiar golden gaze over Arden’s face, as if she hadn’t seen her yesterday.