Page 29

I stumbled over the sand and hurried toward the cottage and horses. “We have to go.”

Theodore was at my heels. He grabbed my wrist and yanked me to a halt. “Go where?”

I looked back out toward Nemea’s haunting ships. “We need to ride through the night, unbind ourselves as quickly as possible. I need to leave Varya. I need to keep as far from Nemea’s men as I can.”

He cupped my cheek, forced my gaze to his. “You need sleep. And food. I’m not letting you go to the Mage Seer tired and hungry. That’ll only make the severance worse for you.”

“Please.” Fear wormed through me so deeply that I struggled to see his reason. “Please, just a few more hours on the horses. Then I’ll try to sleep. I promise.”

His brow furrowed, and then finally he gave me a quick nod. “A few more hours.” His hand left my cheek. “Then I’m force-feeding you and tying you to your bedroll with a blanket.”

My chin quivered as I nodded my agreement.

Once I was back on my mare, my sore body raged against my decision to ride on.

The road grew so narrow that the grapevines were close enough for me to reach out and touch.

I dragged my fingers over the soft, wavering leaves.

Despite my discomfort, I was grateful to be moving rather than sitting in one place.

It helped ease the clamp that had set itself around my ribs at the sight of those ships.

We passed row after twisted row of vines, and just as the rest of the daylight slipped away, Theodore looked at me over his shoulder. “You’re tired.”

I hadn’t the energy to refute him. “Is there a place to sleep nearby?”

He shook his head. “We’ll have to tuck in between the vines.

” He turned us down one of the rows. At the end, a thatch of flowering trees formed a small barrier between the vineyard and where the beach began.

The sky had changed to a deep, inky blue, and we dismounted and tied up the horses.

The clearing was tight. I skirted around horses and posts to get my bedroll, when one of the vines tickled my cheek.

I paused. “Your Majesty?”

He huffed a laugh. “Call me Theo.”

“Theo.” I liked the shape of his name on my tongue. “I need to learn how to control my power. Nemea’s too close. Ligea could have swum out into the water and sunk those ships. I should be able to as well.”

He stopped unspooling a bedroll. “I’ll teach you how to use my power. Hopefully it will help you figure out your own.” He rummaged through the saddlebag for the dried meat and bread and handed it to me. “In the morning. Once you’re rested and fed.”

He was right. Exhaustion cut through my every muscle, but my mind still whirred.

I bit off a hunk of bread and threw open my bedroll.

I wrapped a blanket over my shoulders, then settled onto my back, food forgotten at my feet.

“Do you recall the princess’s necklace?” I whispered as I stared up at the sky.

Theodore lay an arm’s length away. “It’s identical to my ring. ”

“It’s likely a coincidence.”

“Hmm.” That was logical and yet it pestered me like an itch I could not scratch. The waves hushed in the distance, insects sang, and the breeze shook through the leaves above us. “Theo?” I whispered.

“Yes,” he said, groggily.

“Why is there a stained-glass Siren on your ship?”

“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”

I rolled onto my side to face him. “I’m usually a far more agreeable bedfellow. I’m anxious. My mind is racing.”

“All right.” He stood up, then dragged his bedroll toward the base of the nearest vine. “Come here.”

I propped up on an elbow. “What are you doing?”

“We’ll do the lesson now. I’ll tell you about the Siren.” He knelt. “And then in the morning you’ll let me sleep in.”

I made my way toward him. “You strike me as the kind that rises with the sun.” I sat in front of the vine.

“Scoot up.” He set a hand to my back. “You need to be able to touch its base.” He nudged me forward and just that small contact sent a luxuriant heat slinking through my whole body.

It quieted the chaos in my mind. “Good,” he said, when I was close enough.

“And I wake with the sun when I’m well rested. Which you, my dear, are preventing.”

His hand skated down my arm, tightening at my wrist. “Put your fingers into the earth. Dig them in.” I dug through the packed soil to where it was cool. “Stay like that.”

The night was balmy, the air light and comfortable. I could make out his features in the moonlight, the sharp cheekbones and jaw. Those full lips. The messy locks that fell over his brow.

I stared at him unabashedly, and damn him, he relished the attention. A slow smile tipped his mouth. “The Siren on my ship. Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

It was, blessedly, too dark for him to see my blush. “Yes. The Siren.”

“When my father, Athan, was young, he fell in love with a Siren. Before that, she’d sunk one of his ships.

He’d been furious. He had a notable temper, my father, and he went after her to seek some sort of payment for the loss.

I’m unsure of his logic there—approaching a Siren like that is dangerous—but his temper and crown made him idiotically bold.

Unsurprisingly, when he confronted her, she was utterly unfazed by him.

She didn’t care that he was a prince, nor that he was furious with her.

He made empty threats of punishment, which she listened to with a blank face. ”

Theodore leaned forward to check my hands. “Still in the dirt?”

I nodded.

“Good.” He leaned back and looked at me with his head tilted to the side as he went on.

“Naturally, because this Siren thought nothing of my father, he fell head over heels. Eventually, thank the Gods I don’t know the details of how, they became lovers.

And they were for years and years. He had a new ship commissioned and immortalized her in that stained-glass window.

But my father was the son of a Great God and as his father’s strength waned and his time to take the crown grew closer, he was expected to marry a noble wife.

To have an heir. And he did. He married my mother, had children before me that didn’t survive.

But he also kept his lover as his mistress.

He flaunted her, brought her with him to balls and dinners.

Lavished her with gifts that he didn’t give to my mother.

My mother loathed her. And my father too, I expect, though she was wise enough to never let on.

His Siren disappeared one day, likely a nekgya attack. I was born a year or so later.”

A moaning breeze filled the quiet between us. I rolled the soil between my fingers. “That’s heartbreaking. For your mother, of course, being treated so terribly. But for your father and this Siren too. They loved each other and they weren’t allowed to be together the way they wanted to be.”

“I don’t see them as the victims of that story.” Theodore looked away, deep in thought. “When the blood of the Great Gods runs through your veins, you don’t get to have what you want.”

“Who told you that? Certainly not your father.”

“No. He believed the opposite.” Theodore cleared his throat, sat quiet for a long moment. “He thought his divinity guaranteed him his every desire. And that made him callous and indulgent. It made him hurt others.”

“I see.” Theodore took my wrist again, almost absently. “And so, you have tried to shape yourself into his opposite.”

His thumb swiped over my skin. “According to you, doing so has made me into his very image.”

My lips parted. “You seem far better than your father.” I searched his face in the silver light, hungry for any emotion he might offer up. Suddenly certain that knowing him better would make me feel fed. “But I can understand now why I put you so ill at ease.”

“I wouldn’t say you put me ill at ease, Imogen.” He released me and leaned back onto his hands. “Quite the opposite. Unfortunately.”

“Oh.” My voice was dangerously breathy when I finally asked, “How much longer do I need to sit with my hands in the dirt?”

He gave me a piercing look. “A week.”

I froze. A mischievous grin spread slowly across his face.

“You’re despicable.” I threw a clod of dirt at him. “How long were you going to make me sit here?”

His laugh rumbled around me. I threw more chunks of earth.

“All right.” He held up surrendering hands.

“All right. I’m sorry. Stand up.” His laughter rang through the night as he helped me to stand.

A warm arm wrapped around my waist, and the solid heat of his body pressed against my back.

The calloused fingers of his other hand took my wrist, and he extended my arm out toward a curling vine—not too close.

He pressed his cheek to mine as he asked, “What does your power feel like?”

Gooseflesh cascaded down my body. The bond flared like a lit candle. I had to swallow hard before I could muster any thought at all. “It starts like a hum,” I finally managed.

“Where?”

“Here.” His other hand rested firmly over my solar plexus, and I placed my own over it. “But it builds and climbs up to my throat.”

“Mine is the same,” he said. “But instead of building to my throat, it moves toward my hands.” He gave my wrist a squeeze. “Tell the vine to curl around your finger.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You haven’t tried.”

My nerves jolted at the thought of being incapable. At the thought of him watching me fail. I pulled a breath deep into my chest.

“Breathe out,” he said, soft as mist. He pressed his hand against my stomach, the gesture both commanding and supportive at once. “Focus. Try. ”

Focusing would be a feat with his body pressed against mine.

He was solid, unflinching, and I flexed my sore muscles so as to keep myself from pressing into him.

I’d staved off the exhaustion of the last few days as best as I could, but now, surrounded by the night and Theodore’s body, all I wanted to do was give in.