Page 31

W ith fumbling steps, I walked out of the waves and onto the wet sand. The girl in my arms moaned, her head lolling over my forearm, but I could only stare after the two nekgya. They had turned to walk back into the lagoon. On either side of their spines sat two grotesque knots of flesh.

Wing stumps.

Theodore was at my side. He scooped the girl from my arms, speaking to me in low, commanding tones, but I couldn’t grasp his words.

I could only think of the prayer I’d spoken over and over again, the blood I’d given. Shame stuck through me like barbs in my pitiful flesh. My knees hit the sand, mind spinning.

Bound to Eusia. To all the nekgya. That was why they didn’t hurt me. Because it was my power that ran through their decaying veins.

“Imogen, help.” Theodore had laid the girl on the wet sand behind me.

His hands rested on one of the wounds on her arm that spilled red onto the sand.

My stomach turned at the gruesome sight, at the heartbreaking way her mother dragged herself across the beach to be at her side.

More villagers had filled in around them, torches in hand.

Even in the harsh, unsteady light, I could see how the crowd watched me. Carefully. With suspicion. On unsteady legs, I rose and set myself beside Theodore. I avoided the scornful glares of the onlookers, but I deserved each and every one.

My fingers shook as I touched a gash on the girl’s stomach and closed my eyes.

With my heart racing, and my own power still pulsing through me, Theodore’s was easier to find and hold.

It vibrated down my arm. Heat cascaded to the tips of my fingers.

When I moved my hand away from the wound, the villagers gasped.

I’d healed it, leaving behind only a small white scar.

The girl’s mother looked up at me, aghast. A man behind Theodore asked, “What is she, Your Majesty?” The distrust in his voice was clear as the cloudless sky. “Is she a Mage? A spell woman?”

The teeth-bared, fear-drenched question told me precisely how fearfully a spell woman was regarded.

There was only one Mage Seer permitted per kingdom, their magic and spell work heavily restricted.

What could I tell them? I was Ligea’s daughter.

Blood-bound to both their king and the monsters that hunt them.

There was no way to explain who I was, what I’d done, without earning these villagers’ ire and sending a ripple of contempt through the surrounding villages.

Theodore was calm and collected beside me. “She’s your queen.”

My head snapped toward him. “What are you doing?”

He ignored me, tending to the last of the girl’s wounds instead. “Your daughter will be just fine with rest and care,” he said to the astonished mother. He took my arm, helped me to stand. “We need a hut for the night,” he said to one of the older women in the crowd, “if you’d oblige us.”

The request moved the entire party on the beach into action. The villagers voiced their thanks and their welcomes. Some rushed back toward the huts to prepare for us. Others held their torches high, lighting our path.

“Are you mad?” I whispered at his side. “What the hell are you thinking?”

His face was impassive as ever. Ever the king, he held himself straight as he went to the water to wash the blood from his hands and forearms. Then he was pulling me along, trying to keep some distance between us and the crowd as we made our way back toward the huts. “Not now.”

“Yes, now.” My guilt was too tremendous to shake. “I’m not their queen. I did this to them. I’ve given my blood—”

There was a jerk on my arm, a grunt of frustration, and then Theodore’s lips were on mine. They were soft, warm, but the kiss was forceful, laced with command. He pulled back just far enough to glare at me.

A quiet, forlorn moan rolled through my chest. “What are—”

His hand hooked around the back of my neck, and he spoke against my lips. “I am keeping you safe.”

“But—”

He kissed me again. This time it was gentle, lips moving against mine painfully slowly.

When he pulled away, taking my bottom lip between his as he did, he spoke in a clipped, heated whisper.

“Gods, you don’t know when to shut up.” Then, as quickly as he’d kissed me, he took my hand and hauled me toward the village with determined strides.

My only response was a breathy, involuntary protest.

A gray-haired woman led us to one of the larger huts. Theodore urged me inside before requesting that our horses be cared for. I blundered across the packed dirt floor, toward the quaint hearth. My eyes burned and I squeezed them shut.

“Bloody fucking Gods, Imogen.” Theodore forced the door closed and dropped the strip of wood into the metal anchors to bar it.

Then he went about shuttering and locking the three little windows.

“When I tell you not now, you listen.” He’d worked to rein in his volume, but not a bit of his anger.

“The sea villages are superstitious and zealous. They honor the Great Gods wholeheartedly. They shun whatever power they cannot understand. If you were not under my explicit protection—if I hadn’t made a show of my care for and trust in you—they would have gone after you. ”

The lingering heat of his lips went cold. That was why he’d kissed me. I swallowed past the mass in my throat. “I’d deserve it.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s because of my cowardice, my selfishness, that these people live in fear. It’s because of me that they’re killed and taken.”

Theodore scrubbed his face at a washbasin. “Keep your voice down, Imogen.”

I kicked off my wet boots, skin crawling at the touch of the seawater.

“Don’t be gentle with me now, Theo. Tell me what a coward I am.

Tell me how I am a shell of what I should be.

Aren’t you disgusted by me and what I have done to your people?

To my people? Don’t you want me ripped from your blood as soon as possible?

I am the reason the nekgya exist at all! ”

He rounded on me. “Keep your Godsdamned voice down.” His wide eyes reflected the hearth flame.

The effect was wholly fitting of his quiet rage.

He pulled in a breath to steady himself and his gaze fell to my lips.

He took a step nearer. Another. He tilted his head like he might kiss me again.

“I won’t punish you. You are doing a fine job of it yourself. ”

“That doesn’t sound like you.” My voice was sharp, but I couldn’t deny the pull he had on me.

I wanted to be soothed, consumed by him, but I forced a step back.

“It’s false,” I said. “Whatever we think we feel for one another—that burst of warmth we feel in our stomach when we touch—it’s a trick of the bond.

I am everything you said I was. Fearful, and irresponsible, and you should give me what I deserve.

Don’t let the bond make you neglect to show me the same penalty you would any subject who caused harm to your people. ”

His gaze was impossibly dark, brows low, jaw severely set. “You want me to blame you? To punish you?”

My chest tightened. “Yes,” I whispered.

He swallowed hard. “I blame Nemea, ” he said, voice dangerous.

“It’s Nemea who has used you since you were a child.

Nemea who knew what you were and carved fear into you.

He bent you into the shape he desired. And even after all that mistreatment you did not break.

In spite of him, you are alive. I’d wager you are braver and fiercer than any Great God or Goddess ever was.

” His own voice had risen, and it boomed through the little hut, but he caught himself and stilled.

His gaze cut straight through me. A slow breath pushed through his lips.

One step, another, and he closed the little space between us once more.

He spoke softly now, with awe in his voice, in his gaze, as if he were uttering a prayer. “You are peerless.”

Amid the heaviness of my guilt and shame and terror, for a moment, he made me feel weightless. “No, I’m not—”

“I won’t argue with you, Imogen.” Theodore reached up and, so slowly, wrapped an arm around my waist. “Not tonight.” His other arm encircled my shoulders and then he pressed my body to his.

A shaky exhale fell through my lips. I clung to him, willing my heart to slow. “Can the Mage Seer sever both bonds? Ours and the one I share with Eusia?”

After a long beat, he nodded. “We’ll ride all day tomorrow.

I’ll get you there as fast as I can.” His hand drifted up and down my back, fingers playing through my ratty braid.

I let myself soften against him, let my head rest fully on his strong shoulder.

A breathy, longing sound rose in me, and I couldn’t tell if the resplendent heat flooding through my center was our bond or my desire.

I looked up, noted the nearness of his lips, how hard and hot and inviting he was.

Our breaths slowed and knit together between us, and then with a final, remorseful exhale, Theodore released me.

He took a deliberate step back. Color had bloomed on his cheekbones; his mouth was soft and parted.

He adjusted his shirt and gestured to the little bedstead in the corner. “You need to get some sleep, Imogen.”

I looked to the bed, then back at Theodore.

It was comfort I wanted. Oblivion, distraction.

I wanted to lose myself in him, wanted to let him burn away the scourge of despair that grew within me.

The feel of his body still lingered over my own.

I opened my mouth, the request just forming on my tongue: Come with me.

I am weary and empty, and you can make it right.

But I stopped myself.

He stared at me with unreadable intensity, and the thought of him seeing me as some desire-riddled creature, unable to control myself after a night as awful as this one. You are peerless, he’d said. I couldn’t stomach him thinking less of me again.

My gaze dropped to the ground between us. “Good night.”