Page 20 of Sea of Evil and Desire (The Deep Saga #1)

18

Finn

I slammed my fist into the dusty counter.

Why was I so agitated?

The veins in my arms were pronounced as I curled my fingers. It was day three, and I always got unsettled on day three. I needed to return to the water. I could feel it singing to me as it lapped against the distant cliffs—a siren call. I blew out a long breath.

Why should I care if she had lunch with Aranare?

Still, even as I dispelled the thought, something coiled, as if a beast slumbering deep inside me had been prodded, and I found myself pacing between the shelves of odds and ends cluttering this junkyard.

I peered through the dusty window, but they had left the café.

What was this—this gnawing, ugly thing slithering through my chest?

I raked a hand through my hair, swallowing the heat that crept up my throat. It was not anger, not possessiveness. No, this was something else, something dangerous.

My fists curled again as I remembered how she had leaned forward, listening to him, her green eyes reflecting the sunlight. My fingers twitched with a sudden, reckless urge to find them and drag her away, to remind her where she truly belonged.

But where was that?

With me?

I let out a long, slow breath as my jaw tightened. No. I couldn’t think like this. I had spent a lifetime fortifying my walls, keeping my heart out of reach of foolish things like longing. But then she came, crashing into my world like a rogue wave, tearing through every carefully built defense.

And now I was left drowning.

I was drowning in the way she tilted her head, the curve of her lips as she spoke, and the way she had goddamn looked at me as we sat in that lighthouse and she let down her walls.

Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to each other—two broken pieces trying to fit together. Her words caressed my mind, reminding me that hope is the most beautiful and simultaneously painful word in the English language.

I should turn away.

I should let this be.

She wasn’t broken, but I was, and I was afraid if she let me too close, I’d hurt her. After all, I’d already tried.

I didn’t deserve her.

What would I have done if my gifts had worked at my house or on those treacherous misty rocks I led her onto? I would have found out everything my father wanted and never let myself get this close.

My pulse hammered like the ocean against the jagged cliffs adorning this wild coastline. I exhaled and stretched. This was probably just the usual day-three sickness.

There was a presence behind me, and I whipped around.

Inegar .

He was looking at me from under those bushy brows in a way that tested my patience. His eyes traveled from my furrowed brow to the veins now protruding from my forearms as I clenched and unclenched my fists.

“Your father would tell you you’re a fool for showing such weakness, and your mother the same if she were still around.” He had the nerve to look sympathetic, as if he were saying this because he cared and not because he was meddlesome.

My father was the reason I’d learned to hide my feelings. I suspected this was why my emotional shields worked on the girl when my other mind magic didn’t. My song had reached her too—she must love music. Books and melodies. I was gathering pieces of her, tucking them away like rare treasures, hoarding every detail as if they were jewels meant only for me.

“It’s day three,” I ground out, focusing on breathing and controlling the untamable beast that had awoken inside me, making me want to smash the pawnshop to pieces, the same way she’d broken the walls inside me down.

“Yes, perhaps a visit home to your fiancée would help.”

At the way Inegar emphasized that word, I was overcome with the urge to kick something. I needed a drink or to hurt someone. I needed to do what I usually did to feel nothing.

He didn’t reply, simply began rifling through some of the worthless crap stacked on the dusty shelves behind the counter.

My breathing began to steady, and the veins in my arms retreated.

“Why do you and my father insist on keeping this junkyard anyway?” I cast my eyes over the shelves surrounding us, filled with piles of garbage from a consumer society, now covered in dust.

Inegar flicked a speck of dirt from an old compass, his eyes shifting with something unreadable. “Junk, you call it?” He sighed. “Perhaps. But something is waiting to be found among the rusted trinkets and forgotten relics. Something that was lost long before you or I took our first breath.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. It was another one of my father’s quests, no doubt. At least he hadn’t seen fit to involve me in this charade.

Inegar met my gaze. “Just don’t forget your duty, boy. You were born privileged, and with that comes responsibilities.”

A muscle ticked in my jaw; this old man was getting on my last nerve today.

I could curse day three and lay the blame at Inegar’s feet, but deep down, I knew the truth. This pain, this unchecked fury clawing at my insides—it was all because of her.