I was almost afraid that Sean would cancel the wedding traditions but they were still on, six hours of listening to a priest, but I got to hold Sean’s hand, and he spent the whole time looking intent and very serious as he studied me. His eyes seemed to say, “The world is going to try and destroy you, but it will break against my body or break me.” And I stared back like, “I wish I were a Soremni female and could make you brogge jelly for the rest of your life.” But I wasn’t a Soremni female, no matter how well I nailed the feast, which I did.
I worked for three days on that feast, had all the timing down and didn’t have any help no matter how many times Sorsha offered. I completely abandoned my internship while I cooked in the big kitchen of Sean’s team’s wing. Spyguy came to check on me periodically but didn’t get in the way. Finally, I put out my glorious creations, and Sean came in. Junie was there recording the whole thing, like she’d recorded my cooking, but she stayed in the background of the water hall.
Sean swam up to me, kissed my hands one at a time and leaned close to murmur, “There’s no way I can eat all of this in one sitting. This is going to take all day. I really hope you brought snacks for you and that you like watching me eat.”
I beamed back and put my hands on his shoulders. “I’ve got jelly sticks. And I love watching you do everything.”
He was right; it took hours. He didn’t throw up, just kept eating slow and steady, until the platters were decimated. At the end, he got up, held out his hand to me, and I swam to his side. I threw my arms around his waist and then he made a sound that made me pull back. I didn’t want him puking in front of the cameras.
“Be gentle. I think I’m not going to be able to move for a few days.”
“It’s a really weird custom, the cooking thing.”
“Not at all. It’s the calories for breeding. All of the nutrients you need for viable sperm is found in those dishes.”
“But you can’t move.”
He pulled me against him again. “Neither can you.”
So that was it. We were officially Soremni married. There were only two more games. Sean was in the lead even though the distance was slim between him and the king. Thing was, I didn’t feel like we were any more married than usual.
I’d work on music or homework, and he’d work on machinery in the evenings until I got tired and went to bed, either his bed or mine. He always spent some time sleeping with me, but he always went to bed after I did and got up before. He was still kind of icy all the time. When we were in the Chromodome, he’d sometime look at Oliver and smile, but it was a dangerous smile that gave me shivers.
Finally, it was the second to last game. I sat in my special bubble, ignoring the people wearing yellow shirts, the protest group who didn’t want their ruler dictated to by some arbitrary games.
The first player was my mother. She was beautiful, vicious, took her time ripping apart her Vashni opponent. She really liked fighting Vashni, maybe getting revenge for being exiled or something. Then it was Peter. He fought one of the king’s men and was struggling until the end when he showed what he was made of, hard shells and stuff. He pinned the gladiator to the floor, impermeable and completely solid until the king’s man went unconscious. That was as good as drawing blood. Apparently.
After that it was Sean. ‘Takeo! Takeo! Takeo!’ There were also other chants, ‘Monsters die! Monsters Die!’ that kind of thing. Sean circled another gladiator. He was as large as Sean, but had golden plates of armor. This would be a more human battle. Sean would kill him, of course he would, but I still leaned forward and gripped the edge of my seat.
The fight went on for ages until finally Sean started attacking fierce, fast, and the other fell back. Sean went after him then suddenly Sean’s movement slowed, his head fell forward, and then he crashed into the gladiator, completely limp.
I stared at Sean, drifting in the water, at the gladiator before he ripped Sean across the stomach until a stream of blood made the water pink around him. I rose from my chair and had my hands outstretched, towards the water around Sean.
Someone grabbed my arms and pulled me back against him. Spyguy’s voice was clear and emotionless. “Princess, either I take you away or I save him. Can you control yourself?”
Control myself? It would be easier to control the ocean. But that was the point. I couldn’t really control the ocean if I wasn’t in control of myself. I clenched my hands into fists and crossed my arms. “Save him. I’ll go to Siren Rock.”
He released me and swam, a blur towards Sean. A few others were already closing in, Peter, my mother, and Owen. I trembled as I gestured to my guards and we left through the seething mob. Screaming, chanting, furious fans were fighting with the king’s team and the yellow shirts. The noise, the emotion, all of it stirred around me, as the water listened. Sean falling forward, my beautiful, perfect gladiator… I started mumbling under my breath the recipes I’d made for the Soremni marriage feast. I was in the volcano room when I’d moved from those to the monster recipes in the yellow cookbook that I could remember. Goldie was waiting for me at the port beside the door. It rose and fell in the current as I climbed inside. I drove the ship alone, on the course that would take me away from the city. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. Meerten ear tips. Siren tentacles. Brogge jelly. Pickled vegetables on a bed of baby kelp leaves. I drove the ship with shaking hands to the first change point.
The plane was waiting for me then the big ship. I climbed down the ladder and started warming up the engines, going through the process as slowly as possible. Footsteps sounded on the ladder.
“Hey, little sister. Do you want me to take over here?”
I backed away from the controls and curled up on a white seat. It smelled like Sean. I closed my eyes and pulled all my emotions into a big ball inside my chest, wrapping it with a song I couldn’t sing. Crazy. Sean’s Chest. My mother’s lullaby. Our duet. I’m too sexy. The temple prayer song. Sean. My life, my love, my heart. I wanted to sing to him for the rest of my life. I would sing to him for the rest of my life. It didn’t matter how many monsters his ancestors slaughtered. It didn’t matter if I were obsessed with another prince. That wasn’t real. This was real. This was me. My life was tenuous, brief, and I would hold onto Sean as long as I could. Was it selfish to give him what he wanted or selfish to hold back because I couldn’t be my idea of what he should want?
My fingernails cut into my palms as I hung on. I felt stuffed with rocks from my eyes to my toes, rough, jagged rocks that scraped and groaned any time I shifted. Sean had to be okay. He was strong. Brilliant. There were so many things he had to make. I couldn’t be in the world without him. Without him there would be no songs left, no world for me.
When we reached Siren’s Rock, I couldn’t move. Lucien slung me over his shoulder and climbed up the ladder, putting me down on the dock. I pressed against the rock wall on one side and stared at the ocean, at the sullen gray sea and sky. More and more rocks formed inside of me, rocks that sank down inside my mind, my heart. I held onto the emotion, pulling it close and tight, sealing it all inside until I felt like my skin was turning into water, rippling and flowing out to stretch and keep in the pain.
“Aren’t you going to sing?” Lucien’s voice came from far away. He didn’t seem real, so translucent and delicate compared to the steadily swelling sea and the roiling inside me.
I couldn’t sing. There weren’t any songs left without Sean. A wave rolled over the end of the dock leaving a puddle behind.
“The water is rising.” Lucien picked me up and carried me up the dock, away from the water.
I had to push the water down. If I could hold down the feelings, I could hold down the ocean. The water curled away from the island leaving behind an indentation like an empty moat. Lucien put me down in the middle of the island, in front of the hut, in the sandy soil with the now dead scrubby grass.
I dug my fingers into the soil while the wind worried my hair out of its braid. Sean had to be okay. How
could I do so much and still be so helpless? How long ago since I’d fallen asleep in his arms? When was the last time I didn’t feel his strength envelope me every single day? Whether I was worthy of him or not, he was my forever.
“She isn’t singing.” Spyguy’s voice came from far away but I heard him.
I stood and turned to face him, hands outstretched. “Tell me that you saved him.”
He moved to me quickly, gripped my arms and leaned his face close. “He’s alive. Takeo is alive.”
“Alive.” I exhaled for the first time in what felt like days. I refocused on Spyguy as the relief withered. “How is he?”
The tension in his face, the lines between his eyes, the strain in his shoulders… I grabbed the front of his shirt and shook it. “How is he?” My voice was a bell that rang through the air.
He narrowed his eyes but didn’t flinch away from me. “He’s unconscious. The poison worked quickly through his system, but we saved his organs. It’s a matter of time now. He’ll wake up. He’ll recover. I promise you, Princess, he will hold you again.”
I gripped his hands until the bones in his fingers rubbed together. “You promise?”
He nodded, his dark eyes dark pits that I shouldn’t trust. But I did. I always had. I let go of him and fell to my knees. I collapsed, arms spread as I let the feelings roll out of me, uncurling and spreading like a wave. The water rose and rose around the island, leaving a ten-foot moat that didn’t look like much when the water was a hundred foot high all around.
I held it there. It wanted to roll over me and wash away all the fear and pain. The ocean wanted to sweep away all the pain in the world. Sean falling forward in the water. Sean’s crashing into the gladiator, the slash across his stomach, his blood spilling into the water. Blood in the water. A thousand bodies falling, a million drops of blood, blood that cried for revenge.
I gasped and sat up, gripping my knees as I tried to push back the hunger, the gnawing ache. The ocean’s children suffered. It would crush the world until all suffering was silenced. The water didn’t care if that was genocide on a final scale. The ocean didn’t care at all. I did. Somewhere Sean was struggling for life. If he could hang onto me, to this beautifully dangerous world, I could hang on to humanity, to myself.
The water continued to rise, higher and higher and higher around my island. It would reach the pinnacle then crash into the world, a Tsunami to end all Tsunami’s. I got to one leg then the other until I stood, the ocean snapping and starving. I spread my arms and started singing. I went through all the songs from my ‘Egotistical Jerks’ playlist. The water rose more slowly, but it wasn’t enough. I sang my mother’s lullaby, the monster anthem, the songs I’d composed for Sean until my throat was raw and the ocean finally stopped filling the sky. It held its place there, precariously balanced while I struggled to maintain my volume, my control. The ocean was so heavy. It would be so much easier to let it crush me. No. If Sean could take on the world to protect me, I could take on the ocean to protect the world. And him.
My voice cracked and part of the wall of water broke off to crash down into the moat and splash all the way across the island, hitting me like a bucket of ice. I took a deep breath and then Spyguy’s voice joined mine. We were going to sing Sean’s duet. Sean whose strength and steadiness was enough to conquer anything. Spyguy’s voice wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard. It sounded like the ocean and like every monster creature including me. Lucien joined in on my other side, his sweet voice contrasting perfectly against Spyguy’s.
I grabbed their hands and hung on while I sang until the water was swirling around us, falling down bit by bit, sometimes crashing a little too quickly before I held it back up. Strands of water leapt above us from one wall to the other even as the sky grew broader and the water shrunk. We were going to make it. The ocean wouldn’t devour the world, not today.
It was going so well, but then the ocean started talking to me. Fresh blood was in the water. Blood that wanted vengeance. I sang the duet louder, but Lucien and Spyguy’s voices became screams and then the gurgling as blood choked the woman’s voice.
“Murderer.” The voice was so real, so clear. I looked at the wall of water closest to me and a face peered out at me. I knew those mad eyes, gaze directed at Spyguy to my right.
I turned to look at him, at the dark eyes and purple veins that were visible beneath his skin. He was not half Vashni, half Soremni. I couldn’t trust him.
He looked back at me, his voice echoing Sean’s song, but it was wrong. He wasn’t Sean or Spyguy. He wasn’t anyone I should ever trust.
I lost control of the song and then passed out when the remaining circle of water rushing in on my island.
I woke between chaos and destruction. Spyguy was on one side of me, Lucien on the other. We spun through water without any direction in the swirling torrent. The ocean roared and screamed, determined to rip us apart. I tried to focus, to command the water or something, but I only passed out again.
When I came to, Lucien was gone, only Spyguy wrapped around me, protecting me from the debris and rocks. We were lost in the storm for what felt like days until slowly, the ocean got tired and sulky instead of violent. Eventually I knew which way was up. That’s the direction we went. I kicked along with Spyguy, but I couldn’t keep up with him. How was he so strong? What was he? He didn’t let go of me, like his hard fingers were fused to my bones. Finally, we broke the surface and he dragged me through the protruding rocks to what was left of my island. There was a rim of jagged stone around the central well where the hut had been.
“It’s gone,” I whispered. My voice was also gone. Spyguy grunted and pulled me along. My leg was bleeding. Streaks of blood flowed down his arms, his neck, across his face and nose. The only thing I could think was that I was glad that Spyguy had taken the island shrapnel instead of Sean. He pulled me up the near sheer face of a stone wall until we reached the top, my spot, where I sang to my monster chorus.
He let me go and then pulled something out of his pocket, rubbed it together briskly in his hands until he dropped it and with a flickering pop bloomed into an afrateau the size of a volleyball. He collapsed down beside it, chest rising and falling, rising and falling, like the ocean beyond him.
I shivered and moved closer to the afrateau. I curled up opposite Spyguy and soon slept from simple exhaustion.
Chapter 40
I woke up stiff and aching. I hurt so much. Why did the ocean always rip me apart? I rolled to the side and saw Spyguy hacking at a fish with a sharp rock. He’d strung up a contraption over the afrateau where bits of fish dangled, sizzling.
“Did you enjoy your nap, princess?” He was angry. The sharp planes of his face were still discolored, mottled and bloody while bruising had started spreading from one eyebrow down around his eye and cheekbone.
He should be angry. I was angry too. Really? I hurt too much to be angry, no, I didn’t. I sat up and frowned at him. “What happened to Sean’s aunt?”
He met my eyes for a moment, his own dark and piercing before he tilted his head slightly. “Are you asking whether or not her island was far enough away that when you broke this part of the ocean she was destroyed?”
“Her blood cries out against you for vengeance.”
He raised his eyebrows and his lips curled. “Ah, the madness has begun.”
“Has it? Really? Are you going to execute me? I would almost let you. I trust you so much more than is reasonable, particularly considering the way you’re constantly telling me that you’re going to betray me. What happened to her? Why did you kill her?”
He laughed, a sound as jagged as the rocks around us. “I didn’t. You commanded me to kill no one.”
I grabbed his forearm, dried blood brown beneath my fingers. “Her blood cries against you. The ocean witnessed it.”
He leaned close, eyes bright and furious as he gazed at me. “That’s what happened? You listened to the ocean instead of to me and it crushed us. Why would you trust t
he ocean when it wants to destroy everything you love?”
“And you don’t? You used to work for the Examiner. Who tried to kill Sean? Who are you?”
He stared at me with those eyes as dark and fathomless as the bottom of the ocean. “You want to know who I am, princess? Who are you? What are you? You want to be afraid of me? You want to vilify someone whose blood still falls for you? Yes. Her blood is on my hands, the same hands that protect you.” He held up his hands, wrapped with strips of fabric from his tattered shirt.
“You did kill her. Why?”
He leaned closer to me. “You’re a fool. A child. A slave to the ocean’s whim. I executed a known threat to your precious skin.” He said ‘precious’ with a sneer that made me flinch.
“Who poisoned Sean?”
He raised his eyebrows and straightened, crossing his arms. “Someone you trusted. Someone close to him. Someone on his team.”
“You.”
He stared back with those dark eyes. “Maybe me. Is it possible for you to mistrust me?”
I inhaled deeply and the scent of his blood, of his skin swirled around me with images of others, so many others. “What are you?”
“Nothing. I’m as extinct as you.”
“You’re one of the Siren killers. A handler. A…” I swallowed and took a step away from him.
He laughed, his voice grating and harsh. “What princess? What am I?”
“A Siren lover. You let me touch you. You let me call you stupid friend names.”
He took a half step towards me before he stopped, shaking his head. “You’re an idiot. You can’t help it. All your mind is full of the depths, the ocean, the emotion. You can’t help having an infinitesimal grasp on logic.”
“What does logic have to do with it?” I screamed at him, suddenly just tired of it, of him. Someone had hurt Sean, someone I trusted, and here he was, the one I’d trusted in spite of every reason, someone who wouldn’t tell me who he was or what he wanted. “How can logic stop me from destroying the world? I was going to destroy the world, Brian. The world. Someone needs to watch me. You’re my watcher. What else are you? What is your full job description?”
Water Games (Watergirl Book 4) Page 35
