“Father, will you really turn away from me for this? Because I’m serious. Don’t test me.”
A vicious grin flickered over Y’hoshua’s face. “If I never tested you, you’d never have become the man that stands here now. How would your voice grow loud enough to be heard at the council table? Without struggle, the body grows weak. With plenty of fights, the body develops muscle. Today, you’ve shown me you finally have the strength to lead.” He smiled, warmly this time.
Calev’s fingers gripped mine.
I wasn’t sure when she had walked up, but Miriam’s sister appeared beside Y’hoshua.
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing, Y’hoshua.” The poison in her voice put my hand on the dagger at Calev’s sash. I was ready if that—
Y’hoshua turned toward her. “Miriam never hennaed her hands. She was never officially Intended.”
I broke away from Calev. “I thought—”
Calev jerked my good arm gently. “Hold your tongue for once, Kinneret.”
Y’hoshua inclined his head toward Miriam’s sister. “I’m sorry for any pain this causes you or your family, but it was Miriam’s choice to make me wait for her official answer to my suggestion of becoming betrothed to my son. She pays for that hesitation. Kinneret Raza has earned her way to high-caste in my eyes and she has also earned my son’s heart, it seems.” He nodded curtly toward Calev’s hands on my arm.
I pressed my cheek into Calev’s shoulder.
“He listened to me. For once. He really listened,” Calev whispered to me.
The girl’s face collapsed, but before a cry came out, she smoothed her features and ducked her head respectfully to Y’hoshua. “As you judge, Chairman.”
I opened my mouth, and Calev clamped a hand over my lips. “No, no, fire. Behave.”
I scowled at him. The girl deserved a little haha from me.
“She deserves it,” Calev agreed, “but Father won’t like it. And things will be much easier with him on our side.”
“Fine,” I said behind his fingers.
Then I nipped his thumb with my teeth playfully. His eyes widened, and he looked from my face to his father’s. I grinned.
We followed Y’hoshua and Eleazar up the path and I spoke with the fighters and former slaves. With Y’hoshua’s help, I detailed a plan to get them all off the island for good. The bulk of us left that very day for Jakobden.
We only had one more obstacle to our happiness. The remainder of the amir’s court.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
At last, the moon reigned in the sky above Old Farm’s low, stone buildings, stubbled barley fields, and neat rows of dark-leaved lemon trees. I leaned out of the betrothal room’s one window and inhaled the night air. All of Calev’s people, along with Avi and Oron, were drinking and eating under the stars, around the corner.
Calev would be here soon. I tapped fingers against the smooth, wood ledge. It seemed today the sun had stayed high for far longer than it should’ve. Of course, every day since Old Zayn told me about Ayarazi had seemed filled to the edge of the bucket. Especially the day we’d returned to Jakobden minus one amir.
After hearing the fighting sailors account matched mine perfectly—a fine bit of work Oron had done there—and Y’hoshua’s own affirmation of everything, the court and the kyros’s representative agreed to Ekrem’s appointment, Berker’s falsified martyrdom, and the oramiral’s imagined crime of murdering the amir. Yes, on Age Day, I’d not only turned eighteen, but turned Jakobden upside down.
Now, in the betrothal room, Calev and I would begin the process of promising ourselves to one another.
“Pondering an escape?” Calev said.
I turned away from the window as he shut the room’s side door, setting the many candles to flickering. Two bronze incense burners released white clouds of scented air that swirled around Calev as he approached. He wore the same thing as me—a plain white tunic. He looked better in the angel uniform, as Oron had deemed it, than me. His hair was so perfectly black against the fabric and the outline of his trim waist and strong, long legs showed through the tunic, outlined by the burners’ inconsistent light.
He sat on a low stool and pointed to another across from him. “Should we begin?” His voice sounded deeper than normal and his gaze traveled up and down, from the exposed red-brown curls of my head, to my face, along my body, all the way to my dusty, bare toes.
I nodded, strangely shy, and gathered the parchment cone the servants had left for us. It was filled with deep brown henna dye. Calev put his hand in my lap, and I began to draw the symbols of his family on his palm and fingers.
I took a breath to steady my heart and dragged the pierced tip of the parchment cone down his first finger. A flourish snaked into existence, eventually growing into a lemon, a leaf, and a sun that sat in his palm, a palm I knew as well as my own. I started another design, working around his sigil ring and adding curls like palm fronds along his fingertip.
He shivered and his eyes flashed. They looked larger than usual, maybe because he wasn’t wearing a headtie. “You’re doing that on purpose,” he said.
“Doing what?”
“Tickling me. Driving me mad.”
Laughing quietly, I dotted the lemon with tiny circles. “I am not. Now quit fidgeting. Everyone is waiting for us outside for the formal announcement. And you still have work to do on me.”
A sly smile drew his lips to the side. “I certainly do.”
I felt like a host of violet nightwingers had been loosed in my belly. “That’s not what I meant.”
I looked away from his mouth and focused on the barley stalk I was creating on the heel of his hand. His skin was gold in the light of the candles and burners. The scent of beeswax mixed with the earthy, spicy odor of the henna. The Old Farm grandmothers, including Calev’s own Savta, had added ginger and clove.
“Kinneret.” Calev’s breath moved over my hair, warming my scalp.
I kept my eyes down, drawing now on his other hand. “I’m almost finished. See?” His palm and fingers were covered in leaves, swirls, dots, hatched lines, lemons, barley, and even a tiny pomegranate. “Hold still for it to dry, then you can start on mine.”
He made a little laughing noise, and I looked up. He gave me that thief’s grin of his. “What do you suggest we do to pass the sun as we wait?” he asked with all the innocence of a pirate.
He held my gaze, unblinking. A cool breeze drifted through the window and stirred his tunic, pressing it lightly against the lines of his chest and arms.
My body began to feel very, very warm. His pulse moved in the hollow of his throat.
“We can’t…” I started. “I mean, you have to let the dye dry.”
“I suppose we’ll have to make do with your hands then.”
My heart bumped around in my chest, a clatter of noisy thumps in my ears. Everyone was outside the double doors, waiting for us.
“Kinneret, relax.” He smiled. “We can just talk.”
My heart cracked like a whip.
I was being a coward, fretting over pleasing his father and his people, who waited outside. Since when had I let others get in the way of what I wanted? Since never.
I smiled, enjoying the feel of my blood rising.
“There she is,” Calev said.
Leaning close, I ran a finger over his sharp chin. I touched the pale strip of skin that was usually hidden by his headtie. I ran both palms down the column of his neck, feeling the tendons and muscles and the flow of blood through his veins. His Adam’s apple moved under my fingers.
A knock sounded at the heavy, wooden doors. Calev made a noise, and I spun, dizzier than I’d ever been.
Avi peered in, her eyes happy and her sun-colored braid hanging over a shoulder. The embroidered seashells on her skirt and the five high-caste bells on her sash reflected the candlelight.
“Sorry.” She grinned, her cheeks going rosy above the blue of her clothing. “Just wanted to see how much longer I had to listen to Or
on trying to goad Y’hoshua into an argument.”
Calev and I laughed.
“We’ll be finished soon. Promise,” I said.
She shut the door, and I eased back onto my stool, giving Calev my hand. “As much as I was enjoying myself…”
Calev’s chest moved faster, his eyes a bit wild. “Kiss me, Kinneret.”
“Not yet,” I said, quirking an eyebrow. “You have work to do first.”
Closing his eyes for a breath, he scooted forward and took up the dye cone I’d tossed to the floor. “Back to being kaptan again, are we?” He made a face.
“We are.”
“Such a challenging little beast, aren’t you?”
I pointed to my thumb. “I’d like the shape of a sail here.” I opened my hand to show my palm. “And a combined shell and lemon design here, if you can manage it.”
“Of course, kaptan.” He drew the cone’s tip across my skin slowly. Goosebumps rose along my arms, echoing the touch.
Calev’s black hair hid his face. His hands moved smoothly, his knuckles like knobs and his henna designs twisting to life with his fingers’ movements.
Every sweep of new lines and curves drawn on my skin brought another rush of heat, and eventually, my breathing matched his.
Slowly, he raised his head, his eyes glittering and ebony. He met my gaze, then said my name without a sound, dropping the henna.
Standing, we crashed together like waves.
With only the lightest of clothing between us, my hips pressed into his. He kissed me and I tasted honey and lemons. As his mouth moved to my neck, I breathed him in. His hair smelled like sun-warmed earth. My hands couldn’t touch him enough. His chest heaving and strong and hot under my fingers, he breathed my name into my shoulder, and I shuddered as sparks danced down my legs.
A cough broke us apart and I felt like I’d been hit by lightning.
Oron coughed once more. “Please excuse the interruption, but Y’hoshua ben Aharon is about as happy as a beached seastinger out there and if you make him wait much longer, it’ll be a curse rather than a blessing he bestows upon you.”
“Did you stir him up?” I snapped, wanting him to leave. I wanted Calev all over me again.
“That’s like asking if it’s my fault that Asag fellow was such a grouch. His attitude is a permanent condition, my dear.”
Calev studied the floor and ran a hand through his hair.
“Come.” Oron grabbed our sleeves and pulled us out the doors.
We stepped into the moonlight, our appearance prompting the foot-stomping and smiles of Avi, Y’hoshua, and the rest of Old Farm. They’d set up tall, brass candleholders along the dirt and stone pathway leading from the betrothal room to the main farmhouse. Violet nightwingers flitted through the honey light, one resting on Avi’s shoulder. She tried to kiss it before it flew off again.
Oron released us, and found his bowl of drink, raised it, and drank it down.
Old Zayn stood in the dark shadow of a cedar, his smile white. I gasped, and with a nod to Calev to wait, I ran to him and hugged him tightly.
“Easy, young thing,” he rasped, patting me lightly on the back. His hand felt like a sack of tiny bones.
I pulled away and stared. “I lost the compass you gave me.”
He grinned. “Ah. Well. It went down during an adventure and I’d say that’s more than any compass could pray for, could pray for.”
“Did you receive my message?” I asked.
“And the silver too.” He pointed to his thick, brown tunic and wide green sash. “I thank you. You are as kind as your parents were.”
My eyes burned and I turned, imagining Mother and Father standing beside Y’hoshua, still and solemn. Mother winked. The wish-picture dissipated and Zayn patted my back.
“They are here. In you and your sister. And you make them so proud, so proud. Me too, if you care to know,” he said.
I hugged him, a tear escaping despite my best efforts.
“Now go,” Zayn said. “Visit me during the winter months, yes?”
“Yes.” I smiled at him, then returned to Calev.
Calev took my hand, the henna caking off and scenting the air with cloves and ginger as we walked toward his father.
“Thank you for saving me again,” Calev said.
“Saving you?”
“Once, from the sea. Next, from the…everything during our journeys. And of course, now.”
“Now.”
“Now.”
I squeezed his fingers. “You never really needed saving. You’re too lucky.”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet, Kinneret? You are my luck. Not the other way around.”
Then Y’hoshua was holding one of our hands each in his larger ones, and saying the blessing. He took up the painted glass container of holy oil.
“I think now, that there’s no such thing as simply being born with good fortune,” I whispered to Calev. “We make our luck.”
“You do it well,” he said.
I smiled. The night sky’s blue moonlight coalesced into the gold illumination of the candles, making everyone look like dreams among the night insects.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Hells or paradise?”
“I think you know the answer to that one,” he said under his breath as his father raised an oiled hand and prayed in a ringing tone.
“Paradise. With the promise of hells to come.”
Calev’s eyes widened.
I laughed. “Life would be dull without any flames to challenge us.”
He ran a finger down my palm and kissed my forehead, earning a reproachful frown from his father.
“My thoughts exactly, my fire,” he said.
As Y’hoshua rubbed oil into our hands and readied to chant the Old Farm betrothal, I knew I was ready for this. I’d fought hard for this life, an existence stretched between two cultures, and a fantastical blend of exquisite joy and soul-waking pain. There was no greater magic than life itself.
ALSO BY ALISHA KLAPHEKE
Need more Kinneret, Calev, and the rest?
Get FEVER, an Uncommon World Novella—told from Calev and Avi’s points of view. http://hyperurl.co/FeverUncommonWorld
Visit alishaklapheke.com for more Uncommon World info
and a free prequel, CLAIMED.
If you’d like to review WATERS OF SALT AND SIN on Goodreads or Amazon, please do! Reviews are super important for everyone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my husband and children for encouraging me as I write, letting me ignore you at times, giving me titles, helping me brainstorm at bedtime and on hikes.
Thank you to my parents and my sister for reading all my stories, listening to me blab on and on about writing, and being amazing.
Thank you to my Kingston Springs family for cheering me on so wholeheartedly.
Thank you to my extended family in Illinois, Florida, Kentucky, Washington, and beyond for your love from afar.
Thank you to my friends in Tennessee, Virginia, and Massachusetts for asking me how things are going and tolerating excited squeals and stressed venting.
Thank you to my agent Kathleen for being incredibly supportive in this endeavor.
Thank you to my coffee house, MCRW, SCBWI, and critique group friends for dragon dandelion brainstorming, laughs, varied adult beverages, and the gentle-tough push to finish stories.
I know this thank you isn't enough and I know this thank you probably missed some, but I love you all, and I hope you know that.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
During non-writing time, Alisha teaches martial arts (Muay Thai kickboxing, Krav Maga, and BJJ, specifically), loves on her two amazing kids, and travels the world with her ninja husband.
@alishaKlapheke
authoralishaklapheke
www.alishaklapheke.com
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Ch
apter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Also by Alisha Klapheke
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Waters of Salt and Sin: Uncommon World Book One Page 30
