“You’re saying she thinks she doesn’t know me?” I ask her looking incredulously at her. I wonder when she got so bold. Maybe it was Callie rubbing off on her, she used to be so much meeker.
“She’s told me that you won’t talk to her about your past. She’s also told me, or as much implied, that you won’t open up to her about your grief.” She looks serious now, and slightly uncomfortable. I feel slightly shocked. I didn’t realise Callie still had a problem with my past.
“Why should I open up to her about my grief? She can’t fix anything. She can’t bring my father back,” I stiffen at the mention of his name, feeling it like a stab to the gut.
“It’s not about her fixing something. It’s about her letting you rely on her. Have a safe place to go and talk about things that bother you. You were alone for so long, Orion. I can honestly see why that’s tough, but Callie is there to protect you and support you too. It’s not just about her. There has to be a balance of power in a relationship. You do everything for her, I’ve seen you, how protective and loving you are. But she wants to do the same for you and you push her away,” Sophia shakes her head and I feel slightly shocked, who knew she was so observant.
“So you’re saying she won’t marry me because…” I ask the question, not knowing whether I want to hear the answer or not.
“I think she feels like you’re trapping her a little. You became Crowned Ruler and so she took the role of Queen in her stride. She wants to do things on her own terms.”
“But the last time she took things into her own hands she got herself killed,” I remind Sophia and she shakes her head.
“I can see why you want to stop that happening again, but I wonder why you think putting a ring on her finger is going to change anything. She comes from a different time, as I’ve already said, marriage doesn’t mean she’ll bend to you and act like a wife. It means she’ll be Callie with a ring on her finger. That’s about it. I wonder if that’s what she means when she says you’re doing it for the wrong reasons,” Sophia moves toward me, closing the gap across which we’ve been exchanging words.
“I just want to protect her.”
“I want to protect Oscar, but I can’t do anything to stop him getting hurt.” She reminds me and I look into her chocolate irises. She looks like she really cares about Callie and me. I soften slightly.
“That’s true,” I admit, wondering how Callie must feel, knowing I could be called away to fight at any second.
“I also think you may have a big problem on your hands. Callie takes what you say to heart. So if you’ve told her to leave and not come back. I’m pretty sure that’s what she will do.”
“I really fucked this up,” I say cussing, the word doesn’t usually pass my lips, but since I’ve heard her use it in bed when I’m teasing her, I can’t think of anything else that would express the frustration I’m feeling.
“It’s your first ever, serious relationship. You’re going to make mistakes.” Sophia floats absentmindedly. I look at her and realise that I don’t deserve her kindness.
“I should go. If Callie really has taken my advice, I need to fix it. I need to find out where she is and go after her. It’s not safe out there.”
“Okay, well, if you need to talk again… don’t come to me. Talk to Callie. She’s the only person who can really tell you what she is feeling. Just make sure if you ask her, you listen to what she says. Not just hear her response. Really listen,” she ushers me back out the door. I haven’t moved to sit the entire time I’ve been in her apartment.
“Sorry for the intrusion,” I mumble, but she smiles.
“You are quite welcome, Your Highness. Now please, go and find our girl, make sure she’s safe.” My eyes jump up to find hers before she closes the door softly. She really cares for Callie. I don’t know why I’m surprised to find such affection for her in another, after all, she is one of those people you can’t help but fall a little bit in love with.
“Orion!!!!” I hear my name bellowed once I’m back inside the Alcazar, ready to mobilise search parties to find my Callie. I turn and Starlet swims up to me, a flash of magenta moving so quickly that she nearly bowls me over with an inability to quell her own momentum.
“Callie…” She pants. Her eyes are bloodshot through. She only gets like this when she’s had a vision. My stomach drops immediately and terror clutches at me.
“What? What did you see?” I shake her and she clutches my arms with her sharp fingernails.
“I saw her, through Azure, I saw her…” She pants again, looking like she may pass out. I look into her face, I know that the visions from the Goddess are hard on her, but I also know that the visions she sees through the eyes of her twin are the worst. Journeying into the darkness of Azure’s psyche constantly causes her pain and grief. It’s an extension of a soulmate’s ability to share memories, and I also know it’s how she and Azure had been communicating while our sister was with the Psirens and with Titus. I give her a moment, but only a moment, impatient.
“What? Where is she?” I ask her and her face contorts slightly, as though she doesn’t want to tell me. “Tell me Star!” I bark at her and she flinches, actually flinches in my grip.
“I don’t know… where they were… they were in the middle of the sea somewhere, no landmarks that I could make out. She attacked Azure…”
“Then what good is that to me? I need to find her!” I look at her and she breathes in, calming herself as her gills open and close in quick succession.
“I don’t know where she was when she attacked Azure, but I know why she attacked Azure and where she’s going,” she rubs her head.
“Why did she attack her?” I ask, feeling surprised. Callie isn’t violent. Or at least she hasn’t ever shown any violence until our fight earlier, when she sent me writhing in agony with one touch. I still don’t understand how she’d done that. Or for that matter, stolen my ability to manipulate air, which before today had been impossible.
“She wanted information and Azure wouldn’t share.”
“What information could Callie possibly want from Azure?” I interrupt her and her eyes widen with slight fear.
“She wanted to know where the Psiren city was, and something tells me she’s going to find it, Orion. She’s going to see Solustus.”
CALLIE
“So, where is this party?” I ask Vex as we swim past the square in front of the Necrocazar.
I take a moment to examine my surroundings. Crushed bones and the remnants of crustaceans’ shells line the city streets and eels trapped in jars flicker and illuminate the city at intermittent moments of electrical excitement. The Necrocazar towers high above the ground level of the rest of the city, blackened and charred, revealing its ancient purpose as a deep undersea vent, spewing out molten rock and boiling sulphur into the surrounding water. It feels odd, calling it a city, mostly because it’s almost barren and the only other visible architecture in the dim is the expansive square in front of the towering cylindrical constructs of the dark, charred palace.
The square is filled with pieces of equipment, anvils, weapons, and obstacle courses built in the remains of enormous whale carcasses. I can’t see homes anywhere, let alone the kind of venue suitable for a party. In fact, now that I look around I can’t see any Psirens either… where have they all gone?
I feel the hairs rise on the back of my neck and goose pimples climb up my spine at the prospect of them watching me. I wonder why I’m down here, why I haven’t gone running for the hills. I can’t exactly trust Solustus to keep his word about finding my father, can I?
Even beyond that, I can’t believe I’ve been invited to party by a Psiren. I’d thought they were nothing more than primal killing machines and before I’d come down here I’d wondered if any of them even had enough humanity left to hold a half descent, non-violent conversation.
I look up at Vex shyly, observe his smooth jawline and muscled pectorals, his gills that open and close just like mine. He lacks a sc
aled eye mask, he lacks any kind of shine and glimmer at all now I really look at him. He wasn’t even remotely beautiful, he was something else all together and the confidence he exudes is both terrifying and attractive all at once. He catches me staring and answers my question with a smirk.
“Party implies ice cream and cake, love… this is more of a rave. I’ll let you blow out my candle though…” Vex doesn’t give away the location but smiles salaciously at his innuendo. I choose to ignore him and attempt further stubborn questioning instead.
“So where is it?” I ask, looking up at his broad pale chest and acute features. His lilac eyes have darkened now that we’re away from the streetlights and moving into the shadow at the edge of the cavern, their pupils have fully dilated, leaving only blackness streaked by the occasional flash of lilac lightning.
“Patience, pet,” he shakes his head, a smile creeping across his lips. He would look kind of attractive if it weren’t for the jagged edges of his teeth and the dark pits of his eyes.
“Or you could just tell me now,” I huff, feeling impatient. Why is everything always on someone else’s time scale? What is with all the secrets?
“Where would the fun be in that?” He cocks his slashed brow yet again but his expression below his eyes stays stony as his thick, pale lips press into a line. We move close to the side of the crevasse and my gut clenches, suddenly uncomfortable.
“You better not be trying to corner me,” I say fiercely, feeling the hairs on my arms rise at the thought of being alone with him in the darkness.
“Love, don’t flatter yourself. You aren’t that hot,” he bites out the words and the corner of his dark eyes twitch. I watch him lick his bottom lip as his eyes roll over the side of my body.
He leads me upward as we meet with one of the curved rock faces that make up the deep cave and soon afterward he is pulling me hard through the entrance of a dark hole in the rock face. It plummets down, like a tunnel into hell.
“Where are we going?” I ask him, irritable at his silence.
“Do you want to go to a rave or not?” He turns on me looking exasperated, running his hands through his hair, smooth and slick to touch, it frames his skull in a cap of silver.
“Yes, but I at least expect…” I begin, but he places a finger to my lips and furrows his brow looking pissed off.
“That’s the problem then. Stop expecting. This isn’t your Kingdom. You aren’t a Princess and I’m not here to serve you. Alright? I asked you if you wanted to tag along, so if you could do me a favour and shut the bloody hell up, you’ll forever have my gratitude. Alright? Got it? Great.” he snaps and the Britishness in his accent seeps into the water in one great vocal slap across the face. I feel the sting, but then I can’t deny he’s right. I hear him mutter something under his breath that sounds like ‘bloody women’, but I decide to ignore him. I continue to follow him into the dark depths of the tunnel, it moves through the rock like an eel’s body, twisting and turning. All of a sudden I start to feel vibrations and I brace myself, preparing for the tunnel to collapse, burying me alive beneath its enormous weight. I hear Vex’s voice travel gently toward me and I watch him turn, I can tell he’s noticed my fear.
“Hush, pet. It’s just the bass,” he smiles wickedly, smirking at my fear, getting off on it.
What a shit head. I cuss internally, wondering where my anger is stemming from.
Normally I’d have left his smirking and his blunt demeanour in my dust as I swam away, but for some reason I can’t help but enjoy our banter. Enjoy the challenge of trying to perhaps tame someone so aloof and dark.
Don’t be ssstupid girl, you could never tame the dark. The voice moves forward from the recesses of my psyche once more, startling me. I slap it back.
“Shhh!” I exclaim, realising afterward that I must look insane. Vex doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does he doesn’t care enough to turn and ask me why I’m shushing invisible voices.
He propels himself forward with his long and suckered tentacles through the end of the tunnel ahead of me. I move past him and finally out into the open, out into the flashing lights.
The rave is terrifying, yet intoxicating and riddled with dark promise. The cave at the end of the tunnel is monstrous in size, from what I can see anyway. The lighting is strobe, intermittently flashing in brilliant short bursts of white, coming from eels that are suspended from giant and brutal looking fishhooks, writhing and sparking. Above them, hundreds of scarlet neon jellyfish pulsate, trapped in a heavy chained net, suspended from the ceiling, drenching the space in a bloody dim light.
The Psirens are huge in number, a mass of dark, mutated beings, clinging onto one another in desperate, lustful passion, allowing themselves to be engulfed in the remittent black.
I turn to exclaim my shock at the magnitude of the event to Vex, but realise anything short of screaming would be futile. The sound is so immense that the water I’m immersed in is blurred, vibrating with sound waves. The music is a primal rhythm with a pounding and potentially migraine inducing bass line. I source the sound quickly as I spot a group of Psirens, striking down on enormous metal drums with thick, alabaster whale bones.
I look closer, squinting until I can make out that the skin pulled over the broken submarine parts, making up the body of the drums, have scales. I shudder. Vex senses my awkwardness, my lack of belonging and grabs my arm, pulling me harshly into the thick gyrating layer of tails and tentacles. I look around, uncomfortable and being pushed against by other foreign bodies. Vex leans in, placing his lips against the shell of my ear.
“Relax, pet,” his words, barely audible against the primal drumbeat, send a shiver through me as his fingers wrap around my waist. I don’t stop him, if for no other reason than his muscular stockiness prevents me getting knocked around by other dancing Psirens. I do as he commands, ignoring the flashing images of black eyes and jagged, razor sharp smiles, smeared with the blood of their mates. I try to get lost to the music, finding a place of calm so I can let go. I throw my arms up above my head as the beat starts to increase in speed. I let the darkness take me and the sound and sensation wash over me.
This is exactly what I need, no responsibility, no royal duties, no Orion breathing down my neck, demanding more of me than I can be, or am ready to give.
In this moment, moving my body against Vex and letting the music take control is enough. I feel Vex’s tentacles wrap themselves around my tailfin, I’d thought they would feel slimy and creepy, but instead the undersides feel like suckered, crushed velvet. I momentarily catch a glimpse of Vex’s eyes, searching for mine as I’ve been busy gawking around at my surroundings. A chilling reality hits me as I realise the paleness of his lilac irises aren’t icy blue and his blonde hair isn’t tousled to perfection.
What the hell am I doing? I think for a second. This guy isn’t Orion. In fact, he is so far off base from Orion he’s a completely different species.
I take a second and still, watching him raving alongside the rest of his comrades and I wonder if maybe I’ve gone too far. It so isn’t like me to be grinding in the darkness with a tentacled stranger.
But this feels good.
The voice shocks me, mainly because it’s my own, and the words aren’t a lie. Being here did feel good. In fact, it’s the first time I’ve had this much fun in months. I feel good without Orion, even if I hate to admit it. It feels good being in charge of my own destiny, not worrying about what he would think. What I have always feared has happened, I had lost Orion and I am still breathing, still living. I don’t feel awful, I feel powerful and excited. Excited at the prospect of being surrounded by the thing I have been most afraid of, and dancing among them, inconspicuous and untouchable. I can handle myself. I know that now.
Vex looks down at me before he closes his eyes and starts to shake his head, running his fingers through his hair and bringing his arms up so his abs become defined and his biceps bulge. The bass is about to drop and I feel his excitement as we wait for the musi
c to change, moving together in a tangle of tentacle and fin. The rhythm drops and changes and Vex turns to a barracuda tailed Psiren beside him who passes him, I observe in two strobes of eel lightning, what appear to be chopsticks.
I watch him, in what feels like slow motion, take one of the chopsticks and stab himself in the forearm without hesitation or fear of pain. He slumps visibly, relaxing before he looks up and I notice that his pupils have dilated again.
He passes me the other stick and I take it in my palm, recognising it as soon as I hold it up to the strobing of the eels. Lionfish spines. What the hell? I’d seen them up close earlier on Caedes, but why would you want to stab yourself with them? By all accounts I know, Lionfish are deadly in the poison department.
I look down at the spine again and then notice something past it, beneath me. Below the crowd I’m dancing in, groups of Psirens are clustered around vents in the floor of the cave. They’re sucking some kind of drug through pipes fashioned from diving equipment, that I assume has been pulled off some poor, doomed, deep sea diver. I look back to the spine in my hand, a drug?
Vex is watching me as the beat of the drums changes again, picking up. He smirks at my hesitation, making me angrier than I’d thought someone who wasn’t Orion could make me feel. I look at him, narrowing my eyes, and then back to my palm before closing it. I bring my hand up in a sudden and brutal movement, before I strike down, ramming the tapered end into my skin. I feel the spine hit a vein and inhale deeply with the sharp pain as I think:
What the hell, right?
AZURE
The Kiss That Saved Me (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 2) Page 15
