Paradise of Shadows and Devotion

by Gaja J. Kos

  I remained quiet as he studied the beach, blinking past the darkness to see whatever it was Santino was searching for. But Moon Bay appeared undisturbed, with only the high cliffs and the narrow stretch of shore snaking below, composing a sight of perfect serenity. Precisely as it had been when we were still standing upon it.

  Likely coming to the same conclusion, Santino let out a long sigh, then faced me once more. The silver rim of his eyes burned as brightly as the moon above us, the elegant lines of his features stark, speaking of a man who was accustomed to more than a fair share of unwelcome pressure.

  He pushed away a strand of his hair, more out of reflex than necessity, it seemed, and asked, “Can they track you through water?”

  Taken aback by our maddening roll, but even more so by the change I witnessed take place in Santino, I needed a second to realize he was referring to my nymph sisters.

  I nodded. “If I’m in it long enough, the currents will speak of my presence.”

  “Cazzo!” He glanced back at the shore, then towards the curving sea line stretching towards Piran. “How far do you think you can go without being noticed?”

  This was already longer than I had ever dared to stay in the sea. But I shook myself from the clutches of fear and made an honest, objective guess. “Fiesa, I think.”

  “That’ll do.”

  He let go of me and started swimming without another word, his motions elegant, if somewhat strained. The wound. I cursed myself softly for forgetting and caught up with him in a few long strokes, then eased to match his pace.

  When he kept on swimming despite my obvious ogling, I let a whisper cut through the darkness. “I—I can carry you.”

  Santino gave me a surprised look, halting mid stroke. “What?”

  “Your arm. Your—your injury. You can grab onto me…if you’re not repulsed.”

  A hint of a smile touched his lips, so that when he shook his head, I knew it wasn’t that last part of my statement driving him to refuse my aid. A weight I hadn’t known I carried loosened inside me.

  “I’ll only slow you down in case you need to run,” he added.

  My surprise must have shown because he nudged his chin at his shoulder and explained, “That was a gunshot that got me, cara. But I believe it was meant for you.”

  5

  When the magic once again swirled and shimmered, whisking away the tail and replacing it with human feet, Santino offered me his hand. I lifted myself up with his aid and shot him a grateful look as I clutched a beach towel tightly around me. He’d stolen it from the nearby camp in Fiesa, along with a pair of flip-flops, the instant it became clear my dress wouldn’t dry fast enough for me to reclaim my legs. I could have chucked it off, but walking around pantyless until the summer air finally sucked out the moisture from the fabric was something I just couldn’t do. Dead of night or not. At least this way, any stragglers we might cross paths with could write my semi nakedness off to a midnight dip in the sea.

  I was already standing on my own two feet, steadily at that, but Santino didn’t let go of me. The warmth of his touch filled me with a sense of surety and dulled the chills crawling down my skin, although it failed to dissipate them completely. We hadn’t talked much as we swam at full speed from Moon Bay to Fiesa, trying to outrace the inevitable spill of my presence across the water. Not a single word beyond making sure we were both all right. But I knew…

  I knew that if it hadn’t been for him, that bullet would have ended its lethal travel lodged in the center of my head.

  While a part of me hissed at the reality I should have expected from the moment I fled the morass, some small, broken bit of my soul ached at the thought of such betrayal. Of such wrath.

  As long as I drew breath, my sisters’ anger and thirst for blood would creep after me like a shadow, waiting for that opportunity to ensconce me in its wisps of death. I winced. A hundred years of shared history, erased by a single flick of a tail.

  “How did you know?” I asked Santino once we started moving in Piran’s general direction, our steps silent and figures carefully concealed in the deepest of shadows nature offered. “About the gunman?”

  “Instinct.”

  I gently tugged on his hand, the one still closed around mine, and looked up at him. “How?”

  He sighed. There was a hint of pain in the way the sound unfolded, so unlike the easygoing man I’d come to know. “I was police before I came here. Working undercover… Either you learn to listen to your gut or you end up dead. There’s no in-between.”

  “I didn’t hear any shots—”

  “Silencer,” Santino cut in, then added more softly once he noted my confusion, “Goes on the barrel and muffles the sound.”

  “Oh.”

  I had a hard time envisioning such a contraption, but I didn’t press him for more. Although my father had had a passion for collecting guns, I’d never had any particular interest in them myself. Somehow, I doubted I would have understood the way a silencer worked even if Santino explained the mechanics behind it in detail. I bit my lip and moved forward, although our hands remained entwined.

  “How long have you been a Rusalka?” he asked quietly.

  The words stilled my breath. I stared at the rocky path winding before me, hoping to the gods he would let the subject go if I stayed silent for long enough.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the shift in his demeanor when I’d told him of my former self. That flash of darkness, there one moment and gone the next. We’d barely started to inch away from the tension that had sprung to life between us—I didn’t want to lose this comfort. Not yet.

  But I felt Santino’s blue-and-silver eyes burn into my skin with a hunger that left me no choice but to cut open old wounds. Just another ugly truth, floating to the surface like seaweed.

  “World War I,” I mumbled.

  Santino stopped in his tracks. I stared at my feet, afraid to put a visual to the revulsion I felt pulsing from his body. Dead for a century—who could blame him for seeing me as anything but a walking corpse?

  Santino, however, didn’t pull his hand away. “How old were you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  I offered no more, and he didn’t demand it. He led me through the brush, my flip-flops catching on small pebbles as we crossed the uneven terrain. The less than ideal circumstances slowed our progress, but we’d established early on that we didn’t dare risk the seaside path. Or its proximity to the water. Staying in the sea for as long as we had had been dangerous enough. If my sisters decided to show… There wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do to stop them from ensnaring Santino.

  The thought alone was enough to turn my stomach into a tight, painful knot.

  “What happened?” he asked as we climbed up a small hill, his grip keeping me steady. “After the change?”

  He motioned to my legs, much to my relief, inquiring about the second time magic had reshaped my being. Not the first.

  Sadly, the memories weren’t any less unpleasant.

  “Rusalkas have some long-standing hostility towards mermaids,” I admitted, the absurdity of the words almost bitterly laughable as they fluttered into the night air. “They never told me why and I didn’t ask, but I always believed it had something to do with the fact that we—them,” I quickly corrected myself, “are spirits of the dead, locked in ageless flesh, while mermaids are, by all accounts, living beings.” I hesitated, unsure whether to enter these murky waters but did so nonetheless. “The death every Rusalka suffers before she becomes a water-bound soul is, by nature, traumatic. Suicide or violence. There are hardly any other alternatives. And life, for them… It’s something to be taken against a person’s will, not celebrated or cherished. I—I fought the impulse, refused to become so…jaded. I didn’t want to let my own mistakes—my own choices—shape me into a monster that resented the beauty of living. But it’s strong, Santino. The impulse to kill is strong enough to drive even the most sensible person insane.

  “But mermaids…
They embody the essence of a water nymph without the cloak of loss slung across their shoulders. Not to mention that their seductions don’t have to result in death, whereas every man a Rusalka puts under her spell wanders into his watery grave sooner rather than later.”

  A nod from Santino revealed he knew as much, too. A phantom weight rolled off my chest.

  What I was telling him was bad enough. I didn’t want him to hear from my lips that any kind of sexual intercourse with a Rusalka was ultimately lethal. Especially when I didn’t know how much of that curse I’d brought along with me when I’d changed.

  My cheeks heated at the thought—at why the subject had even crossed my mind—and the gentle brush of wind seemed sharper against my skin. But I didn’t flinch away from our interlaced fingers.

  Even when every nerve in my body was torn between wanting Santino and running from him.

  “When the magic hit,” I continued as he led the way through a series of tightly scattered rocks with me following just a half of a step behind, “three of us changed. The Rusalkas attacked Iza at once, tainting the water red with her blood before she could even utter a word. But Angela—she attempted to plead with them. Reason with them. She was one of the core members of the group, one of the oldest, too. She tried to convince her sisters, her friends, that just because she had a tail, it didn’t make her any different from the spirit they had spent decades—some even centuries—with.”

  A shudder rippled through me. Santino stopped to turn around, his blue-and-silver gaze revealing an edge of hardness that wasn’t directed at me—but at what he knew followed.

  I bit down a sob. “Santino, I escaped while they were tearing Angela apart. I used the spill of her blood as cover and swam as fast and as far as this new body could take me. I knew my sisters would kill me if they ever laid eyes on me again, perhaps even came after me if the currents brought hints of my location. But I never thought they would send someone to kill me while I was on land. Not when being separated from water is a punishment I have to live with every second of every day just because I’m different.”

  The pain within me shifted into anger. Tears scalded my cheeks, and I wiped them away before they had the opportunity to fall. While a single drop shouldn’t be enough to ignite the magic, I didn’t want to risk even the slimmest chance of going through another shift. I was exhausted, and hurt, and needed to find out where I would go once Santino led me back to Piran.

  The man in question caught another stray tear with the tip of his finger, then gently cupped my cheek.

  “I’ll help you, Liana,” he whispered, the velvet of his voice engulfing me as gently as the press of night around us. “I’ll help you get your freedom back.”

  6

  Santino’s apartment in the very heart of Piran was small, but not unpleasantly so. It smelled of books, old and new, that were perched on the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves dominating the southern wall. They made me fall in love with the place in an instant. But even more than the alluring fragrance of paper I’d missed so much while living in the morass, it was the traces of him that captured my senses and wrapped me in their velvet cloak. It was as if Santino himself were embedded in every atom of air, in every dark-hued throw pillow scattered across the cozy love seat, and in the minimal, but tasteful decorations that created a unique, warm atmosphere.

  And yet that same scent made me pause as the door locked behind us.

  “This… Santino, I can’t.” I shook my head, mortified that I had been so selfish as to even let it come this far. “Police or not, I can’t let you risk ruining your life because of me.”

  He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe as if he was ready to physically block me in case I acted on the growing urge to escape. “I won’t go back on my word, Liana. Now, do I have to stand here all night or can I make us some dinner?”

  I blinked. He couldn’t be serious… But before I had the chance to protest, my stomach rumbled—another little side effect of this new mermaid state, since food wasn’t all that vital for a Rusalka.

  Santino gave me a pointed look. He got his answer. Or, rather, my treacherous body gave it to him with another rumble to back it up.

  I grunted, and walked deeper inside the apartment to show him I wouldn’t bolt. For now. Seemingly satisfied, Santino spilled from the doorframe with liquid grace, his long strides carrying him towards the kitchenette occupying the corner adjacent to the living room.

  Gods, he really was serious.

  He opened a cupboard and reached for the top shelf, the soft clank of dishes filling the silence that stretched between us. For a moment, all I did was stare at him, noting the tasteful, fit triangle of his back. My gaze involuntarily dipped lower, then back up again as heat invaded my cheeks.

  I’d dreamed about being here, dreamed of sharing something as simple as a meal with this gorgeous man on far too many nights when the draw of the ocean subsided and I finally fell asleep, secreted away in the colorless boarding house.

  But that was it. A dream. Wishful thinking that would never step beyond the realm of the imaginary.

  I let loose a steadying breath. “Can I at least bandage your shoulder before you whip out the dishes?”

  I could have sworn I’d seen a hint of a smile touch his face when he glanced at me, a silver pot dangling from his hand. It was all I got, too, because between one heartbeat and the next, he was already by the sink, filling the dish with tap water before placing it on the narrow stove.

  “It’s just a flesh wound, cara.” He shrugged, then slowly turned around and prowled over to the nook beneath the stairs that connected the ground floor to the spacious upper level I’d spied over the airy railing. “I’ll clean it up while you change.”

  He opened a couple of drawers and reemerged with a bundle in his hands, then, wordlessly, deposited the clothes in my lap. My fingers bunched in the fabric. I stared at the dark gray man’s T-shirt and black boxer shorts—with the tag still on—but before I could argue, Santino’s palm pressed against the small of my back, ushering me towards the bathroom.

  “Dinner will be ready in fifteen,” was all he said before he closed the door behind me, leaving me bewildered and utterly wrapped in his spell.

  For long, long seconds, I stood on the cool tiles, clutching the spare clothes and staring blankly at the white wood door, filtering through the sounds of Santino rummaging around the kitchen. My mind was a swarm of jumbled thoughts, all of them centered around the silver-haired cafe owner. My boss. Savior. I shook my head. All of this was just too…peculiar.

  I was well aware that I’d spent a century surrounded by no one but the Rusalkas and those men we drew to their sloshing graves. Enough to lose my grip on reality existing beyond the water. But even before, I couldn’t remember many humans acting this aloof after getting shot—while trying to save a mermaid’s tail, at that.

  Honestly, I didn’t know whether I should laugh or march out there and give him a piece of my mind.

  A cop, I reminded myself. Santino was a cop. Getting shot isn’t a novelty to him, so stop panicking and pull yourself together.

  Sadly, that was easier said than done. My thoughts refused to cooperate, and I was fairly certain I was flirting with a nervous breakdown somewhere down the line. But eventually I regained enough composure to strip away the towel and bra. Not wanting to go through another shift, I decided against a shower, although the salt clinging to my skin persisted to act as a cruel, aromatic reminder of just how lost I was in this world.

  Lost, but not stranded.

  I bit my lip as Santino’s image flooded my mind again, the memory of the heat in his silver eyes when he skimmed my almost naked form…

  Stop it.

  That had been before he knew the ugly truth of who I’d been—still was, in a way. Although he was obviously inclined to help me, the notion surely came out of the same sense of duty that had driven him to join the force. His show of goodwill wasn’t personal in an intimate way. Nor was it a gesture
of affection, regardless of how much I might have wished otherwise.

  With a sigh, I pulled on the gray cotton tee, then snapped the tag of the boxer shorts and slipped them on, marveling just a little at how good they felt against my skin. My hair was an unruly lilac mess of salt-kissed strands, so I finger combed it into submission, then walked back out the door, my mood a few shades lighter.

  However, any moderate amount of calmness I might have gained while confined within the bathroom walls was gone the instant my gaze fell on Santino.

  The man had changed his clothes while I was inside. A three-quarter sleeved raglan black shirt adorned his honed body now, coupled with matching dark slacks that rippled with movement and showed off the inviting swell of his ass every time he leaned over the white wood counter. I blushed violently, swatting away those thoughts with an almost feverish urge, and forced my feet to move. By some miracle, I managed to make it to the small table where Santino had already laid out two plates, filled to the rim with parmesan and olive-covered pasta.

  Having barely eaten a thing all day, my mouth watered at the scent. I sat down and snatched a silver fork before realizing it wasn’t polite to eat while your company was still working. A chuckle came from behind just as I froze, the fork suspended in mid-air.

  “Go ahead, piccola. I’ll be there in a second.”

  I glanced over my shoulder, noting the grace with which Santino poured two large glasses of red wine—a local Teran, judging by the colors on the label—then walked over and placed one in front of me while holding on to the other. There were no traces of his previous harshness, of those shadows I’d seen amassing and dissipating like morning mist when I’d revealed my heritage.

  No, there was only Santino—the carefree Italian who seemed so at ease in his beloved bar, enjoying life one day at a time. If I had been shocked before, when the light had given way to darkness, the staggering transformation I witnessed now was well beyond my comprehension.