by Jade Kerrion
Duggae extended his legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. With his puffed out cheeks, twinkling black eyes, and crinkly white beard, he really did look like a statue of a cheeky garden gnome. “Anyway, my point is that Ashe didn’t get to where she is today by being fickle and easily distracted. And she was Beltiamatu royalty. The crown princess. She would have ruled all the oceans if she hadn’t vanished, searching for a soul for her son.”
Varun’s heartbeat skipped. “I…didn’t know that. I knew she was royalty and the eldest daughter; I didn’t realize she was also the heir. So, she risked everything, gambled everything, even her kingdom, for Zamir.”
Duggae nodded. “Ungrateful whelp. But once again, back to my point. The Beltiamatu—especially the royal line—is ambitious, driven, and focused. Observe Zamir, as a case in point. The real problem with Zamir is that he’s just like his mother. Ashe is not the fickle, easily distracted Daughter of Air you think she is.”
“I don’t think she’s anything of the sort.”
“Which means that their feelings aren’t fickle either. Their hurts go deep and last long. You’re lucky that all you got was a water spout. I half expected her to spin a hurricane out of still air.”
“On the boat?”
“Whose side are you on? Your nervous, hysterical half-wit girlfriend, or the one who allowed you to come along on a task she could have accomplished on her own with far less effort—just because she knew you’d want to see and experience it for yourself?”
“I…” Varun’s thoughts stumbled over Duggae’s words. “I never did understand why she let me—”
“I don’t either, but she did.”
“I think she has the Isriq Genii.”
“That thrice cursed dagger?”
“It’s attuned to Zamir.”
Duggae looked alarmed at first, but then his shoulders relaxed. “If she wanted your soul for Zamir, she would already have taken it. Considering how she still coddles that boy, she probably thinks you’re not good enough.”
“She…coddles Zamir?”
“Ever seen a furious Daughter of Air? One who also commands water? She could have torn him apart—limb from limb—but she tossed him into the water and let him go.”
“Maybe she thought she could get more information out of him later.”
Duggae rolled his eyes. “If she wanted more information, she would not have let him go. He could tell us nothing more.”
“We know nothing,” Varun pointed out.
“Not true.” Duggae shook his head. “We know that he freed the Great Arbiter of Life and Death in exchange for a soul.”
“We don’t have a name. We don’t know where to find her.”
“You guessed Krakatoa.” Duggae’s frown gave way to a faint smile. “As guesses go, it’s a good one. We were all really confused about Krakatoa. We never did understand why the Beltiamatu went after it with the Dirga Tiamatu. Krakatoa was just an island—and not even a significant one at that. We were cleaning up the mess all around the world for months…even years…”
“And ignoring Krakatoa itself,” Varun added.
“Exactly.” Duggae snapped his fingers. “And if that’s the case, there’s a good chance that what we’re looking for is still on Krakatoa?”
“Which is?”
“The entrance to Irkalla.”
“The underworld.”
Duggae nodded. “I’ve never been there. It probably won’t be fun.” He looked up and met Varun’s eyes. “I know you’re not happy about Ashe returning you to your people, but it is the right thing to do. There is no place for a human in an elemental war.”
Frustration was a fist-sized knot right in the center of Varun’s chest. “I want to see this. I want to see it all.”
“I know, but this isn’t a grand tour of all the weird shit in the world, as you so eloquently put it.”
Varun winced. The words sounded harsher than he had imagined. “Ashe didn’t take it well.”
“Would you have? She didn’t do anything weird—until your girlfriend started spouting off.” The gnome shoved to his feet. Standing on the table, he was slightly taller than Varun. He gave Varun a friendly pat on the back. “If you think of Ashe as a woman—with a woman’s feelings—but a great deal more capable of throwing a dramatic hissy fit, you’ll probably handle her better.”
Varun set his crutches aside and sank down in his chair. “It wasn’t supposed to be this complicated. This research trip was supposed to be my time to focus on my work, but Ondine changed her mind at the last minute and wanted to come along. And when I looked over the crew list, I never imagined Ashe might be a woman. How many female ship captains are there?”
“Probably more than you think,” Duggae said. “The point is, you and your girlfriend have pissed Ashe off. You’re lucky she’s dropping you off at home instead of marooning you on an island somewhere.”
Varun grunted. “It’s probably only because she has to return the boat and the crew anyway, before she takes off again, free as the air.”
“Ashe doesn’t look free to me,” Duggae said quietly. “She’s burdened with responsibility, with guilt, with love. The world’s edging toward disaster, and she wonders if most of it is her fault.”
“I’ve told you. Personal responsibility—”
“You can talk about personal responsibility until your tongue falls off, but I guarantee you, when she looks at Zamir, she sees the baby she left behind. He is her only child; the only child she will ever have.”
Varun grimaced and looked away. He, too, was his mother’s only child.
His mother would have given anything, everything, even her life, for him.
Why would Ashe’s love be any less—Ashe, who had risked her kingdom, her people, and her life, for her son’s soul?
“Any idea where she is?” Varun asked Duggae.
“Who, me? I just live here.” Duggae spread his arms to encompass the room. He hopped off the table and returned to the bed he had made from Varun’s lab coats. “Turn off the light on the way out, will you?”
Chuckling to himself, Varun flicked off the light switch and made his way slowly up the narrow staircase. Low conversation, oddly devoid of laughter, came from the mess hall. The crew was nervous and on edge. He hoped mutiny wasn’t a thing anymore. The Veritas was a research vessel, not a pirate ship. And Ashe had told everyone that their next stop was Bar Harbor—the Veritas’s home port. He overheard a stray piece of conversation. “And then, Ondine said—”
Damn it! He made his way to Ondine’s cabin. Without knocking, he entered. Ondine spun around as he stepped in. The flurry of her hands over her shirt hinted that she had been standing bare-breasted in front of the mirror on her tiny closet door. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” Ondine’s chin lifted as she buttoned her silk blouse. “Where were you? Corey said you left his clinic a half hour ago.”
Was she checking on him? Varun checked his instinctively peevish response. “I went down to my lab.”
“I know. I checked the deck. You weren’t out there with the captain. Ashe.” She dragged out Ashe’s name in a lilting, mocking tone.
“You need to back off.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Me?”
“The crew’s talking. You’re making trouble.”
Ondine hissed. “We wouldn’t have trouble if the captain weren’t a witch. All the storms, your diving accidents, the underwater volcano blowing up near Kalymnos, and then now—Atlantis? Open your eyes, damn it. You’re infatuated with her. You can’t see or think straight anymore. She’s leading you around on a leash.”
“She’s not leading us around anywhere. She’s dropping us off back at Bar Harbor. You’ll be home, back on dry land, back in your mind-numbingly dull reality of shopping in Milan and Paris.”
Ondine’s mouth dropped open. “What did you—? How dare you?”
“I told you not to come. Why didn’t you go shopping like you’d planned? We’d all
be happier, even you.”
“I…” She blinked, and for an instant, she looked younger, and almost vulnerable. “I thought we would spend time together. I know you love it out here.”
“But you hate it. You hate the ocean.”
Her hands balled into fists. “I know we’re on opposite ends here, but someone had to give, and it certainly wasn’t going to be you!”
His jaw dropped. “What do you mean?”
“You’re obsessed, Varun.” She strode up to him and poked a finger at his chest. “First with your research. Then with this captain. When am I going to rate high enough for you to notice?”
“That’s not fair.”
Her eyes glittered, but she couldn’t possibly be crying, could she? “News flash, Varun. Life isn’t fair. If it were fair, you would have noticed that everything you have has come from me!”
“Everything?” He flung his arm out to encompass the breadth of her small cabin. “Are you still harping about the fact that your dad paid for this charter?”
“Of course.”
“Right. No mention of the fact that it was sponsored by his charitable foundation, and that it was an open competition, with a winner selected from among the top research ideas. I spent months putting that research proposal together. Hundreds of hours of lab work and data went into it—”
Ondine rolled her eyes. “You’re a child if you think that anything other than a good word from me won you that competition.”
“Are you saying—?” He pressed his hand against the plunging sensation in his stomach. He ground his teeth. “Why the hell did you do that?”
“I wanted you to win.”
“And you call that winning?” He thumped the open palm of his hand against his chest. “My work is solid, Ondine. I could have won the competition entirely on my own.”
“You wouldn’t have. They were going to give the grant money to someone else—that project on the Florida marshlands—”
“Wetlands.”
“Same thing.”
“Very different.”
Ondine set her hands on her hips and glared at him. “It doesn’t matter. You weren’t going to win, but I made sure you did.”
Varun’s hands curled into fists. How could he make her understand? “I don’t need your help. You don’t even give a damn about what I do. I try to explain my experiments and findings to you, and your eyes glaze over, but you can calculate the ROI on your favorite fashion designer down to the last penny. In your head. In thirty seconds.”
Her lips—perfectly painted crimson—parted. “Are you saying I’m trivial?”
“I’m saying my work doesn’t matter to you, and we both know it.” He glared down at her. “We’d both be better off if you stopped faking it.”
She gasped, then twisted away from him. She reached for something on her bedside table. He caught a glimpse of it in her hand as he stepped out of the door—the porcelain figurine he had given Ondine of a mermaid arcing out of the water on the crest of a wave. It was the only decoration she had brought on board to personalize her cabin. They had laughed about it together. He had breathed a kiss into her auburn hair and called Ondine his mermaid.
Varun’s breath caught in his throat, but momentum closed the wooden door between them.
An instant later, something shattered against it.
Damn it!
What the hell was wrong with women? All of them. The human one. The elemental one, who could kick his ass—and had kicked his ass—without thinking twice about it. They were all freaking damn weird.
He made his way onto the deck. Anger hastened his unsteady progress, in spite of his crutches. The cool breeze tugging through his hair did nothing to steady his mood.
Ashe sat on the rail at the far end of the ship, looking out, as she always did upon the ocean. The wind danced around her, as gentle as a caress, combing through the long blue-green hair.
He hobbled up to Ashe.
She did not look at him. Her fingers toyed, as they almost always did when she was not using them to communicate, with the pendant around her neck.
Varun drew a deep breath, as much to quell the frustration knotted in his chest, as to check his temper. He broke the silence between them with a question. “That’s Zamir’s scale, isn’t it?” Varun leaned in closer to study the scale that shone with iridescent darkness like a black pearl, catching the light in faint, tantalizing hints of dark blue, deep green, and indigo. It was luminous.
Infant Beltiamatu shed the scales on their tails as they grow. This was the first one Zamir shed. I had it fashioned into a pendant.
“Why is it the only thing that stays on you when you transfer forms—from human to pure air and back? Your clothes don’t do that.”
I don’t know.
“But surely—”
Really, Varun. How many Daughters of Air regularly shift forms?
“I don’t know.”
Too few for you to run a randomized control test, I guarantee it.
“Stop making fun of me.”
Stop treating everything like a piece of data to collect. Life isn’t a research experiment.
He drew a deep breath. “My research isn’t done.”
Yes, it is. You know the ocean is dying, and you know why it’s dying.
Varun glared at her. “And you think it’s okay stopping there? I have to do something, Ashe. I can’t return to my university, tell everyone the world is going to end, and they should go back to sleep. I’m not just looking for answers. I’m looking for solutions, and that’s a whole other beast.”
She raked a scathing glance over his body, lingering briefly at his bandaged leg. I think your girlfriend is worried you’ll hurt your other foot.
“Of course she’s worried. Look, the entire crew’s worried, but you’re not letting them stop you from doing what you need to do.”
Oddly enough, I’m the captain. No one tells me what to do on my ship.
“When we chartered this ship, we were told that you had an extensive track record as a ship captain.”
She shrugged.
“But how could you even…I mean, you don’t usually do this, right? How could you have a record of anything?”
We own the company.
For an instant, his brain fizzled. His jaw dropped. “You own the what?”
Prime International, which owns this research vessel, several other ships, planes, and hires thousands of humans, is managed by elementals.
Varun’s eyebrows drew together. His brain had to still be spinning, because he barely understood Ashe’s words. “What do you mean managed by elementals?”
Sometimes, we need human…agencies…to get things done. Prime International is our interface with the real human world. It does a great deal of normal work for human clients, and the last I heard, is actually highly profitable, but it is controlled by elementals.
“Damn it, Ashe.” He raked his hand through his hair. “What else do I not know? You don’t tell me anything.”
How has this enriched your understanding of the world? Ashe challenged. How has your knowledge of this— She held up Zamir’s scale. —given you any insight into the problems facing you? They haven’t, because they’re not important. They’re not relevant. Not everything is research data, Varun. You’re human, not a mole. Stop that compulsive digging. Anyway— She shrugged. It doesn’t matter. You’ll be back on land in three days, safe and sound.
“I told you, I’m not done.”
I’m captain of this ship. You are done.
“You put me back on land, I’m catching the next plane to Jakarta, and from there a boat to Krakatoa. You can’t stop me, Ashe.”
Don’t bet on it.
“What are you going to do? Crash a passenger jet because I’m on it? Sink a ship because I’m aboard? It’s a wide, open world, and I’m a free agent. I’m not part of your crew, and funnily enough, I don’t answer to you. I’m going to Krakatoa—with or without you.”
You’re going to get k
illed.
“Maybe, but I’m looking for answers, Ashe, and Krakatoa is where I’ll find them.”
She snorted and turned her head away from him. It’ll be over before you get there.
“Then I’ll pick up the pieces, but I’ll be there—regardless.” He cupped her chin and turned her face back to him. “This is my job. I don’t quit, however long it takes, whatever it takes. You, of all people, would understand that.”
Ashe tossed her head, shaking off his hand, then turned her back on him to stare out at the ocean. The breeze stirred the water, churning the white caps of tiny waves into sea foam. Clouds scurried across the sky. The wind dashing around him grew hard and cold, icy enough to bite.
She was getting angry again.
Varun gritted his teeth. “I’m sorry.”
The wind jerked to a standstill.
“I’m sorry Ondine’s been so difficult. I’m sorry I didn’t call her out on it, and took it out on you instead. The things you do with the wind and the waves—” He swallowed his pride and spoke the truth. “—it’s not weird. It’s beautiful. It’s as if nature itself sings to the rhythm of your heartbeat. I love watching you, watching the sky and the water reflect the peace or the storm in your eyes. It’s…” He groped for the right word. “It’s magical. You’re magical.”
Ashe said nothing for a long, silence moment, then he heard the snap of her voice in his mind. You’re still not going to Krakatoa.
Varun chuckled, a self-mocking half-smile twisting his lips. Of course he hadn’t expected Ashe to relent on that little bit flattery—except that it hadn’t been flattery, but the truth.
Either way, relenting wasn’t her style.
Just as well he hadn’t been counting on it.
He huffed out his breath. “I’m going to do some research—the thing you shun. Maybe I can dig up some information on the Great Arbiter of Life and Death.” Varun shrugged. “And I’m going to Krakatoa, regardless. With you or without you, I’ll be there.”
Chapter 19
An hour later, Jackson’s voice broadcast over the ship’s PA system, announcing a change in itinerary and a 180-degree turn. Instead of heading to Bar Harbor, the Veritas was returning to the Mediterranean Sea, then cutting through the Suez Canal, curving south of the subcontinent of India, toward the Sunda Strait.
