by C. L. Wilson
But sometimes, what was meant to be heard and heeded were words of instruction or gentle admonishments. As was the case whenever the angry fire blazed so hot in Summer’s heart that she thought she might explode.
“Look at me, Gabriella,” Mama would say at such times. “Look at me now, my darling. Let it go, Gabriella. Be calm. There’s my girl. There, now. You’re such a good girl.” Then, when the fire was safely banked, and the Rose-shaped birthmark on Summer’s right wrist no longer burned like a white-hot coal against her arm, Mama would enfold Summer in her arms, and the cool, sweet, nourishment of her love would surround Summer in a world of peace and calm and gentleness, and everything would be set to rights.
Only Mama hadn’t been there that day in the stables, and Summer—protected, pampered, surrounded by love—had never known grief or horror, or the consuming fury that would erupt when she lost what she loved.
“What happened to the puppies you loved, Gabriella?”
She blinked up at Dilys a little hazily, her thoughts still mired in memory. “They died, of course. But you knew that.”
“Tey, moa leia. I suspected so.” The fingers clasped over hers were stroking lightly, soft, gentle, undemanding caresses. “Talk to me, Gabriella. Tell me what happened.” His voice was as calm as a still mountain lake. Somehow, that made the words easier to say.
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault. But they were puppies and they shouldn’t have been in the stables. Papa had bought a new stallion. Very expensive. Very high strung. And the puppies got out of their stall. The stable master and his eldest son were bringing the stallion in, trying to calm him . . . but the puppies must have startled him.”
To this day, she didn’t like stallions. She couldn’t be near them. She rode, of course, but only on gentle mares or placid geldings. And she hadn’t stepped foot in a stable since.
“Mama and Papa and the rest of us were just coming back from an outing when it started. I heard the screams and the barking and went running into the stables before anyone could stop me. Several of the puppies were already dead by the time I got there. The stallion was out of control, rearing, stomping everything in sight, and so were half the other horses in the stables. The mother dog was savaging him, trying to protect her puppies. Who could blame her? The stable master and his sons were trying to calm the stallion, but the puppies were everywhere, barking, getting underfoot, making things worse. Everything happened all at once. The mother dog got hold of the stallion’s foreleg and the horse went down. The older boy kicked one of the puppies so hard I heard her spine snap. And then I snapped, too.”
Gods, the fire and the fury that had roared up inside her. The shaking, howling scream of rage that had erupted from her thin, four-year-old chest.
“The one he kicked. She was the one I loved most. I was going to smuggle her into my rooms and keep her. And they killed her. So I killed them.”
She looked at Dilys and remembered what she’d felt like after that rage had come pouring out her. After the stable master and his three sons and the wild-eyed, terrified, injured stallion had fallen, writhing, to the floor as every bone and organ in their bodies had exploded inside their flesh, leaving flaccid, bloody bags of skin. She’d stared at them, the living beings she’d killed, and for the first time in her life, she hadn’t felt anything. She’d felt hollow, as if her insides had been scooped out, leaving her an empty, paper-thin shell.
“I don’t know what started the fire. Maybe that was me, too. Or maybe a lantern got kicked over. Or maybe it was Papa after he saw what I’d done. In any case, he and Mama let everyone believe the fire was what killed them.”
“As well they should have. You were just a child, Gabriella. You were not to blame.”
She ignored his absolution. It didn’t change what had happened. And she didn’t deserve it. “Papa banished all pets from Vera Sola after that. Every dog and cat and small animal in the city was taken away. I wasn’t allowed in the stables again, and they made sure, when I rode, I never had the same horse twice. So I couldn’t get attached. I wasn’t allowed to play with other children until I proved I could control myself. Mama worked with me every day.”
Summer remembered the feel of Mama’s hands holding her small face. She remembered the way Mama’s eyes fixed on hers and never wavered, cooling the fire that raged in Summer’s soul.
“There is great power in you. So you must—Gabriella, you must—learn to control it. Do you understand, darling? You must control your emotions, or you could hurt someone again. And I know you would never want that.”
So Gabriella had learned how to control her anger and push the bad, hot, violent feelings away. For Mama. Because Mama was Summer’s anchor in the storm, just like she was Papa’s. Gentle, steadfast, unwavering.
“It was very difficult for me after Mama died,” Summer told Dilys. “But I saw how Papa despised Storm—even as a baby—for not being able to control her gifts, and the thought of him ever hating me the way he did her was more than I could bear.” She shrugged. “So I learned to stay away from things that made me feel too much. I learned how to avoid extreme emotion, how to make the people around me happy so I could stay happy too.”
“And then I came along.”
“And then you came along.”
“What do I make you feel, Gabriella?”
She looked up at him. Traced the strong, beautiful lines of his face with her eyes.
“Too much,” she admitted. “Far, far too much.”
Emotion broke across his soul like sunlight breaking through the clouds after a fierce storm at sea. It suffused him with the same relief and satisfaction and sense of a fight well won, the same profound sense of awe that left him marveling at the beauty and the challenge of this wondrous world. Of this woman who had somehow, in so short a time, become his world, and no less wondrous than the one whose seas he’d sailed most of his life.
“And if I could promise you need never fear your power again, moa kiri? Would you let yourself love me then?”
The fingers splayed across Dilys’s chest trembled. Or maybe that was him doing the trembling. He couldn’t be sure.
“You can’t promise that,” she said.
“But if I could? If I could promise you’d never hurt anyone by accident ever again, would you still refuse me?”
Her eyes were so wide, so deeply blue. Her soft mouth trembled. She looked so uncertain. Fear and hope teetering uncertainly on a delicately balanced fulcrum. He’d never wanted to kiss her more.
He didn’t. She had to come to him. She had to make the choice.
“No.” She spoke in a whisper so low he had to strain to hear her. “No, I wouldn’t refuse you.”
“And would you let yourself love me? Could you? Love me?”
Her lashes fluttered down. Her head bowed, leaving him looking down at the neat part and glossy black curls of her artfully arranged hair. As silky and dark as any imlani females. “If it wasn’t a danger to everyone around me? Could I love you then? I suppose so.” She tugged at the hands he held pressed to his chest, pulling with enough force that he had to let her go. “But it doesn’t matter,” she said. “You can’t change what I am.”
He half expected her to walk away. To put as much distance between them as she could. She was a turtle without her shell, vulnerable, and she was an expert at running from people and situations that made her that way. But she didn’t run, and his heart nearly burst with pride and soaring hope and love so strong it made tears sting his eyes.
“There is no part of you I would ever want to change, Gabriella Aretta Rosadora Liliana Elaine Coruscate,” he told her huskily. “You are perfect, just as you are.”
Her gaze shot up, startled, and he had to smile at her surprise.
“Think about it, moa kiri, you just spoke to me of the most painful experience in your life. A memory so terrible you have spent your life cutting yourself off from even the possibility of love. You just relived every horrible moment of that experience in your mind—
even the bits you didn’t tell me about—and yet the power you fear so much did not overwhelm you.”
Her jaw dropped. She turned over her right hand, staring in shock at the red Rose-shaped birthmark on her inner wrist. She touched it with shaking fingers, then pressed a hand to her chest.
“How?”
He reached for her hand slowly. Unfurled the slender, delicate fingers. Laid her trembling palm over his own heart.
“You gave your pain to me. You let me take it from you and give you my love back in return.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You weren’t born to stand alone, Sirena. You were born to love and to be loved. To share what’s inside you. And whether you want to admit it or not, your heart knows you can share it with me.”
He could see her doubt, feel the fear trickling into him through the filaments of trust and need that had multiplied and strengthened these past weeks, binding them ever closer. But beneath the doubt and fear was a sweet savor that set his senses soaring. Hope.
Numahao bless him. Earlier, when she’d told him about the horrible incident in her childhood and she’d unwittingly let him bear her anguish, that subconscious gift, that sharing of emotion, had come with ragged surges of magic that had filled every corner of his being with tingling energy. But this—this hope—even fragile as it was, was like a blaze of brilliant light illuminating the night, a river of pure power, pouring into him. And she wasn’t even aware . . . wasn’t even trying to share her gift with him.
He could scarcely imagine what it would be like once she actually claimed him as hers and forged bonds of love even stronger than what tied them together now.
“Let yourself love me, Gabriella Aretta Rosadora Liliana Elaine Coruscate.”
She stared up at him, and though all his life he thought the wide, golden eyes of Calberna’s imlani females were the most beautiful eyes in the world, he measured by a different standard now. There could be no eyes more beautiful than those of clear, deep sapphire. Blue as summer skies and the prettiest seas he’d ever sailed.
“Why do you do that?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Call me by my full name. Are you trying to work some sort of Calbernan magic on me?”
He smiled. “Not in the way that you mean.”
“Because I know that some folk believe names have power. That by speaking the true name of a thing, you can bind it.”
His smile broadened. “Names do have power—true names, at least—and I do aim to bind you to me in every way possible. But you must claim me first before I can.”
“How do I do that?”
“You already know my true Name. Speak it, and you make me yours forever. And when you speak it, I’ll know your true Name too. Until then, I call you by your full name because that’s the truest name for you I know.” He shrugged, feeling a little shy as he admitted, “It makes me feel closer to you.”
He traced a finger down the side of her face. “I call you other names too, all of them true in their own way. Moa leia. My flower. Moa halea. My love. Moa kiri. My heart. Myerial u moa kiri. Queen of my heart. Moa liana. My wife, my beloved, my life’s mate.”
Her lips were parted. Her eyes a little dazed. And sweet, hot energy was pouring into him, wave after wave. It was the most marvelous feeling. Like food for a hungry soul. And he hadn’t realized how badly he’d been starving. She nourished parts of him he’d never even known existed. And, like any starving man set before a feast, he wanted to gorge himself. He wanted to take everything she had to give him so that he’d never be hungry again.
But he wasn’t hers yet. She hadn’t claimed him as hers and invited him in. Until she did, that dazzling bounty of love and power wasn’t his. To take what must be given was the worst sort of crime. Punishable, in Calberna, by death.
He bent his head, shuddering against the aching need she roused within him. He clasped her hand more tightly to his chest and willed her to hear his silent plea.
Claim me, Sirena. Speak my Name. Make me thine.
But she didn’t, and so, with deep regret and no little effort, he released her hand and stepped back to break the connection between them. The abrupt loss of her sweet succor made him groan. To leave her, to leave the Halla of that communion, pained him in ways he’d never known. Nothing less than the fullness of her love, the utter completeness of her claiming, would ever assuage the hunger that burned in him now.
If she didn’t have him, he would Fade. Or rather, he would do the Calbernan male’s equivalent. He would give himself up to the ocean and swim the depths until no strength remained in his body except that which the fishes could claim from his lost and lifeless corpse.
He tried to smile in answer to her questioning gaze, but the effort was too much for him.
“Come, moa kiri. I’ll take you back to the palace.”
As they exited the winding paths of the labyrinth, a familiar six-blast call of a Calbernan conch-shell horn rang out in the distance.
“What’s that?” Summer asked.
Dilys, who had halted to listen to the sound, took the closest set of terrace steps three at a time and turned to look out over hedge maze to the fjord beyond. He raised a hand to shield his eyes and gaze at the Calbernan ship sailing round the bend towards Konumarr.
“Dilys, what is it?” Summer joined him on the top step and turned to follow his gaze.
Three familiar flags flew from the mainmast of the approaching ship: the green-and-blue flag of Calberna, the curling blue-and-white waves of House Merimydion, and atop them both, the small white-and-gold crown on a field of coral red. The pennant flown by royal envoys of the Myerial of Calberna.
“I think my uncle is here.”
“Your uncle?”
“My mother’s twin, Calivan Merimydion. He was originally planning to accompany me, but my mother . . . fell ill and he stayed behind to assist her.”
She went still beside him. “Your mother is ill?”
He cursed himself for saying anything when he heard the tremor in her voice and knew he had reminded her of her own loss. Still, he had spoken, she had asked, and now there was nothing for it but to give her the truth.
“She Fades,” he told her honestly. “I told you that Sirens don’t survive their mates, tey? Well, my mother has enough Siren in her that my father’s death nearly took her, too. But then the Myerial died, and my mother inherited the queen’s gift.” He stared out at the horizon, not seeing his uncle’s approaching ship, but the memory of his mother’s pale, thin face the day before Nyamialine’s death. “Sometimes, I used to think it was only the queen’s gift and the duty that came with it—not the love of me or my uncle—that kept her with us.”
A warm, slender hand touched his arm. A gentle touch of comfort and sympathy. With it came another astonishing wave of power, sparkling with compassion and strength.
He laid a hand over hers and smiled. “I came here seeking a wife not only for my own joy but also to bring her a daughter to love, and the promise of a grandchild to look forward to. Joy enough to keep her with me for a while longer.” His smile tilted towards self-deprecating as he admitted, “A man grown I may be, but I am not ready to lose my mother.”
“Of course you aren’t.” And there was a note in her voice so sweet, so full of kindness and understanding, that he wanted to snatch her up in his arms and never let her go.
Instead he lifted a hand to cup her face and ran his thumb along the crest of her cheekbone, tracing the path where the mate to his ulumi-lia would, Numahao willing, soon reside. “You, moa kiri, truly are a myerial myerinas,” he told her huskily.
She didn’t pull away, merely stood, looking up at him. “What does that mean?”
“A treasure of all treasures. A pearl of all pearls. The queen of all queens. It means you are a woman without equal.”
“Ah.” Her cheeks turned a dusky pink beneath their Summerlander brown. “I wouldn’t go as far as all that.”
“I would.”
“Well, um . . . shall we go greet your uncle?”
He grinned. He liked that she’d said “we,” making the two of them a couple. “If you like. Are you up for an adventure?”
She hesitated. “What sort of adventure?”
His grin grew wider. Holding her hand, he ran towards the edge of the terraced garden. As they reached the edge of the terrace, he wrapped a powerful arm around her waist and cried “Hang on, moa leia!”
Summer screamed as Dilys wrapped an arm around her waist and leapt off the garden terrace into the dark waters of the Llaskroner Fjord. She kept screaming as he propelled them rapidly through the water towards his uncle’s approaching ship. She was still screaming as he shot them both upwards on a wide spout of water and stopped only when he dropped them lightly onto the polished wooden deck of his uncle’s ship.
She should have been drowned or at least soaking wet from head to toe, but he’d somehow made the water of the fjord flow around her, keeping her surrounded by a cone of breathable air as he swum them towards the boat. And though the spout of water that had delivered them onto the ship’s deck had soaked her slippers and the skirts of her gown, he’d evaporated the moisture with a wave of his hand.
She was still gripping the arm he’d clapped around her waist; her fingers dug into his muscular forearm in a death grip. With effort, she pried each one free and turned to glare up into his laughing, golden-eyed gaze.
“A little warning would have been nice.”
He only laughed. “Where’s the fun in that?”
She grimaced. “Show-off,” she muttered, and she stepped away to give her skirts a firm shake. Only then did she realize they were surrounded by unfamiliar Calbernan warriors, every one of them clad in gleaming musculatas and dark green loincloths, every one of them holding a polished, wickedly sharp trident and a long, coffin-shaped shield.