I exhaled. “Okay.” I gripped his hand and tugged it closer. “Hold still.” I focused on the cup and the water that shivered then rolled into a ball and out of the cup to wrap around Sean’s hand. I frowned until most of the water rolled back into the cup leaving a narrow thread of water chasing around Sean’s ring finger on his left hand.
He smiled slightly. “So this is a human traditional marriage you’re proposing. With a ring made out of water and the proposal made by the female. You make a terrible human.”
I bit my bottom lip and stared at him. The water in the cup quivered. Sean took the glass and threw it back.
“Oh, are you thirsty?”
“Genevieve Fielding? Are you serious about marrying me?”
I nodded while I kept my eyes wide open so no tears would fall out.
“Why?”
“In sickness and health, ‘til death do us part. I already am married to you, heart and soul. Watching you collapse…” I took a shaky breath and two tears tumbled down my cheeks.
“So all I had to do to convince you that you wanted to marry me was to get poisoned. Should have tried that sooner.” He wiped my tears away with his fingers then licked them. “Siren tears are priceless. You shouldn’t waste them. Don’t cry, Watergirl.”
I fell against him and he wrapped his arms around me. “I’m sorry, Sean.”
“It’s okay.”
It wasn’t, but he said it was, and what he thought was all that really mattered.
Chapter 42
When she fell asleep, I caught the water from her engagement ring in my palm and carefully spilled it into the empty glass. I’d put it into my permanent band later. I touched her face, the bruises and cuts that weren’t impressive enough to bandage. The rest of her wasn’t as well off. She’d broken Siren’s rock? It was supposed to be Siren’s kryptonite, the one place where the wind negated the Siren’s voice.
Poisoned.
I still felt weak and aching from the inside out. Someone had poisoned me on my team, no doubt on the Examiner’s payroll. I closed my eyes. There was one person I particularly didn’t want to talk to, not ever again, but what I wanted didn’t matter.
I grabbed my phone and spoke in it softly to keep Gen from waking.
“Oliver?”
She had deep circles under her eyes. I stroked her hair.
Oliver sighed from the other side of the world at the bottom of the ocean. “How is she?”
“I’m the one who was poisoned.”
“You didn’t see her after we picked her off what was left of Siren’s Rock. She wouldn’t let me treat her. She had your old cook stitch her up. Watch for infection in her leg. The gash was pretty deep.”
“She is not your concern, not her, her legs, her neck or any other part of her. If you ever touch her again, breathe in her direction, threaten her with your kiss, I will exterminate you like the cockroach you are.”
He laughed, the sound of a prince with a broken heart. His heart couldn’t be broken enough to satisfy me. “Do you have the faintest idea what she nearly did? And that was after she knew you weren’t going to die. The world, Sean. She was going to destroy the world. If you can’t control her, you’ll have to kill her.”
I gripped the phone until it creaked. “I will never hurt her.”
“She’s your responsibility, your mate, your destiny. She’s not obsessed with me anymore. Are you going to thank me for that?”
I clenched my teeth and closed my eyes. “I’m trying not to rip out your eyes. I saw what you did to her. You made certain I’d see.”
“I couldn’t have done it without her mock Soremni cocktail. We created the closest thing anyone has come to a cure for centuries. Unfortunately, it performed much better on males than females. Betraying her was the only way. I wouldn’t have been able to do that to her without the cure and without her love for you.”
I tried to breathe. I had her in my arms. I could breathe. I had to. “You picked her off the island?”
“What was left of it. Her and your Meerten gladiator were overrun by Silkrot.”
I held my breath for another moment. Lucien had been with her. “Did you exterminate them?”
“No. They fled and we let them. Your wife doesn’t like killing things.”
I glanced down at my wife, her brown hair spilled over my blue shirt. She’d probably drool all over it. I smiled and brushed her shoulder carefully. She shifted in her sleep and twisted my shirt in her fingers. I had her here, safe, at least for the moment.
“What about the games?”
“I won the last one. You know the rules. The final game was postponed. The games are between you and I. The queen has agreed to withdraw for the time being. She was kind of upset that you got poisoned. It’s like you’re her son or something.”
“How strange. I don’t think that Gen will want me to leave here for a long time.”
“You must obey your wife.” His voice was only slightly mocking. “We’ll play a game of Glitt, winner takes the games.”
Glitt, the strategy game that princes cut their teeth on. “That would infuriate the people.”
Oliver laughed but sounded tired. “I don’t care. Our fighters are revered. You are royalty. That the Examiner tried to destroy you in the ring is beyond the pale. I thought getting Claristia to kill our father was bad. The games will end after one round of Glitt.”
“It’ll be a close game.”
“I’m very good. I was winning championships when I was four.”
“It will be difficult for you to lose. If you win, I won’t hold it against you.”
He cleared his throat. “Even if I lose she won’t want you to play in the games again.”
I brushed her hair back. It was a mess. She’d nearly destroyed the world when she thought she lost me. “Maybe not. I could live without the games, all of them.”
Oliver was silent for a long time. “The game isn’t over yet, cousin. The curse might be broken, but the monsters have an anthem. We’ve dreamed of this day. You can’t let personal feelings get in the way of what must be.”
I held her too tight and she shifted, mumbling about bicycles. “I won’t sacrifice her. Not for anything. I won’t use her either. I will love her. I will protect her. I will kill you and anyone else that tries to use her to further their agenda. I don’t care how virtuous you think it is.”
He laughed, light and delicate. “You are the ideal husband. Do me a favor and take care of yourself. If you die, we’ll have to put her down. That would make all of us very unhappy.”
I dropped the phone and buried my face in her hair.
All of us.
I shifted until her head was perfectly in the hollow of my shoulder where she belonged.
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The next book in the Watergirl series comes out Spring 2019.
Acknowledgements: After so much nonsense (Water Lost) we’re finally back on track with this watery world. Thanks to all my fantastic readers, particularly those on my FB group, Juliann Whicker’s secret society of Witches, Wizards and Pretzels.
I couldn’t have done this without my very own, ‘too hot to be human’ husband. You keep me running and piggy back me when my shoes fall apart. Thanks to my editor, Dr. J.H. Whicker Ph.D. in Writing Studies, you brilliant magician! Without you it would look like ah^%*24teoi h.
Other YA Contemporary Fantasy book series by Juliann Whicker:
Darkly Sweet (Addam’s Family meets Mean Girls)
Butcher, Baker, Vampire Slayer (Paranormal retelling of Shakespeare’s 12th night)
House of Slide (Literary horror/romance/urban fantasy)
Water Games (Watergirl Book 4) Page 37