As they should. As they all should.
With one thought from me, they scatter and I push myself to the surface, feeling my body return to normal like molding clay. As I break the surface, I see a shadowy figure on Lo’s balcony watching me. But when I look more closely, there’s no one there. Lo is still on the beach, lying on a blanket next to his surfboard. It must have been a trick of the light or one of his strange, silent staff.
After surfing for a few hours and a picnic on the beach, Lo decided to enjoy the sun for a while. I decided to go for a swim instead. Sleeping makes me dream and doing nothing makes me think, and neither of those were things I wanted to do. We’ve spent the past two days at his house, skipping school and surfing. I didn’t want to face my family or Cano, and Lo didn’t mind being a complete school burnout with me.
After the fiasco at Cano’s, he’d asked me what I meant about my mother being dead but I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Not with him...not with anyone. But in my head, all of the pieces were coming together.
My mother started it all.
Floating on top of the waves, I think back to the video I’d seen at Cano’s house. All of the work was hers. The voice was hers. But the most damning evidence was seeing her face—her human face—on the video log, with Cano on one side of her and another woman on the other. The woman I can only guess is Ehmora.
My mother didn’t look like a captive. She looked like a leader.
And Echlios must know. Otherwise, why would he try so hard to keep me away...to keep me from finding out the truth that my father tried so hard to protect me from? I can’t face Echlios with what I’ve learned. His pity will break me more than I’m already broken.
I’m not quite sure how the pieces fit together, so I’m speculating, but my mother must have been branded a traitor. So she went to the only person who would take her in—my father’s enemy. And with me out of the picture, Ehmora could be next in succession by right of challenge. A vision of my mother’s body parts in the box that Ehmora sent me along with her challenge spins through my mind. The cruelty of it takes my breath away.
Not Ehmora’s, but my mother’s.
How could she have sent a barbaric message like that to me, her own daughter? I lied to Lo that she was dead, even though she’s very much alive in breath and in body. After what she’s done to me, she may as well be dead. And if I see her, I will kill her myself.
Swimming in to shore, I lie next to Lo on the blanket on my stomach and rest my face in the crook of his arm and chest. His skin is warm from the sun, and I let the feel of him chase my simmering anger away.
“Your phone buzzed a few times,” he murmurs, kissing my wet hair. With a sigh, I grab it, wishing I could toss it into the ocean, but I check the messages instead. I already told Echlios where I was staying, with curt orders for him to stay away. Not that he’ll listen—I’m sure he’s already checked in on me in secret a few times. As long as I don’t see him, that’s all good. I also told him to not tell Speio, which I hope he listened to.
The text messages are from Jenna, with increasing usage of exclamation marks. She’s freaking out, I can tell. The last one has some particularly offensive comments about me being holed up with Lo, which makes me giggle.
“What?” Lo asks sleepily.
“It’s just Jenna. She thinks you’ve kidnapped me and are forcing me to go all Fifty Shades on you.”
“It wouldn’t be forcing, would it?” Lo says, and I elbow him in the side, blushing.
Lo has been a total gentleman the whole time I’ve been here. And despite my throwing myself at him on the first night, when we came back to his place after I downed a wine cooler, he sent me to have a nice long shower and then put me to bed.
In the guest room.
The next day at breakfast, Lo told me that it was the hardest thing he’s ever done, saying no to me. But he somehow knew that I was an emotional wreck despite my exterior indifference, and that my booze-induced advances were just that. I, for my part, thanked him and let it drop. I’ll never admit to him that, drunk or not, I knew exactly what I was doing.
“I guess I better text her before she and Sawyer start staking out the beach,” I say, tapping on the screen and hitting Send. A text comes back before I can even close my phone.
Knew it. You are such a tramp
It’s not like that, I text back. Explain later.
When later?
I smile at her tenacity and lean over to poke Lo in the stomach. “What did Bertha tell Cano about you being absent?” Bertha, a fierce-looking Scandinavian woman, is Lo’s cook slash housekeeper, and she always has the best excuses for when Lo misses school, which is often.
“That I had food poisoning.”
“Darn, that’s a good one.” I sigh. “I’m out of excuses. If I show up to the dance tomorrow, I’m toast. With everything going on, I didn’t even tell anyone I was out of school. Again. And I’m sure they’ve already called Soren.” Lo props himself up on one elbow, his eyes glittering in the sun.
“Don’t worry. I took care of it.” I stare at him incredulously. “I had Bertha talk to Soren a couple days ago, letting her know that you were doing an extra credit kelp care project at the marine center for this week. School’s covered.”
“And that worked?”
Lo nods solicitously. “Bertha can be very convincing. Soren called here, too, to check on you.”
That gets my attention in a heartbeat. “You spoke to her?”
“Don’t worry,” Lo says, blowing sand from my temple. “I only told her that you were staying here and that you had already talked to Echlios. It’s all good. I didn’t say anything about anything.” Relaxing almost immediately, I pick up my phone and text Jenna back.
“Assume that means we’re still going to the dance tomorrow?” he asks, nodding at what I’ve typed on the screen.
I grin and hit Send. “Well, it is my birthday.” My phone buzzes and I laugh out loud at Jenna’s return text. It’s a smiley face with about fifteen exclamation marks. “What’s the theme again?” I ask Lo.
“Under the sea, last I heard.”
I laugh. “Are you kidding me?”
“I thought you liked the ocean?” Lo asks, bending over me to drop tiny kisses from my jawline to my ear that are making me see white starbursts.
“I do,” I manage, breathless. “It’s just... Never mind. I can’t think while you’re doing that.”
“Doing what?” Lo asks with a wicked grin.
I raise an eyebrow—two can play at that game. I flip over onto my back and run my fingers across the rounded curve of his shoulder to the sleek bulge of his arm. His blue eyes turn dark and storm-tossed in the space of a second. My hand glides back upward on his side past his rib cage. A trail of goose bumps bloom on his skin at my light touch and I smile as I slide my fingers down the muscular planes of his stomach. Lo grabs my hand in his, stalling my movement just at the waistband of his swim shorts.
“Coward,” I tell him.
“Maybe so,” he says, silencing me with a kiss. “But I’d rather be a coward than get arrested for getting busy on a public beach.” Bringing my hands to his lips, he kisses my knuckles. “Plus, I can’t be held responsible for my actions while you’re doing that.”
“Getting busy? People still say that?”
“Only in the coolest circles,” Lo says with a straight face.
I kiss his mouth and then his nose and jump to my feet. “Okay, then I’ll race you inside and we can get busy in private.” I’ve never seen a boy jump to his feet so quickly, but I’m already off and running up the trail to Lo’s house, giggling like mad.
He catches me just as we round the back door—actually, I allow him to catch me since I wasn’t putting much effort into staying ahead of him—and lifts me clean off the floor. I can run almost as
fast as I can swim, and after all of Echlios’s training, I’ve never been more physically fit.
We both freeze in the living room at the person sitting on the couch, his face expressionless as he sees me covered in sand and in Lo’s arms. My grin fades and I lower myself awkwardly to the ground and dust off my arms.
“Mr. Seavon,” Grayer, Lo’s butler/valet, intones. He unnerves me as much as Bertha does. They’re both cut from the same grim, silent cloth. “Ms. Marin has a guest, her guardian. He insisted on waiting. I was just about to call down to get you.”
“Thank you, Grayer,” Lo says, walking forward to stick out his hand. “Echlios, always a pleasure.” They shake hands, but I remain standing where I am, motionless. Half of me wants to grab Lo and run back the way we came and the other half knows that I have to face Echlios sooner or later.
I sigh. “Let’s take a walk.”
Excusing ourselves from Lo, we walk back down to the beach almost to the water’s edge, where the crashing sounds of the surf will keep our conversation private.
“I told you not to come,” I say in a low voice.
“I know, but I had to see for myself that you were all right.”
“You’ve seen that I am,” I counter. “I know you’ve been watching me.”
Echlios amends his earlier statement, conceding my words with a nod. “I had to speak to you in person. It’s still not safe for you, my lady. And this boy, we know next to nothing about him.”
“You cleared him.”
“Because he wasn’t a threat. For all we know he could be a hybrid.”
I laugh. “He’s not.”
“How do you know?” It’s not like I can explain to Echlios that I’ve played tongue twister with the boy in question and know his scent so intimately that there is no biological way he could be anything but human. Lo smells delicious, perfect. The hybrid had been so pungent that every predator instinct inside of me had been alerted. It isn’t a smell that I’d be slow to recognize, now that I’m familiar with it.
Instead, I just say, “I know what the last one smelled like. I came face-to-face with it, remember? And Lo smells nothing like that one did. Just trust me on it.”
“Speio doesn’t trust him,” Echlios says quietly.
“Did you tell him where I am?” I ask. Echlios shakes his head. I study the waves, contemplating my next words. I decide to be honest. “Speio is jealous of Lo, that’s why he hates him. Do you know that he told me that he is in love with me?”
Surprise crosses Echlios’s face. “My lady, Speio loves you for certain, but as a brother. I am sure of it. Soren and I would know.”
“Then why would he lie?”
“I don’t know. Speio—” Echlios rakes his hand through his hair “—has changed. He has become so moody and disconnected, disappearing for hours at a time. We thought he was with you, but the other day I found him in the ocean near San Clemente in the middle of the night. When I asked him what he was doing there, he told me that it was the only way he could think.”
I try to make myself care, really I do. But I don’t. Speio has made his bed or whoever’s bed he’s crawled into. I turn glacial eyes to Echlios. “Did you come here to talk to me about your son? Because I really can’t help you. And you’re wrong, Speio now hates me more than anyone else.”
“No, he doesn’t—” Echlios begins, but I cut him off with a silent, raised hand.
I study the waves, watching the white eddies froth into the darker water beneath them. The demons in my head are clamoring for answers. “Why didn’t you tell me about my mother? That she was a traitor?” I ask softly. “You knew, didn’t you?”
Echlios looks pained. “We suspected.”
“Did you know, back then, that she hated my father?” His pained expression turns into something so dark that I flinch. He shakes his head just once. “Tell me.”
“You were too little, and they never fought in public,” he says. “But they disagreed often, and sometimes violently. She always agreed with Ehmora. Did you know they used to be best friends...?” He trails off, staring at the sand beneath his boot as if the sting of the memory is too great, but I can’t let it go that easily. Not now, when he’s finally talking.
“Tell me everything, Echlios. Do not lie to me,” I tell him.
“There were rumors that they were more than friends,” he says after a while. “Bonded.”
“But my parents,” I gasp. “They were bonded.”
Echlios shakes his head sadly. “It was their biggest secret, and one that I was tasked to protect at all cost. Theirs was a politically arranged alliance from the start. Your mother bonded with Ehmora the night before they were united, and the day she turned against your father, all the others knew. Because a true bond is one that can never be broken. So your father cast her out and told you that she was dead.”
I want to laugh, because the rumors were that my father had something with Ehmora when all the time it was my mother, but the truth hurts too much to laugh.
“Why did he stay with her?” I ask. “If he knew about her indiscretion?”
“Your father loved her. And she convinced him that she felt the same, but of course, her heart—and her loyalty—were always elsewhere.”
“With Ehmora.”
“Yes.”
“Did they plan it from the start?” I say, trying to keep my raging emotions in check, but it’s useless. The clouds are already rolling in, dark and thunderous, blotting out the sun’s light. “For the throne?” Echlios nods, his hand reaching toward me. I step away in the same breath. I don’t want to be touched. Lightning cracks in the distance. “She never loved either of us, did she?”
“She wanted different things, Nerissa. That doesn’t mean she didn’t love you.”
Suddenly Echlios’s eyes narrow and he shoves his arm out to push me to the side. I glare at him but he’s staring into empty space at something behind me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I thought I saw a glimmer.” When I glance behind me, there’s nothing there but a shimmer of sunshine trickling through a gap in the thunderclouds.
“That’s not possible. Both of us would have sensed it in seconds,” I say. “It must have been a trick of the light or something.” I shrug, glancing around just in case, but there’s no one there, not even any movement on the balcony of Lo’s house. “Or maybe it’s Speio, spying. Did you tell him I was here?”
“No,” Echlios says. “But he already knows. Either he followed you or someone at school told him. He knows.” But it doesn’t even matter to me anymore. I take several deep breaths and watch the rays of the sun dancing across the tops of the waves.
“Echlios, I need some time. Time away to process everything,” I say. “The challenge with Ehmora is soon—”
“You don’t have to accept,” Echlios interrupts.
“That’s just it,” I say calmly. “I do. I have to prove myself now. My mother orchestrated my father’s death so that she could be with her lover. I have to fight Ehmora. I have to do it for my father, and you know that. Don’t you?” Echlios doesn’t say anything for a long while but I can see it in the set of his face. He knows I’m right. He nods just once and bows slightly.
“Two days. That’s it, Nerissa. I will come for you on Saturday. Then we will resume our training. And you will fight. And we will return to Waterfell.”
“Agreed.”
“One more thing.”
“Yes?” I ask.
“Have a happy birthday, my lady.”
I watch as Echlios walks along the beach to the road. He doesn’t need to go back to the house, but I see him stop and look up at it all the same, a thoughtful look on his face. I stay at the water’s edge until he’s barely a speck in the distance.
The next three days will decide the rest of my life. Wheth
er I live or whether I die.
21
GODS AND GODDESSES
“Ugh, I look ridiculous.”
“You look gorgeous.” Jenna’s mom doesn’t mince words as she tugs on the hemline of my jewel-toned satin dress, which is the startling color of green sea glass. I tug back on the sleeveless bodice, only to encounter a tittering sound on her part.
Seriously, when Lo told me that Bertha had already gotten our costumes for the dance, I assumed it was something simple, not this extravagant. I stare at myself in the full-length mirror in Jenna’s bedroom. My hair has been roped into intricate braids under a gold net and wound with brilliant green tendrils of fake seaweed. Gold-and-green glitter is dusted across my brow and cheeks, accentuating the greenish tones in my human hazel-colored eyes. The glitter continues its trail across my bare shoulders and down my arms.
“Who am I supposed to be again?” I ask Jenna, who’s smoothing her own outfit on the other side of the room. She’s dressed in a mermaid costume, complete with a sparkly emerald dress that turns into a mermaid’s tail at the bottom. She looks great, while I look and feel weird.
“Salacia, the Roman ocean goddess,” she says. “Lo’s got good taste.”
I can appreciate the irony of my costume, only I’m no goddess. In fact, staring at my reflection, I look exactly like a phony human version of my other self, green-and-gold fake bioluminescent glitter included. It’s a little off-putting. My choice would have been to go as Ariel, the Disney mermaid, but that’s Jenna’s costume. She makes a far better mermaid princess than I ever could.
“Roman mythology,” I mutter, tugging at a stray piece of plastic seaweed.
Jenna’s mom stops at the doorway. “I’m going to get my camera. The boys are downstairs already, so hurry up.”
“Sure, Mom,” Jenna says, and makes sure the door’s closed after her mother leaves. “Omigod, I’ve been dying for her to stop hovering for, like, two seconds. So seriously, you’ve been shacked up with Lo this whole time?” One thing about Jenna, she gets right to the point. Her blue eyes are intense, brooking no escape on my part. I tug the skirt of my dress over a swatch of bare leg.
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