“Do you yield?” I ask her.
“Never!” she shrieks, and leaps for me again, a long shard of discolored bone in hand. A flame-red shadow barrels in from the side to collide with Ehmora, pinning her to the ground as the weapon falls harmlessly to the sand. Wrenching out of Echlios’s grip with near-inhuman strength, she comes at me again, claws extended. Froth and blood fleck her lips. But this time it’s Lo who darts forward to retrieve the broken length of bone. Ehmora’s mouth opens into a soundless scream as the forward momentum impales her on the edge of the bone shard that was meant for me. She stares at her son, her dying eyes wide with surprise and something oddly resembling pride.
“Now, it’s over,” Lo says in a dead voice, the piece of bone slipping from his fingers. “None of us would have been safe if she had lived.”
“Lo...your mother...” I trail off.
“She wasn’t my mother. She was my maker. Big difference.”
Amid the suddenly deafening cheers in the arena, Echlios grins and hugs me fiercely. His voice is quiet but proud. “All hail the new queen of Waterfell. Well done, my lady. Well done.”
But I can barely process what he’s saying or any of the other voices cheering around me. Somehow, I’ve won back my crown—the very one that I’d thrown away. In the end, my people have chosen me...because I chose to fight for them. Ehmora lost because she didn’t even realize what was really worth fighting for, or that our people would see right through her. From Jenna to Cara to Lo, I have experienced the gambit of human emotions, and that only made me stronger. Not weaker.
After all, love favors those who are receptive to it.
And that is a universal truth.
25
ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
“So do you still have to go?” Jenna asks. “I mean, now that the big bad is gone?”
We’re sitting on my back patio around the pool, cross-legged on the cool flagstones. All of our furniture has been donated to local charities, and the house is empty with the exception of a few treasures that I’ll be taking back with me.
“Yes. I’m the...queen now.” Getting the word out is tough, considering saying “princess” used to be hard enough. “And the big bad isn’t really gone with Cano and my mom still out there. We’ve just cut off one of its legs. My people need me.”
“I know,” Jenna says. “I am really going to miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too, but I won’t be that far away, and I’ll come visit you.” I laugh. “Plus, I read that James Cameron recently did an expedition to the Mariana Trench. What’s to say you couldn’t come visit me one of these days?”
“Count me in.” Jenna fingers the scale necklace I’d given her with a thoughtful expression. “So what happens with Lo? I mean, he can stay here if he wants to, right, because of the gene thing? But he’s your...boyfriend or king or what?”
Flushing at the thought of Lo, I say quickly, “The correct term is royal consort. But yeah, boyfriend works, too.”
“So is he okay?”
“He’s fine, apart from a few bruises and broken bones that will heal eventually,” I say.
Echlios had told me that the emotional wounds would probably take a lot longer to heal than the physical ones. He and Soren had been pretty cool about everything when they found out about Lo. Well, truthfully, Soren had freaked out a bit at first, but she has since spoken to Lo and she approves.
“Wow,” Jenna says, shaking her head. “I still can’t believe that this all happened. I mean, it was so surreal. You left to go meet Lo and then Lo’s mother showed up at my house looking for you guys. I didn’t even think twice about letting her in.” She stares at me. “So the other lady was your mom?”
Ignoring the stab of pain at her words, I nod. “Yes.”
“I know you probably don’t care, but she was actually nice to me in the car. Emma Seavon terrified me, but your mother was...kind.” She trails off awkwardly.
“She’s a liar. I should have killed her instead of just knocking her out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I say, shrugging off any thought of my mother. “It was my fault that they came for you...and Speio’s.”
The thought of Speio is a bittersweet one. He already went to Waterfell with Soren. I forgave him because I couldn’t not forgive him. After all, he was seduced by my mother’s words of a better life and a way out, and he’d been so unhappy and lonely that it had been an easy thing for her to convince him. Maybe if I’d made more of an effort to repair things with Cara, he would have been happier here with her and less susceptible to my mother’s promises. Things could have turned out far differently. But I’ll never know. The truth is, I couldn’t have saved Jenna without him so he did sort of redeem himself in a roundabout way.
“He told me he was sorry, you know,” Jenna is saying to me. “Before he left. He came to apologize for not keeping my secret and for telling them about what I knew. I told him it was okay but that he owed me one...which I’ll probably never collect.”
“You were right, by the way,” I say. “About Cara. I should have been a better person. A better friend. Maybe if I’d made the effort with her, Speio could have been happy. He wouldn’t have been so lonely and craving to return to Waterfell so badly.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Riss. Hindsight is always twenty/twenty. At least everything worked out in the best possible way. Well, except for the worst part ever. I really hate goodbyes.” She raises her hands with a dramatic sigh. “I can’t believe you are all leaving! Seriously, what am I going to do?”
“You’re going to do everything that Jenna does so amazingly well. And you’re going to win that hockey championship for your best friend. Or else.” Jenna laughs and I make a mock-stern face. “I’m serious. I want you to score at least three goals for me.”
“You got it.”
Jenna’s blue eyes are teary. We stare at each other in silence, so much history between us and so many other things we both wish we could share in the years ahead. Saying goodbye for the last time is harder than I ever thought it would be.
But I know I’ll see her again.
I squeeze her into a hug and place her hand on my heart and mine on hers. “I will always love you like a sister. And I will never forget you no matter how many years go by. Always know that you made me better— A better friend and a better leader.” We break apart and she’s full-on crying now. My face is just as soaked. “One more thing, look out for Kevin for me, will you? The marine center’s going to need a lot more volunteers to keep the ocean safe.”
“I will, Riss. I promise. You be safe, and take care of Lo, even if he was an idiot. I’ve never seen anyone in love with someone so much... Well, except for Sawyer, of course.” Her voice breaks and her smile wobbles. With one last lingering look at my backyard, where we spent countless hours swimming, goofing around and talking hockey, boys and school, Jenna waves. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
After I watch Jenna’s car drive away until it’s nothing but a speck in the distance, I sit at the edge of the pool and stare into its glittery surface. I meant what I said to Jenna—I owe so much of who I’ve become to her and to this place. Humans have something to offer, too, and they have the same, if not more, invested in this planet. We have to have faith that they will do the right thing, and just like my father, I believe that they will.
I sit at the edge of my pool with my feet dangling in the salt water, watching the ocean in the distance until the descending sun turns the surface a brilliant sheen of red and orange. It’s nearly time to leave...to say goodbye to this chapter of my life.
“My queen?” Echlios says from behind me.
I can’t help grimacing. “Echlios, can you stop calling me that, please? It’s only, like, just a little bit weird.”
“Sorry,” he says with a tiny smile. “Old habits.”
“Any news on my mother?” I ask him.
His smile fades and his all-business expression returns. When his people went back to the marine center, there’d been no sign of her. She’d escaped. Maybe a tiny part of me had even wanted her to, despite everything. “She’s gone into hiding,” he says. “And Cano has disappeared, as well. All of the equipment in his house is gone.”
“Are they a threat?” I ask him. With their knowledge of the hybrids—and especially Lo—they could be dangerous. And Jenna will still be at risk with them out there.
“I don’t know,” he answers. “They have taken all of the genetic research, and that could pose a bigger problem in times to come. We will continue to look for them, but with her genetic mutation, she can survive farther inland than we can.”
“So basically, you’re saying we’ll probably never find her,” I say.
Echlios sighs and stares out at the ocean. “Either we will find her or she will find us. You will be safe in Waterfell, but I have a feeling that it’s far from over.” Echlios studies me and I can feel the weight of the question hovering on his tongue.
“Just ask me.”
“What about the boy?” he says.
“What about him?”
An exasperated huff. “Do you trust him? Or better yet, can I trust him with you?”
“Yes, Echlios, you can,” I answer softly. “He killed his own mother for me—you can trust that he won’t betray us.”
There’s a lot still unresolved between Lo and me, especially following his deception. After all, he was tasked with making me fall in love with him under the guise that he was a human boy. It was the lowest form of trickery. But Lo didn’t count on falling in love with me as hard as I fell in love with him. What I felt from his entire body in the water and what I saw in his eyes had been nothing more than truth. And so I forgave him.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to let it go that easily, because forgetting always takes time, and so does rebuilding trust. And now we are linked forever...tied to each other for better or for worse, literally. I’m not sure how I feel about the whole being-bonded thing—it isn’t something I’d thought about or been prepared for, partly because I’d thought Lo was human, so falling for him would have minor consequences. Turns out the consequences are slightly bigger than I expected.
Soren told me that she had just known it was Echlios from the day that they met. It was something immediate, primal. With Lo, there’ve been so many other layers—human ones—blended into the Aquarathi ones that things are not as clear.
“Soren told me you fell in love with him,” Echlios says hesitantly, interrupting my thoughts about Lo, “as the humans do. Before the bond.”
“Yes.”
“Does that make it easier?” I can see that asking the questions are hard for him, but I know he asks because he wants to protect me. I owe him an honest answer.
“No,” I say sadly. “It only makes it harder.”
“Why?”
“Because bonding occurs at the basic core level for us. You know and you accept it once it happens. With Lo, I gave him my heart and then everything else. Almost like I chose him before the bond chose us, if that makes any sense.” I lean backward and stare at the deepening twilight sky and the first hint of stars on the purplish-blue background. “And now that I will be queen with him at my side, we need to navigate a life that we’ve both lost touch with, somehow together. It’s just...overwhelming.”
Echlios places his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “You will be a good queen, my lady. Your father would be very proud.” I hear the tremor in his voice and raise my hand to grasp his fingers.
“Thank you.” I pull myself to my feet and embrace Echlios. “I’ll just be a minute. Just want to say goodbye. We’ll be right behind you.”
Walking down the beach, I see a bonfire in the distance and wonder if my friends are sitting around it. A sense of nostalgia fills me as I think of Jenna and Sawyer and wonder if they miss me as much as I already miss them. The beach is empty even with the rising moon. In the distance I can spot figures walking along the edge but they’re still far away. The sand feels velvety between my bare toes and I dig them in, enjoying the feeling. There’s nothing like it in the world. I smile to myself. No wonder Lo is so obsessed about walking barefoot all the time.
I push my glimmer outward and sense him at the end of the pier. It’s so easy to sense each other now. All I have to do is push outward while thinking about him, and I will find him in seconds. Apart from what I already learned—we can give or take strength from each other and communicate mentally over great distances—there is still so much to discover about bonding and each other.
Lo stands as I approach. “Hi,” he says, his voice husky.
“Did you say goodbye?” I ask him.
“I don’t really have anyone to say goodbye to,” he says. There’s a trace of sadness in his voice. “Bertha and Grayer were both my mother’s staff.”
“What about Cara?” I say, fighting my smile. “She’s going to be a mess without you, you know. And when the fact that we’ve eloped hits the rumor mill on Monday, you’ll have no hope of ever returning to this town.”
Lo smiles. “I emailed her.”
“Good.”
We stand next to each other, looking out at the inky black water glittering under the light of the moon, silence stretching between us. Only this time, it’s not our usual comfortable silence—this silence is full of unsaid things, colored by lies and dishonesty...not just on Lo’s part, but also on mine. I wasn’t honest with him, either.
“Lo,” I say after a while. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
“What do you mean?”
I hesitate, glancing back toward my house and the beautiful stretch of moonlit beach reaching as far as the eye can see. “You could stay here. You don’t have to go to Waterfell. I mean, you’ve never even lived there—it’d be like starting all over again.” My words are rambling now, falling out of my mouth unchecked. “Won’t you miss this?”
Lo’s eyes are unfathomable. “Yes. I’ll miss it. But I would miss you more.” My lips clamp shut but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. The idea grows with shape and form and purpose.
“What if you did? Stayed here?”
“You don’t want me to go with you?” His voice is aching, and I feel the pull of it against my breastbone like a deep tenderness.
I lick dry lips and take a deep sustaining breath. “Of course I do. But I think you’ll be better off staying here. My mother is still out there, and Jenna is vulnerable, at least in the short-term. And with what happened between us, maybe some distance will be good at first.” I grasp his hands but his fingers remain slack against mine, unresponsive.
“Distance,” he repeats dumbly.
“Lo,” I say, grabbing both his hands. “I love you, please don’t think otherwise. We are bonded for good now—that will never change. But I think you need this, and I need this. And Jenna needs our protection. I can’t just leave her alone and I don’t have anyone else I can trust who can stay land-bound and protect her.”
“What does Echlios say?” he asks in a tiny voice.
“He doesn’t know I’m asking you. No one does. I just don’t know who else to turn to, and I believe deep down that this is the right thing to do. You and I will still be able to speak, and I will get here as quickly as I can if anything should happen. Please say you’ll do this.”
Please, Lo.
In my heart, I know that it’s right. Lo and I still need some space to deal with our own baggage, and Jenna needs someone she trusts to look out for her. And I know that Lo will be happier here for a while, figuring out who he is without standing in the shadow of his mother and walking right into
another shadow—mine. He can learn to live for himself again. Last of all, I will be able to assume the mantle of my responsibilities without having to worry about whether Lo is fitting in or whether he and I are okay.
The truth is, we both need time to grow up.
And I think Lo knows it, too.
“Okay,” he tells me in a quiet voice. “But just until the end of the summer, until things settle down. Then I’m coming to find you...with or without your permission.”
I throw my arms around his neck and bury my face in his chest, inhaling his unique smell of sea and salt and warmth. His lips find mine and I’m lost in the desperate heat of the kiss, every emotion caught up in that single moment between us. Lo kisses away the tears on my cheeks and brushes the hair out of my face, his fingers excruciatingly tender.
“I love you, bond or not,” he says. “Always.” And then I’m clutching his chest and sobbing as if my heart is breaking into two from his words and his touch and the broken look in his eyes. “Go,” he tells me gently. “I’ll be here. Waiting.”
“Lo,” I say, pressing kisses on his cheeks, his nose, his eyes...every part of him, I’m desperate to memorize. I want to remember the feel of him, the taste of him on my lips, the way his hair slips through my fingers like velvet sand, the weight of his eyes when he looks at me. “Will you transform with me?”
He nods and we slip into the water, still hand in hand. Raising my palms to his, I watch the blue swirls in mine line up with the greenish-yellow swirls of his. We will always have that piece of each other. We swim out to deeper water. I touch his face with my hands and pull him toward me for one last human kiss.
And then his bones are shifting, elongating, pointing through the human skin that transforms into shiny hard scales. I feel it in my body but see it in his. We transform in unison but experiencing it through each other’s eyes is so intimate; it makes every part of me ache. His bronze neck is long and beautiful, curving around the golden green hide of mine. The colored swirls that mark our bonding nearly merge into each other as Lo’s body coils against mine. Even my iridescent fins bend toward his blue ones, until our bodies are nearly one.
Waterfell Page 32