Paradise of Shadows and Devotion

by Gaja J. Kos

  And yet, amidst my heart pounding and my breaths growing more irregular the longer I stared at him, I somehow found the voice to say, “Thank you for coming.”

  Santino remained perfectly still. Only his eyes drifted down my body, then came back up to search my face. “You said you had answers.”

  I rose from my perch on the rock and brushed off the dirt from the back of my dress. Stalling. By the gods, why was this so hard?

  I gave myself a mental shake before the impulse to run away overcame me, then met the guarded hardness and curiosity of Santino’s gaze. The point of no return.

  “I’m a runaway,” I admitted. “I believe you already figured out as much, given I had no papers when I came to you.”

  He nodded. Just a simple nod, much like that day when I padded into his cafe, answering the call for an ice cream girl I’d seen written in chalk on the board set up on the corner of the patio.

  “I’m—I’m different, Santino. Different than you, but also different from my family. I’ve known them for so long I fooled myself into believing this…change…wouldn’t tear down the bonds, however peculiar, we’ve built. But I was wrong.” A tear rolled down my cheek, and this time, I didn’t mask it. I was done hiding the pain. Hiding myself. “When I ran away from home, I thought that it would be enough, that they would let me be, leave me in peace since I wasn’t insulting them with my presence, but…”

  “The PI,” Santino said grimly, understanding darkening the icy gleam of his eyes.

  I sniffed and rubbed my hands across my face. “I guess they weren’t content with letting me go.”

  Santino shifted minutely, the barest ripple of muscle and sway of hair. His jaw clenched, but the words that left his lips weren’t ones I expected.

  “What do they want?”

  A silent, bitter laugh rose inside me. “My death.”

  For a moment, he went so still I couldn’t even hear him breathe. Then a long, melodic string of curses in Italian cut through the silence. He raked a hand through his hair, lifting his eyes up to the moon before he met my gaze again.

  “What are you?” His tone was gentle despite the plain choice of words—despite the demand resting within them.

  He knew I wasn’t human. And he wasn’t running away.

  At least not yet.

  I swallowed heavily, fighting the impulse to chew on my bottom lip. Then, as a long, trembling breath uncurled from my chest, I spun around. My fingers lingering on the hem of my sundress, and I breathed deeply, battling the tremors rushing through my flesh. I’d never…revealed myself to anyone. Not like this.

  The heat of his gaze burned into my back as I tugged the fabric over my head and placed it on the smooth surface of a large rock. Once in nothing but my bra and panties—the latter I wasn’t willing to sacrifice even when I knew the shift would ruin them—I faced Santino once more. Briefly, he skimmed the swell of my breasts before he caught himself.

  I almost smiled at the normalcy of the gesture, but the trepidation still locked at the base of my spine refused to let go.

  “Just remember,” I whispered, “that I would never harm you.”

  Whatever reply Santino might have had on the tip of his tongue I squandered as I kicked off my flip-flops and ran straight into the water. The magic wrapped around me as quickly as the affection of the dark waves welcoming me home, and I let the secrecy of my existence slip away.

  Right alongside my human form.

  For a beautiful moment, I forgot about my fears.

  The rush of salt and water gliding against my scales and caressing the loose strands of my hair was all I could think about. All that mattered.

  I could hear every current, feel every small pulse of life existing within the depths of the dark sea. Rapture washed through my heart, a smile blooming on my lips as I drifted down, down, down, becoming one with the current before I rose towards the surface once more.

  With a powerful bat of my tail, I leaped out into the serenity of the night. The light breeze caressed my wet skin as I arched my back, soaring through the air and allowing the moonlight to illuminate my body, then dove headfirst into the water once more. Gracefully, I lifted my fluke into the air before going under, and a laugh—my laugh—bubbled through the dark.

  I circled around, my gills seamlessly filtering the oxygen and infusing my enhanced lungs, every nerve in my body coming to life, hungry for this experience. This freedom. When I gained enough momentum, I broke the surface with another elegant leap. Only this time, I reached even higher.

  Faintly, I noticed Santino’s silhouette on the shore, perfectly still. Stoic.

  Reality kicked in, shattering the illusion of bliss, and I ducked my head under the surface, facing the harsh truth.

  I’d spent enough time in the sea for my presence to carry on its currents.

  With no small amount of remorse, I made my way back to the shore. Pebbles grazed my tail when the water became too shallow for me to swim in, but the sensation was more uncomfortable than painful. Mermaid scales, despite their beauty, were hard to break.

  Santino didn’t move as I heaved myself onto dry land. He simply stood there, stark and beautiful in the moonlight, his gaze on mine.

  “You’re a—a mermaid,” he whispered, the arch of his eyebrows suggesting the shock wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “I’ve heard stories of your kind’s existence, but I’ve never seen one with my own eyes.”

  I worried on my lower lip. “Until recently, neither had I.”

  Confusion swept across his features, and I silently cursed myself for saying those damning words. I was still sitting there with the breeze drying off my tail that almost seemed to glow under the pale silver light… And I knew that the foul ache twisting my insides—it was shame.

  Santino didn’t need to hear the rest of this mess. He should have the beauty, the rarity of my existence, not the darkness surrounding it weighing on his mind.

  My sisters hunted me because I was a mermaid—it was his answer and the truth. I had fulfilled my vow. And yet I found myself craving the chance to finally confide in someone.

  I frowned, hating myself for this weakness. For being so selfish. Spilling all my secrets wouldn’t mean a thing if they scared Santino away. In the end, I would still be alone, with only another person tainted by the danger of knowing who I was. Besides, even now, I couldn’t say with certainty that he wasn’t going to walk away at any given second, leaving me huddled on the empty beach.

  “Would you mind handing me my dress?” I asked gingerly before the despair of fruitless hope swallowed me whole. “The change—the change destroyed my panties, and it won’t be long now before I regain my human legs.”

  I didn’t know whether it was the raw embarrassment in my voice or the realization of what exactly would happen if I wasn’t dressed by the time I shifted, but Santino strode over to the rock where I’d stashed my dress, a sense of urgency infusing his steps. Still keeping his distance, he handed me the garment, then inched a little farther back.

  “Thank you,” I whispered and quickly covered my already drying skin.

  The fabric pooled around my waist, and I tugged it down lower, trying to cover as much of my tail as I could. Once I was moderately convinced I wasn’t going to show off any more skin than I intended, I leaned back on the palms of my hands and finally looked at the man staring at me.

  “What do you know about mermaids?”

  “Merda.” His fingers slipped through the strands of his hair as he shook his head lightly, and I could have sworn I saw a smile of disbelief quirking up the corners of his sensual lips. “I know you’re rare. I know you possess the ability to bespell men with your voices and sexuality alike.”

  There was something heated, yet guarded in his gaze as the words filtered through the air. An invitation and a warning, merged into one.

  I shook my head. “Only in water. Only when I have my tail…”

  The same tail that shimmered and warmed, wrapped in a haze of magic now t
hat the final droplets of water had evaporated from my scales.

  “How—how can you even do that? A mermaid shifting is not a legend I’ve ever heard before…”

  I lowered my gaze, knowing this was the best opportunity I would get, yet suddenly so very afraid to take it. Without words, I pushed off the ground and threw the damp strands of lilac hair across my shoulders.

  “From what I’ve heard, it should be impossible,” I confessed, only now daring to meet the full, crushing weight of Santino’s gaze. “But I wasn’t born a mermaid. I was made into one.”

  4

  If surprise and confusion had been the core of Santino’s reaction when he had seen my true form emerge from the water, what lay on his features now was nothing but utter bewilderment. His gaze dipped down to my human legs, almost as if he expected them to change back into a tail at a moment’s notice.

  “Water is the trigger,” I offered, waving down with a hand. “Or the lack of it for the shift back.”

  He dragged his fingers along the side of his jaw when he caught himself staring. It seemed as if he were ashamed, but as his silver-rimmed eyes fell on my face, there were no traces of his discomfort any longer. Only a hint of a realization that had been absent before.

  “The shift,” he said hoarsely. “The shift affected you.”

  I nodded, then angled my head at the isolated stretch of the beach reaching southwest. Without words, Santino fell into step with me as I started to walk, ignoring the sloshing of the sea still beckoning me to enter with its gentle lulling melody.

  It was only when we had crossed a fair distance under the hulking cliff that he spoke again. “I knew the battle reshaped our reality, but I had no idea it could have this”—he motioned at my body with an elegant wave of his hand—“effect on people.”

  There wasn’t a single soul in the world ignorant of the consequences the War brought. Even a distant morass like my former home had heard loud and clear of the showdown a group of supernaturals and humans had against the darker forces who had wanted to turn the world into a bloodbath. In the end, the good guys had won and restored order, but the price of their victory was a fundamental change to the fabric of our reality nobody had expected or been prepared for.

  Where magic had once been leashed, it now flowed freely, entwined in every aspect of our existence and causing surprises to pop up at every step. Some bigger than others.

  I sighed and glanced sideways at him, drinking in the sharp lines of his profile. “When the magic wave hit, we all felt it.”

  A nod from Santino.

  “But unlike the rest, when the phantom tendrils of power breezed through my body, they didn’t leave on the other side. Instead, they took residence there, burning up my essence and turning me into something else… Into—well, into a mermaid.”

  A hint of hysterical laughter slipped into my voice as I said that last word. Mermaid.

  Regardless of how many times I repeated who I was to myself, it still sounded foreign on my tongue. Absurd, even.

  With my vila grandmother and the life I’d led in the morass, I knew there was a grain of truth to every myth. I even knew mermaids existed. But being aware of tailed maidens who belong to the sea and actually becoming one were two very different things.

  I didn’t know if I could ever fully accept what had transpired. Who I became.

  Santino’s gaze drifted over to me, steady, but with a flicker of shadows darkening the silver of his eyes. “That’s why your family is after you? Because you’re a mermaid?”

  I bit back the bitterness. “Let’s just say they’re prejudiced against water nymphs with tails.”

  Something about that stopped Santino in his tracks, and I had the sudden suspicion he knew more about the supernatural than I’d initially presumed. We walked a few more steps in silence, the air between us growing thick with anticipation until, finally, he phrased the question I was dreading, yet knew would inevitably come.

  “What were you? Before?”

  I looked away, hating the shame that washed over me with a burning passion, then trailed my gaze along the horizon. When I had died and, after a wave of darkness, woke up—not in Veles’s realm, as I had expected, but in the embrace of murky, languid waters—I was only glad I still drew breath. That, somehow, I had been saved.

  For long, long seconds, all I could think of was how grateful I was that the world hadn’t been snatched away from me yet. That I had been gifted another chance.

  Then reality settled in.

  I was breathing.

  But I was underwater.

  Physically, there was nothing different from the way my body had always been. At least on the outside. Inside, however, there was a foreign presence—a kind of melodic, seductive power that slithered through my flesh and beckoned me to use it.

  I didn’t know what it was or how it got there. I couldn’t even tell how it was possible to draw breath this deep under the surface. I panicked, kicking my legs in a desperate attempt to reach for air…when I noticed I wasn’t alone.

  There were several women submerged in the water beside me, all young and enticing, with dresses that billowed around their lithe bodies in a graceful, seductive display.

  Spirits.

  They were all spirits, returned to this world because of their past mistakes. Of the punishment others had brought upon them—or they had given themselves. They were unclean souls, denied the eternal peace of Veles’s realm.

  And so was I.

  “Rusalka,” I whispered, my voice so weak it nearly got swept away by the breeze. “Before the change, I was a Rusalka.”

  A chilling shadow slid across Santino’s face. I tried to speak, tried to utter some weak apology, but words failed me. Nothing I could say would ease the fact that I was a spirit. That I had spent the past century living as the most ruthless kind of water nymph, a delicate weapon designed to bring the worst of consequences to men who fell under my spell—lungs filled with water and a still heart, buried beneath the waves forever.

  I might not have murdered out of joy—or some twisted satisfaction like some of my sisters preferred to spend their time—but my hands were stained with blood nonetheless. A lot of it.

  “Santino, I—” My words morphed into a scream as he lunged at me.

  His powerful body rammed into mine and smashed my back against the hard, pebbled ground, violence pulsing off his skin thick enough to choke on.

  The air whizzed from my lungs as Santino’s body kept me pinned down, the pebbles biting into my back so viciously they drew blood. I squirmed once the talons of shock loosened their grip and fear-driven instinct finally kicked in, but all I managed to achieve was scrape my skin harder.

  Trapped in this human form, Santino was stronger than me, and no amount of hoping it were otherwise was going to change that.

  A string of frantic curses and panicked cries exploded in my head. The irony of dying at the hands of the one who I’d foolishly believed would be able to understand, if not help, threatened to drag me under. This… This couldn’t be happening. And yet the truth of the situation was a force I couldn’t deny.

  I was utterly and absolutely screwed.

  “Stop. Fighting,” Santino hissed, his fingers digging into my skin harder.

  I must have been going mad, but the sheer, unyielding command in his voice pierced right through the veil of panic and made me do precisely that. Stop. It was irrational and unfounded—and probably more than a little damning—but I forced myself to calm down, becoming pliant in his arms.

  Death had been a long time knocking. Perhaps even truly deserved.

  Escaping it once was all the bitter luck I would get.

  I loosened a breath, consoling myself that at least it wouldn’t be my sisters who had gotten the better of me, when realization slammed into my face on the wings of a coppery smell.

  I wasn’t the only one who was bleeding.

  Crimson welled on the outside of Santino’s arm, just beneath his left shoulder. But
before I managed to take a better look at the sinister trickle, we were both rolling down the beach, set right on the collision course with the sea. I squeaked in protest as water splattered onto my side, dancing across my skin before it embraced me whole and awakened the inner power.

  As the warmth of magic tingled all the way down to my toes, Santino shifted the iron grip he still had on me. He kicked his feet, taking us farther away from shore and into the inky embrace of night. I pulled my weight once the change settled in, grabbing onto Santino tighter as I pushed on, my wide-spread fin granting us greater speed than his human legs ever could.

  We crossed a fair distance under water, but eventually, Santino had to go up for air. He’d tried to hide his discomfort, almost stubbornly refusing to rise once I shifted direction, and yet for all his determination, he couldn’t keep me from hearing his body’s burning cry for oxygen rippling through the currents. I resurfaced with him, holding him firmly above the restless waves, but before I even opened my mouth to ask what went wrong, Santino clasped his hand over my lips.

  Warmth sizzled through me at the touch, the tips of his fingers gentle as they fanned from cheekbone to jaw.

  I couldn’t have spoken even if I wanted to. Not when I was now the one who found herself at a loss for breath.

  Santino shook his head in silent warning, then carefully spun around, examining our surroundings. Torturously slow, his hand slid across my mouth as he moved, until, finally, he lay that staggering warmth on my shoulder. Firm, but not restraining. If anything, the gesture felt protective.