“You told me you couldn’t draw, and you wanted a map of everything. I had to do something while you traveled. I’m not finished, of course.” His lips curled up slightly. “It’s hard to keep secrets from a spy.”
I set my lips at his ear and whispered as softly as I could, “If you can do what Dustin asks and find me again, I’ll tell you all my secrets, my mate.”If I live.
Our heads turned at the same time, and our lips met. The kiss said everything I couldn’t put into words: all the feelings he’d stirred in me, and how dangerous fully bonding with me would be. How much I wanted to go back to those first days and nights with him, and how sorry I was that I’d left him the way I did. Of all the Alphas I’d known, he was the one who’d lit a fire in my mind, not just my body or heart. He challenged me intellectually, and I wanted him… in much the same way I wanted Alexios, as a friend as well as a lover.
I knew I was probably heading to my death. But if I survived, I wanted him there to play chess and cards with. To mix herbs for our baths and my perfumes, and sing me to sleep. I’d only spent a few days with him, but those had been a seductive promise of what could be, if I could make it through the nextfew… weeks? Months? I had no idea how long my mission would take.
And since the kiss I was giving him now might be our last, I made it count.
I stopped when Alexios started chuckling, and Goran poked me in the side. “Let him go before you kiss him too stupid to swim,” he grumbled.
It may have been too late.
“I don’t understand,” Kellin murmured, staring at my face like it was a puzzle he needed to solve more than he needed air. “You left me. You poisoned me.”
“I poison a lot of males,” I whispered. “I just don’t use lethal doses on the ones I’m falling in love with.”
His jaw dropped on one word. “Love? That’s...”
One of the others cleared his throat behind us, and I straightened, nodding for him to go. Kellin shifted quickly, joining his brother. Alexios, Goran, and I watched the selkies pull the small boat out of sight, Dustin waving until they were too far to see. Then I relaxed back onto Goran’s lap, hoping my worry for the three who’d just left wasn’t obvious.
Somehow, a small metal box had found its way to my side, and I opened the latch that kept it tightly shut. A rush of buttery sweetness filled the air. “Honeyed cakes?”
“A gift from Lusca,” Alexios called.
“How very thoughtful.” I ate one. It was crumbly and rich, more like a shortbread cookie with a glaze of honey soaked into the top. I was almost certain he hadn’t baked them, but who knew? “I need to get this recipe for…” I thought of my adoptive mother and sighed. I had no idea when I’d make it back from Pict.
I pressed a hand to my gut, feeling the cold pocket that Skadi had put there, but sensing the fire licking at it from within. Small flares of pain reminded me of a campfire’s embers, ready to burnhot at any moment. Who knew if I’d even survive whatever Edan had done to me?
For a moment, I wondered how the fire god had used Serak’s voice to trick me into answering him. I’d dreamed for years about the boy who’d given me my first kiss. I was sure he’d forgotten about me, but I’d obviously been wrong.
A finger pressed at the center of my forehead, smoothing out the wrinkles that had formed there as I thought back to what had happened with Serak in Rimholt. “What are you thinking of,ma bohinya?”
“Of my first kiss,” I admitted. “And why it was his voice I heard back in Mirren when I struck the bargain.”
“The bargain?”
“To go to the Alldyns Vug.” I thought of the stories I knew about that volcano, and what it was used for. “I have to sacrifice myself to the fire god.”
RADA
Goran spent the next three hours trying to convince me not to go to Pict. Alexios spent them sulking and trying to hide it, because I hadn’t told him everything about the bargain. I pretended to listen to them for a while, working my way through the entire box of cakes and not sharing a single bite, then fell asleep halfway through Goran arguing with Alexios about why the boat was still going due east, even though my valet was doing everything he could to tack away from our destination.
I slept for hours, dreaming of battles that raged in the sky and under the waves. Fish died by the thousands, and canyons were dug into the icy rock where the fighting monsters engaged, while I floated as ethereal and useless as a cloud above it all, wearing a gleaming white shirt and nothing else. The nautilus pendant had been broken and tossed on a beach, beside another nautilus. But this one turned into Alexios, who kept leaping into the sky to join me, but falling onto the rocks until he was cut to ribbons.
For some reason, there were swords on the beach all around him, and an army of flame-eyed warriors approaching frombehind. I screamed at him to pick up a sword, but he shook his head, shouting, “I’m not your sword. I’m your shield.”
Completely weaponless, I had to watch as the army buried him, stepping on him with burning feet until he was ash. I screamed endlessly, but my vocal cords had burned away and taken my voice. Another voice in the dream was what woke me, shaking with fear.
Don’t they understand? If they kill each other, my daughter will fall. The plagues will start again.
I gasped when I woke in the dark and sat up to take my bearings. I had a sword at my side, a leather bag under my head as a pillow, and two males beside me. One was enormous, and the other was my best friend.
“Lex?” I breathed. I was wedged in between him and Goran, all of us lying on the deck of the boat like sardines. Goran was still sleeping on my left, but something in the air smelled awful. I could almost taste the foulness on my tongue.
“It’s smoke from the volcano,” Alexios replied grimly. “The plume stretches for miles.”
“How many miles?” I tried to stand and fell, waking Goran. He grumbled, grabbed my hand and pressed it to his lips, then turned onto his side. My cloak was caught under him, but I tugged it free, staying on my hands and knees as I crawled to the side. The boat was sailing itself, shooting through the water quickly. The sail was still furled, though. So it couldn’t be the wind doing this, at least not all of it. “Who’s steering?” I asked, feeling slightly seasick. No one was at the rudder.
