Omar now waved from the ship before shouting orders to his crew.
They weren’t why she’d come, anyway. Every step here had been driven by sheer reluctance.
Roman and the Drynopians were aboard, returning to the Trayterre Isles.
The air at Selene’s back shifted, and a chill prickled down her spine. She hadn’t heard his steps, but she recognized him all the same.
He was still a storm that struck. A tide meeting flame. The hush before a battlefield scream.
Roman would forever be the world holding its breath before breaking.
Selene clenched the rail until her nails bit wood. “I thought you were already on the ship.”
“You never said goodbye. I thought… I’d hoped you’d come. And here you are.”
She turned to find him dragging a hand roughly through his thick, dark hair. He wasn’t smiling, but the weight of him bent the very air around him.
Heat flared in her chest, sharp like fury and longing, and she hated it. While everything else had been going on, any emotions she had toward him had been easy to ignore. Since their return to the pirate city, it was like being stuck on the island all over again. She didn’t know which way was up.
“I don’t know why I came,” she admitted, heart pounding like drums out of sync.
She’d woken before dawn, restless, listening to Augustus’s deep breathing in the dark. All the while, watching the sky change outside their window, a tug in her chest she couldn’t name.
Roman’s mouth curved knowingly. “Don’t you?” His blue and brown eyes seemed to brighten as the sun rose higher at her back. “You’ve tried so hard to hate me, but you can’t. And now that I’m leaving, you’re finally curious why.”
“Or…I never properly thanked you.” Selene fidgeted against the railing and stared at his boots as men rushed past with coiled ropes. “Augustus wouldn’t be alive if?—”
“I do nothing for him.” Roman closed the space with a single step, caging her between his body and the rail. He knuckled her chin up, and his warm breath washed across her lips. A thumb swept high along her cheekbone. “I do everything foryou.”
Selene’s mind screamed retreat, but her body hummed with memory. Gods, she could hardlybreathe. “Don’t you dare kiss me,” she whispered, even as her gaze fell to his mouth.
He swept a tongue across his lower lip, slow, deliberate. “No… I don’t think I will.” His jaw tensed, breath flaring from his nose. “Not until you’re mine again.”
Roman stepped back, and his sudden absence left her swaying. His fists hung heavy at his sides as he stared out at the ship that would carry him away. The sails snapped, catching the growing light.
Selene sucked in a deep breath and swallowed hard to wet her dry throat. “I don’t understand any of this. If I ever loved you, if we’re meant to be, then why aren’t we?”
“Only you know the reasons you left.” Roman’s gaze lowered. “You just…vanished. I waited for you to come back again and again, and then, after centuries, you walked right onto our island.”
“I came on a hunch, based on information?—”
“It doesn’t matter how you returned, only that you did.”
He reached for her again, but she shifted away. With a sigh, he dropped his arms.
“Eva—Selene. Come with us. I’ll speak with Aspasia. She can help you recover your lost memories.”
“I’m not interested in the past. I thought I was, once, but I’ve learned to cherish what I have now.”
“You’re content rising again and again, just you and Michail? You’re alone?—”
Selene stopped him with a raised hand. “It’s not just the two of us. Not anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a long story, but there was an incident inside the Ethereal Mountain, and ever since, I’ve been sensing a connection to some of the unborn in Perean. I recognized one of them as a close friend who’d died.”
Roman’s silence pressed heavily, broken only by the clatter of a dropped crate on the dock. Finally, he said, “You’re sensing others? Only a Mother can do that.” Then, almost to himself, he said, “The dronsian isyours.”
