Icy waves lap against my calves, and my body stiffens, halted by cold and fear. Desperate, I drag my skirt up, trying to tear at the wet material, needing something—anything—to wipe him clean as a wave crashes into me, nearly knocking me over.
“Fuck,” I gasp out, frustration clawing at my chest. I smack at the water, panic stinging hot behind my eyes. “Shit, Orion. It’s fucking cold.”
He looks down, his movements oddly calm as he slips the instrument into his pocket. “You get used to it,” he says, voice distant beneath the roar.
A weary smile touches the corner of his mouth before he leans into the oncoming wave and lifts me into his arms. My body curls against his, feeling the cautious tension in his hold, aware of my hand placement.
As he begins to wade us deeper, panic seizes me. “Wait—no.” I glance around, out over the gray, tossing waves. “We can’t see anything. Please, Orion, it’s too dark?—”
“It always is at first,” he cuts in, “but we adapt.”
He’s speaking to something beyond the dark, icy waters. Beyond even the blood staining us both.
“We adapt to the dark,” I question, searching his unreadable eyes.
“It’s a process,” he murmurs, shifting me higher against his chest.
Out in the ocean, enclosed by this utter darkness, fear should be tearing me apart. But something happens when his arms embrace me, caging my body against his, just as he did amid the music in his observatory. My pulse steadies, modeling its rhythm to the strong, even beat of his heart beneath my palm.
“Our eyes naturally seek the light,” he continues quietly, securing me tighter. “Even indirect, there’s light to be found in the deepest shadow. Dark adaptation is the gradual shift, the slow recalibration of our senses, until what once seemed too dark, too unknown, no longer frightens us. It becomes familiar.”
As the water rises around his hips, he holds me safely above the surface, our bodies intimately close within the danger. Freeing one of his hands, he wipes his face, smearing the blood along his jaw.
“That helps to know, Dr. Night.”
The subtle lift at the corner of his mouth tugs at my heart.
And it’s here, deep in the night, that we’re able to acknowledge darker truths we’d never dare own in the brightness of day. Not when the sunlight reveals the scars and flaws too starkly, exposing what we aren’t ready to confront.
Beneath starlight, immersed in the cold shadows, we can rationalize almost anything.
The blood. The torn clothes. The death undoubtedly caused by his hands. The secrets we both harbor, hidden below layers of denial and deception.
Feeling the soft contours of my body give effortlessly against the hard lines of his, all I can do is cling tighter to his steady strength, his warmth, where I should feel anything but comfort. Yet Orion embodies it all—the night, the darkness, the calm refuge.
“Don’t worry,” he says, his voice rising above the crashing waves. “I won’t lose you to the dark waters. Not tonight.”
“I’m not afraid,” I tell him, my hand held to his chest.
The ocean reaches around us higher, rocking us gently in the current. After a moment, I no longer feel the burn of frigid water. I watch as he lifts his hand once more, clearing another trail of blood from his face.
“Orion, what happened tonight,” I dare to ask.
The tendons along his throat work, silent conflict banked behind those eyes of dark teal waters as they meet mine. “I hurt someone,” he confesses.
I hold his gaze, unrelenting. “Is it possible they deserved it.”
Because I know, if they were chosen by Orion, they committed a far worse offense. Some monsters can only be hunted by darker ones.
A muscle tenses along his jaw as something reverent and pained passes over his expression. “You are such a beautiful anomaly.”
And I’m suddenly weightless, lost within the starry ocean of his gaze instead of the dark waters.
As my eyes fully adapt to the night, pale moonlight glimmers across the waves, and the endless stretch of ocean becomes serene, beautiful even in its terror. The sea is cast in silver and deep teal, a reflection of his eyes, turbulent and clouded by a storm.
I become brave and shift in his arms, lifting myself slightly to wrap my legs around his hips. Orion helps me, bracing his forearms around the lower curve of my back to anchor me against him.
I drag the hem of my skirt up and, carefully, gently, wipe the remnants of blood from his neck, his jaw, his cheek. He remains utterly still amid the rolling waves, his gaze unwavering, trusting. With cautious pressure, I brush his lips, breath stalling as I draw the fabric across the smear of red, erasing the evidence of violence.
