I choke on a laugh, and I’m not sure if it is humor or just a way not to cry more. “With such wit it is a wonder you do not have more friends.”
His smile is a little wistful. “What was his name?”
I choke on it. “Lieve of House Carnelian.”
He makes a sign of blessing for the dead. It’s a thoughtful gesture, but I glare at him balefully for it. He has no right to honor my dead. I haven’t given him permission for that.
“Lieve of House Carnelian,” he repeats, and the way he says it, like an apology, breaks the resentment in me, leaving only a second spill of tears.
I turn my face away so he will not see them. I do not make a sound.
He steps out from among the tall rocks and into the moonlight, joining me on the lip of the cliff, waiting patiently for me to clarify. When I glance at him, I see him watching me out of the corner of his eye, though he faces forward.
I want desperately to push my grief back down into my chest.
“What would you have me tell you?” I ask bitterly. “That every time my eyelids close I see him go again beneath the water never to return? That I still feel the ghost of his touch in every breeze that brushes my skin? That I expected this morning to open my eyes to his smile and saw instead only a strange place and an empty bed beside me? That I miss his jokes? I would not give you the satisfaction.”
My eyes well up and my vision swims enough that I take a cautious step back from the edge, and then to my uttershock his arms wrap around me and I’m pulled against his solid chest in an impulsive embrace. The shock of it sends my mind reeling and for one wild moment I am simply enveloped in warmth.
“Of course you would not, you maddening queen,” he murmurs gently. “Why would you allow yourself to be comforted when you can choose to be made of prickles? But I am not easily pierced by the teeth of your thorns.”
He is warm and strong and certain as if he can ward off all trouble, as if he might even turn back the pages of time and mend my heart. And it is too much. It is far too much.
Tears spill hot and fast from my eyes and I’m clinging mindlessly to him without conscious thought, shuddering as waves of agony sweep over me and hollow me like the surf eroding the shore. I press my face into the crook of his shoulder and suck in long breaths. He’s making soft shushing noises, and when he strokes a gentle circle with his wide-spread palm between my shoulders, I am overcome.
I wrench myself abruptly from his arms. We look at each other, both breathing heavily. His face is startled, lips parted, already looking as if he regrets his choice.
I do not give him time to express any such regret. Rather, I say, “We should return to the cottage. There may be all manner of dangers on this island.”
“We are the only two living souls,” he whispers.
But I do not answer his protest. I dry my eyes, swipe my cheeks with the backs of my hands, and lead him back to our shared bed.
“Grief is its own vast sea,” Oke says in the darkness of the cottage as we settle back in to pretend to each other that we will sleep. I cannot see his face, but I hear the catch in his voice as he speaks. It is full of experience. “And none of us can cross it by the same path. Do not hurry your journey, Coralys. Certainly, I have no such requirement of you.”
It’s much harder not to cry when he is so kind. I wish he would stop and let me push all this away where I need not dwell on it at all.
But as I fall to sleep, in the confusion that comes as unconsciousness descends, I do not know if I am longing for the arms of Lieve to hold me or the arms of the one who has tried to comfort me.
Chapter Ten
Ido not need any light to descend the stone steps, for the room beneath is as open to the air on one side as it is with the cottage above, carved into the same cliffside. The builder was clever enough to create several long slits about as wide as my body in the side wall and fit them from floor to ceiling so that the stone room, while guarded from the elements, is well lit.
With Oke gone fishing again, now is my chance. He’s hovered very close since the night he feared I would take my own life, and while I appreciate his company, my fingers itch to unveil the secret I knew was beneath us, waiting to be exposed.
I have imagined all manner of things over these past few days, and now that my chance is here, I am almost afraid to be disappointed by it. But from the moment my head dips below the cottage floor, it is hard to keep my mouth from falling open. In stark contrast to the room above, thiscavernous space is rich beyond my experience. None of my palaces have boasted such intricate murals as the ones set into the mosaic floors. Stylized waves and stars are woven in swirling beauty from tiles no larger than my smallest fingertip and fitted to form the floor. I think they might be reminiscent of the Cryciene Period, but the method of shearing the tiles into such delicate shards was lost after the War of Eastern Tides and we never rediscovered it.
The builders chose pale blues and stark whites for their patterns, and mosaics crawl right up the walls to waist level, where they morph into smooth white stone and then elaborate wave-and-tide cornices. I think that the walls and cornices may have been carved directly from the stone when this room was set into the rock, and my mind can’t help tallying workers, materials, and cost. I would estimate three years of effort and ten seasons of wealth for my nation would be soaked up in trying to replicate this. And it’s all sitting here where no one can enjoy it.
There are riches on display, set on plinths and small pedestals. They’re valuable, no doubt, but they’re displayed like a collection rather than like useful tools—a draped shawl here, a burnished breastplate there, a small red stone vase, a carved sculpture no larger than my hand depicting a donkey of all things. They’re vaguely familiar, as if I’ve read of these things before. Is that meant to be the daffodil blade of Corephus used to cut the snake venom from his brother’s heel? I’ve never seen another attempt to create the relic of the tale. But a collection of items from legends will not help me nowand I do not bother with them. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time later to peruse everything on this island if I wish it. All I have is time and the weight of it clogs my chest if I dwell on it too long.
I go first to the dominating feature of the room.
Placed in the very center—surrounded by enough space to admire it from every side and surely planned when the room was built, for the mosaic swirls out from it—is something I’ve only ever read about but never seen before, a marvel of modern engineering, a treasure so priceless it might turn back the tide of a war. A water clock.
It is hard not to gasp at that. I was offered plans for one once for a kingly sum. The seller had given me only a brief peek at them and that peek had been enough to tell me I had neither the expertise nor the resources in my kingdom to properly make use of them. Such an item is a master craft and the work of years to produce. I’d been sorry to turn it down, though, and I had thought long on the glimpse I’d had months after the seller’s boat had left our shores.
The builder of this clock—to his great credit—has been restrained in the details, choosing white marble rather than gaudy golds.
