He reaches for me as if to wipe a tear from my cheek, but I flinch back and he winces. I am in no mood to be touched. And if I am to do what comes next, I must not forget what he is.
Hesitantly, he returns to pacing.
“Surely now you see why my goal is to build a refuge forour people,” he says. “Our enemies stalk and harry us. They threaten war—a war that I think one of them has already begun. They seek to force me into a trap of their making.”
“Ourenemies?”
Vesuvius snorts and I am grateful he can only be perceived by me. He’s propped against one of the swordfish, his tentacles swelling out and rippling back with each motion of the sea.
“Our enemies,” Okeanos repeats, stilling for a moment and looking at me. His green eyes are lit by his halo and his nose and jaw are both sharper in the bright light. “Let us speak plainly, for you know my heart and all my secrets. I told you, Coralys, that I had a people I would save. I bid you help me. They are the folk of the sea, and their enemies are my enemies… and yours.” He bites his lip, looking pained. “You have seen my failure to hold back their attackers.”
I have seen it, yes. I am bleeding out with the pain of it and scalded by the fear it will continue while he seems to take it in stride. It is no surprise that he does not mourn. What are mortals to the gods except playthings to be discarded when they are not presently wanted? But I cannot allow my people to be playing pieces to him as I have been. No matter how clever his ideas or noble his goals, he’s lost sight of them as individual people. They are not a school of fish to be judged as a whole, a few individuals lost for the good of the rest. They are each one precious. Like Lieve was to me.
He goes on, “I have made every effort, but as you have seen tonight, we are constrained by the laws of heaven. Wemay guide, we may tend, and in some things we gods may even interfere, but when it comes to war, to seizing lands, to wholesale slaughter—these are the tools of mortals, and to use them, or even counter them, requires the work of mortal hands. I confess the loss of you as queen of the Crocus Isles has cost me an ally in this, but perhaps you see that as my wife you can work with me. That is why you came here tonight, is it not, though you were late to the decision?”
My breath freezes in my lungs. He does not suspect. He thinks I came here to work with him as he asked me to before he left. I am very, very still.
“Together we can build this refuge. Together we can find the source of our people’s misery and excise it.” He’s back to looking into the distance, thinking. “Which god is calling us out? Who is it that endangers our plan?”
“Okeanos lies,” Vesuvius says, examining one tentacle as one might examine their fingernails. I look at him and he lifts a brow at me as if he is patiently waiting for a child to catch up with his explanation. “This is his chance to firmly pin you in place and secure your oath to help him. Don’t do it. You have seen with your own eyes what he has done to the ones you love. Do you really think it is these nebulous enemies who have swept away the lives of your people? Was it Aurelius’s banner that flew over the raiders on your island? Was it Treseano who claimed you as his reluctant bride?”
He is right. I will not be so dazzled by beauty and majesty that I forget what I know to be true. But I do not trust Vesuvius.
I draw myself up and speak. “If all that you say is true, then tell me how you care about a people you watched wrecked by a storm while you did nothing to save or succor them.”
“You refer to when your husband was killed.” His tone is sharp, decisive.
I flinch but he goes on.
“I was delayed. You have seen my godwound.” His voice is burred. “I couldn’t come sooner, though I tried.”
But I am not having this. “You intentionally delayed until I struck a bargain with you. You forced a marriage to further your own ends and in the process many were lost. It was manipulation, plain and simple.”
He lifts his hands. “You blame me falsely. I made no bargain with you until we spoke our wedding vows. You were tricked by another.” He stops, considering. “Possibly someone with a hold on your kingdom so that he could maneuver a mortal into power in order to steal it from me.”
“That’s not possible,” I say, shaking with anger. Now he’s just inventing conspiracies. Who else will he pretend has power over the sea except the God of the Sea?
He grimaces. “When I wed you, I did it properly in the old way. If I meant to trap you, I would never have granted you such power. How else do you think you are here now on the plane of the gods if not because I opened it to you?”
“Am I to credit you for that?” My voice is trembling. “Should I believe it was coincidence that I made this bargain and then you swept in just in time to save me from myself?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “Yes. Exactly. You are to believe that you made the bargain with another, and that upon seeing it had been made, I chose to marry you myself to prevent a worse fate. I am not responsible for the storm or the lives lost.”
My retort is like a whipcrack. “Then what are you responsible for? For doing nothing? For inaction?”
He’s circling the floating island, agitated. I have to keep turning so that he is in view, and every time he passes Vesuvius, the former sea god taps his lips as if to remind me to keep him a secret.
“Lies,” Vesuvius mouths when I catch his eye. “All lies.”
“Imagine you were wed to one bent on the destruction of your islands,” Okeanos says, his shoulders thrown back proudly as he presses his point. “What paths might a marriage to their queen suddenly open? What gates might fling wide? The moment I saw that vulnerability, I shored it up. I was late to stop the storm, late to save those innocents washed away, but I prevented a second trap from springing.” He softens, stills, faces me. He’s almost pleading. “We want the same thing, Queen Coralys. We want our people safe. Can you not see it?”
“He’s very good at this,” Vesuvius murmurs from the corner. “I almost believe him. But do not forget, from the start his neglect doomed your people. He killed his rival and he claimed you for his own. Likely, he has been watching you. Perhaps even for years. Gods do this.” I shiver at that thought. I treasure my privacy and to think someone powerful hasbreached it leaves me ill. “And then they maneuver that weak mortal into a place where they cannot say no and they take them for their own pleasure. He’ll be surprised, I think, to find you are not easily shunted into place.”
I swallow. Almost, I could believe Okeanos. He is so very sincere. But Vesuvius’s conclusions are also my own.
And if Okeanos really cares only for his people, then why did he list out towns and cities lost when the other gods claimed no gains? Glorian had been worried about armies gathering on her borders. But Okeanos had sounded more worried about dead El’Dorian. Was that because he thought the lives of his peers more important than a few thousand mortals in his care?
I am not a fool to be turned by a pretty face and honeyed words.
