“Be patient with me, and I will give you an answer.”
His smile is quick as a darting fish. He believes he has triumphed.
But I have not answered the way he thinks. Because whether Okeanos has enemies or not. Whether they try to kill him or not. Whether he needs my help or not. He is a liability. He is an anchor dragging on the ship and he must be cut loose. Nothing has changed except the depth of my understanding of this situation and how much it will hurt to destroy this man I am coming to soften toward. While he lives, my folk will never be free.
I must not be his partner.
I must be his murderer.
I have grown so calm that Okeanos has begun to smile again. His smile makes my heart want to open like a flower to the sun. What a traitorous organ. I pay it no mind.
“You’ll ally with me,” he says as his smile grows. He’s overly eager, overly trusting, and it masks for him my true intent. And he looks so sincere that it makes me ill. “You—of all people—will want this, too, will move the heavens and the earth to achieve it, will stand with me against any storm. We will not fail, you and I.”
Well. I won’t fail. I can guarantee that.
I might vomit right here. With the taste of wine and honey still on my lips and the brush of his kiss still tingling through my core.
But I smile with him and I contribute to his planning as he thinks through how to escape the trap of his enemies and spring it on them instead, catching all of them at once. His shoulders seem less stooped and his eyes are lighter with every suggestion I make to his plan. He believes I amforhim. I am a better liar than I knew.
We plot together well into the night and it feels like a fairy tale I am telling a child, for it will never come to pass. I do it with an eye ever on his fishing spear—his god weapon. He keeps it in hand, allowing me no opportunity to snatch it up. But eventually even the God of the Sea grows weary, and when he proposes we sleep the rest of the night, I agree. I curl up on my side of the bed and he curls up on the other.
No one has tried to attack us here on the island. No one needs to.
Chapter Nineteen
Iwait in the darkness, clutching to my chest all my little certainties. I must be right to do this. There is no other way.
I keep coming back to the same thought. Who do I really care about? The people who depend on me even now to return and save them, or one faulty man with a boyish smile? I know my duty. I know what is right. Fortunately, they align, even if my weak flesh balks at the idea of staining my hands in his rich god-blood.
We all of us worship gods. Some we make. Some we inherit. Some by necessity. Some by design. But there comes a time when we must set them aside, or if they will not be set aside, then they must be slain.
Okeanos is warm beside me, and the way his breath moves in and out carries the comfort of sleeping next to another person. My body is drawn to the safety implied in that.Without meaning to, I move closer and closer. Close enough that my cheek touches his hair. And then his breath evens out, and as I tense to spring up, he moves, suddenly, and flings a leg and arm over me in a sleepy, possessive cuddle.
He’s warm and soft with life, heavy with muscle. His even breath is against my cheek. I feel the scratch of his barely there beard tickle my ear. His forehead nuzzles against my temple like a small child might nestle into comfort. He smells of salt and faraway spices andman. Not like a god at all. His limbs, long and lax in sleep, are heavy on me. Vulnerable, like a puppy cuddled on my lap, but this puppy is a dangerous one. Dangerous, not only for all he has done and will do, but dangerous because he is making my heart hurt.
He’s bleeding on me. He’s warming me. He tugs me in tight against him without waking as if it gives him succor to draw so near.
My belly flips and rolls as if I’ve swallowed a mackerel whole and living and it seeks its way out. I want to be sick. I will be sick and sick and sick forever.
But my mind brings back the image of Delarte strung across the anchor, his tongue cut out, the scent of blood thick in the air. Of Lieve disappearing beneath the waves and his body cold and lifeless in my arms thereafter. Of Turbote driven mad by horror, his hand clutching at me. And with those images fresh behind my eyelids, I slip out from under Oke’s tender embrace, away from where his warm chest softly shifts with his breath, and out into the cold of the night.
The moon watches me—the only one who does—her eye wide open with scandalized anticipation. Waves beat upon the shore outside our bedroom, as if they might hammer on a door to wake my husband in time. But they are too slow.
Everything is too slow except me.
Already, I have slipped from the bed, my feet cold on the mosaic floor. Already, my hand wraps delicately around the shaft of the fishing spear.
I creep back up onto the bed, the silk of the bedcovering sliding under my limbs, but this time I do not lie down. I stand, shifting to secure a strong footing. I will have only one chance. I must do this well.
I pick my spot.
Okeanos wears no shirt to sleep, only the pearl cuirass. I see every rib. I choose a place between them.
The spear feels weighted with a thousand intentions when I lift it high. I do not yet know if I can kill like this.
My throat is suddenly clogged. It’s hard to breathe.
I choke for a moment until I remember it was hard for Lieve to breathe, too, when the waves clawed down his throat.
