“No mortal tool will cut those and nor will your power take them away,” Okeanos says earnestly. “I am not the first god to face such a fate, nor will I be the last. If I was whole, perhaps… but I am not whole.” He pauses. “Forget me. Forget this place. Finish the tasks and raise the Lighthouse. Give our people a place of safety that cannot be snatched from them.”
I say nothing, stubbornly staring at his prison.
“Coralys,” he says, and still I ignore him. “Cora.”
The tender way he says my name finally draws my gaze.
“Oke,” I say belligerently, and the tiniest flicker of a smile shows in the corner of his mouth. Maybe it’s all he can manage in so much torment.
“You cannot change the past. You cannot take back what you’ve done. You cannot absolve yourself with your actions now. Not even by freeing me.”
I shiver.
“But tell me this. Do you still believe me guilty of the crimes you thought were mine?”
“No.” My voice is small.
“Do you think I mean to harm your people?”
“No.” None has planned more to save them. I steal a look at his green eyes and feel as though I have been stabbed right through.
“Do you think I mean to harm you?” he says gently, and his eyes are so deep, so careful in how he holds my gaze that I choke a little.
“No.”
“That is enough for me,” he says quietly, and when I look at his face again his eyes are very serious. “I need nothing more from you. Though I would like it if you finished the work, I don’t require it. Do you understand? Do you… do you know what I’m trying to say?”
“I think I do,” I say, but I’m shaking again, and rivers of sweat run from his temple and drip down his jaw and I know it is all he can do to keep from screaming.
“Good.”
He has forgiven me, I think. Absolved me. Never has he felt so godlike as he does now, as he forgives a sinner with a simple word.
He clears his throat. “Do not pursue more revenge. Please. It will bring neither of us satisfaction. Promise me this.”
I am silent. It is not in my nature to make such a promise. But when his eyes catch mine again, I must swallow, because he ought to be able to ask me anything and receive a yes after what I’ve done. He has the right to ask this of me.
“Yes,” I say faintly. I look away, no longer able to meet the intensity of his gaze. “I will look to your Lighthouse.”
“You are doing a better job than you think,” he says, andit’s the gentleness that breaks me—that he’s offering me kindness when it ought to be offered to him.
I squeeze my eyes shut and I think of what I can do for him. I can’t get revenge. I can’t free him from the anchor. I can’t stop the creatures from coming to eat him… but maybe I can offer him guardians to drive them away?
I look into his stormy eyes one last time and I say, “I’ll fix this.”
And then I make my bargain and the world seems very far away; my legs grow very long, and my skin so hard I can feel nothing at all, my clothing and the pearl cuirass slip down my body and I must scramble to escape their cloying grasp. I think I hear him call my name, but words mean nothing to me anymore. I slip into the water like a stone but not before I see two massive crabs tearing into Oke’s torturers and ripping them to pieces.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Iemerge from the water dripping and in a foul temper. It is no delight to be a crab. I still feel as though I ought to have more legs than I do and the balance of my body is all wrong.
I creep sideways from the sea, my human feet soft and slippery on the smooth rock, and stop dead.
Someone has lit a driftwood fire of blue-and-purple flames. That someone sits on the far side of it from Okeanos and both of them are lit by the dancing light. It’s a strangely companionable situation. My trident lays beside my husband on the rocks, as close as if he set it there.
My eyes snap to Okeanos’s bare muscled chest. The wound I gave him is yet set into the flesh, ragged and unhealed. He is still strung up by his hands and they twist painfully in their tethers. Even with the sea creatures driven away by my sacrifice, he must be in agony. He sits though, not at ease,but not in as much visible pain as he was before, and his eyes watch me with a hunger that makes me uncomfortable.
“You must not do that again,” he tells me gently over the soft patter of water running from my slick body and dripping on the rock. It mingles with the mellow crackle of the fire. He is always so very gentle, this new husband of mine. “You will waste your days paying for my comfort and your days must be better spent.Youmust be better spent.”
