I wash myself in the sea. I wash out all the blood and dirt and soot and tears. But this time, as I plunge beneath the surf, I can feel Okeanos in the water wondering why I am smoky and smelling of blood. I can feel his confusion and then, over top of that, a deep peace as if the God of the Sea himself is trying to calm me.
I do not want to be calm. I do not want to be told how to feel.
I clamber out of the water.
Markanos stands there looking grim. “You’ll need sleep if you’re planning to be a crab all day. Get that done now and be ready for me at dusk tomorrow. Together, we’ll hunt Treseano and his creatures. You’re not much in a fight, but you’re still God of the Sea. Let us accomplish this task, free Okeanos, and then I can fight the bigger war we’re in with my friend instead of his useless wife.”
I’m so stunned that I have nothing to say. He wants me to work with him after insulting me and ordering me about. Typical. He starts to swipe his sword and then stops.
“I’m angry about Ordanus. He wasn’t a friend, but he’s been a god nearly as long as me. I don’t like changes.” He glares at me—a change—as if he’d like to wipe me out, too.
“Fear not,” I say grimly. “I’ll just be here doing useless things until you return to kill more gods.”
What else does he want me to say? It must be exactly that, because he snorts, slices the air with his sword, and is gone.
I don’t even go up to the cottage to sleep. I just collapse on the beach, and the tide must rise farther than I expect,because I dream of Oke in the sea trying to comfort me as I cry. But when I wake up, it is not his arms trying to wrap around me but rather the swirl of the waves reaching, reaching forever for the shore.
The first ray of dawn spills golden across the water’s surface and I just have time to gasp before I have six more legs and the sand is suddenly very close and the sea very deep.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
My body needs very little now that I am a god—not food, though it enjoys eating; not as much rest, though I am feeling worn and wrung out. When I shudder back into a human body, the light is fading from the sky. Any moment now, Markanos will be here wanting to hunt Treseano with me. Any moment now, the madness will begin again.
Time spent as a crab is a strangely thoughtless time focused solely on eating and moving, on avoiding danger and dancing from shadow to shadow. I do not think when I am in this state as I do when I am a woman… or a god. But the moment my mind is my own again I am flooded with all the thoughts I might have had when I was not myself.
Primary among them is this: In the Crocus Isles, everything we do of importance is done in the sea. And Okeanosis the sea. How much of my life did he know before he ever met me?
But more than that, I am growing worried, for if I am the sea and he is the sea, together, the sea is half-dead. I do not want that half—whatever it is—to be lost to us entirely. The death of Ordanus shook me more than I expected. I am still trembling with it, still reliving the moments he whispered to me as around him all the mortals he loved died. If such a thing was done to him at his full power and in the safety of his refuge, then what might be happening to Okeanos while I am away?
I look at the fading sun and grimace. I do not have the time to go and check on his welfare, and yet I do not have the heart not to do it. Markanos can wait a few minutes. Just a few.
I dress quickly and then race up to the cottage to gather a lantern, knife, and flint. At the last moment, I fill a flask with fresh water, too. When I’m satisfied that I have all I need, I fly back down the steps, barely paying attention to what is happening around me, hit the water with a splash, and twist my hand as I’m moving.
It’s as natural as breathing to me to move in this way, now. I almost don’t feel nauseated when I land on his shore and find Okeanos there, limned in the light of the rising moon.
I can just pick him out as I bend to light the lantern.
“Coralys.” His voice is rough, parched. I’m glad I brought the water.
The moment the lantern is lit I lift it and I gasp. Myhusband is not alone. There are two corpses, one on either side of him, and their blood is smeared across the rocks surrounding him, seaweed tangled around one man’s leg and another strand of it clutched in the other man’s hands. There’s a sword flung to one side, but it is the only weapon I see.
“You’ve been busy,” I say calmly, lifting the lantern higher and checking around the anchor with my heart in my throat. “How did you kill these men? You are chained here.”
“My legs are free.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“There are no more,” he assures me, and I hurry to his side, setting the lantern down and bringing him water. He drinks deeply from the skin I hold to his lips, and when he is done, he sighs. “Are you well?”
“AmIwell?” I ask in a slightly caustic tone. “I am not the one surrounded by corpses.” I pause, thinking of yesterday, and amend my statement. “At the moment, at least. Who are these who attacked you?”
He makes a movement that might have been a shrug if his hands were not pinned above him. He’s beautiful in the moonlight. The stark contrast makes the line of his neck and jaw strong and masculine. It highlights every swell and dip of his flesh.
I swallow. I have always considered myself an unflappable woman, calm and cool in a crisis, but all this is growing to be too much.
“They attacked you… here… while you were helpless?”
“It’s the best time to attack,” Oke says calmly. “When your enemy is helpless.”
