His thick brows knit together, and his words come out harsh, almost derisive. “You can see a drifting woman about to be dragged off to die in the sea and you can help her without some sordid ulterior motive, Coralys. What are you suggesting? That I, who could have any mortal woman I wished for, was pining for a woman married to another?”
“I wasn’t married then,” I say, and my words half break in the speaking, but he speaks right over me.
“That I couldn’t see a piece of myself in the heart of someone else without being overcome with the need to put a piece of myself in them more literally?”
I flush. I had, indeed, feared it was something like that.
“You do me an injustice,” he says, and his eyes cut away and it is like a cut to my flesh. “And you accredit a very large worth to yourself.”
I gasp, stung, but I have to know. I have to. I can’t leave it like this.
And so, in a trembling voice, I force the words out.
“Were you there for all of it? Did you help me with every triumph I had as queen? Were none of them entirely my own?”
He does not reply, but his broad shoulders hunch forward a little, pulling against his bonds, and his muscles tighten, flexing everything from his rigid, powerful neck down acrosshis ruined chest and along the trail of his midline to where the sight of him is lost beneath the surf. It is as if my words have been like the shock of an eel and the mere flesh and muscle of his body—perfect though it is—cannot bear up against them.
“Could I have done any of it without your aid?”
He still will not look at me, but he whispers, “You were an excellent queen, Coralys of the Crocus Isles. Your people could not have asked for better.”
I feel my cheeks grow hot, for even as an excellent queen I required help. I am choking on these revelations. They do not go down easily.
I try to put my own self aside and think clearly, but it is so very hard to do. I am still aching from the harshness of this knowledge.
I must not lose Okeanos. Now more than ever, I am certain that all will be lost if he sinks beneath the waves of death. For who will save our people then? If I needed his help when I was queen, how much more so now that I am a god?
I bite my tongue and he, too, says nothing more. But I am not content to leave it so.
There is too much between this god-man and I. And I know, as I know my own soul, that we two are too much like a matched set of lodestones. We cannot dwell in peace side by side with nothing between us but friendship or common task. We cannot even live as a peaceful pair like Lieve and I did with our shared understanding and mutual supportbearing us through many years. We two are not meant for such gentle dealings.
He must either be my greatest adversary or the dearly desired of my soul, and I have already tried the path of murder.
I will not take that path again.
But neither can I walk away. Neither can I abandon him here to his suffering knowing nothing of the turbulence raging in my soul, for I know what I am about to do is a betrayal of everything—of who I was and what I stood for, of my husband who never was anything but good to me, of my own actions just months ago. And yet I must seal this commitment as surely as the sun must rise in the morning.
I study him, biting my lip, letting my eyes linger for just a moment on the firm lines and tempting softness of his flesh. It’s torn and abused and yet somehow that very ugliness makes all the rest of him that much more decadent. I swallow, my throat thick with desire, badly wanting to taste the sea along the lines the moon has suggested to me with her flagrant silver outlines.
I do not know if I am furious with him, or if I want to sink my whole self into his embrace. And I am unsettled by my own indecision. I am naked and vulnerable at this revelation, that I want to hide from eyes that see too much, that I want to exact justice for his meddling.
And yet.
I have never been a passive woman. I am not one now. The moment his throat bobs teasingly and his brow peaksupward in a question, or perhaps a provocation, it is too much for me.
I stride toward him, sink to my knees at his side, take his glorious cold face forcefully between my hands, and with all my boldness brought to bear I set my lips to his. It starts like defiance, like a statement that he does not get to make all the decisions. But it is not defiant for long, for he meets me with unwarranted tenderness, and under his ardor I melt. My lips slide open, a tiny surrender, and I curve one possessive leg over his waist, straddling him.
For a moment my cheeks are hot with my boldness, my audacity shifts into uncertainty. I am almost resolved to draw back again, but just before I pull away, I feel him meet me, opening his mouth to me and making a subtle sound in the back of his throat. His kiss is forceful as if he is meeting my audacity with his own, wanting as I want, taking as I take, reverencing me just as I worship him.
He still tastes like a god, though I have stolen that from him forever. Though he is cold with death he is alive to my touch. My thumbs caress his cheekbones, his chin, his jaw. One of my hands slides down his neck and twists into his hair, and his shiver feels like my own joy.
And it is too much. It is too much for any mortal. It’s too much for me as a god. I’m shaking with conflicting emotions like a ship torn between wind and surf. I draw back with a gasp and his low moan bites into me like an accusation. What have I done? I have no right.
I untangle myself from him, stumble backward, and landclumsily on the rock. I have yet to draw a breath. The air feels stuck in my chest.
“Coralys.” My name is a whisper on his lips, and I see by the look in his eye that he wishes he could reach for me, chase after me, sweep me back into his embrace, and I’m undone.
I bite back a sob of guilt and desire all tangled into a poison draft and force myself to take another step backward and into the sea.
