“Is it a long way?”
“Not the way we swim. But you wouldn’t survive it. The humanbody can’t adapt to the water like ours does. We’re made for it. You’re not.”
She moved to touch the wall of the nearest building. “It’s so pretty the way it shimmers so.”
Its beauty couldn’t touch hers. Especially not the way the light played against her skin and in her eyes.
In either of her forms. He’d never seen a more beautiful woman in all his life.
She looked up at him with an adorable smile. “I can’t imagine you as a boy here.”
He jerked his chin toward a group of them who were playing nearby. “I wasn’t as carefree and happy as they. Me brothers and father saw to that. Rather, I spent the majority of me time skulking about the ruins.”
“The ruins?”
He nodded. “Aye. Would you like to see them?”
“Sure.”
Kalder took her hand and led her out of the city, far away from the bustle of the Myrcians he’d thought were long dead. How weird to be back when he’d been fully convinced that the entire city was gone. It was surreal to find it so eerily the same and yet very different from the place of his childhood memories.
He recognized much, and at the same time it was like being in a foreign land he’d never seen before. Familiar and lost, at the same time.
I should be used to being an outsider.He’d always felt that way here. Never quite fitting in. Never feeling wanted by anyone.
It was what had driven him to find solace in his own solitude where he didn’t see disappointment or irritation in the faces of others. Where he didn’t hear open agitation in a strained voice as it barked at him for being in the way when all he was trying to do was become invisible. Here, he didn’t have to guard his words or actions.
He could just be.
That precious and ever-elusive peace he’d savored and clung to every moment he could. Because he knew how fleeting it was. And that all too soon they’d be on his back again. That the insults would return, a relentless soundtrack in his head, and from their angry mouths that never gave him any reprieve.
Only Cameron silenced that wave of endless criticisms that constantly flogged his sanity. The inner hatred that threatened to drown him. He didn’t know how, but her presence made him want to be a better person. Made him want to be the man she saw him as.
She allowed him to breathe for the first time in his life. And he wanted to share things with her that he’d never shared with anyone else. Most of all, he wanted to keep her laughter ringing in his life.
In his heart.
Cameron slowed her steps as they came to an edge opening that looked out over the tumbled stones where bright fluorescent coral had grown. Like the walls, it glowed, only this was a vibrant coral as opposed to green and blue. The water over it made it appear to move and breathe.
As far as she could see, there were the remains of shattered buildings in the dark water, covered by the glowing plankton. A vibrantand yet dead and crumbling city underneath the water that lay outside the city’s walls. “What is this?”
“The remains of a war my people fought against Poseidon, long ago.”
“Who won?”
“We did. But at a great cost, and loss of life. It’s what really happened to the Pharos of Alexandria. It wasn’t destroyed by an earthquake. Rather, a group of our warriors went after it in retaliation for the destruction they did to us here.”
He gave her a sheepish smile that lit the shadows of his handsome face. “Would you like a closer look at it?”
“I would love one.” Cameron glanced out the window that was covered by a membrane where the sunken city lay asleep beneath treacherous dark ocean waters. “But how?”
“Do you trust me?”
How could he ask her such a thing? “Of course.”
Cameron froze as he began to slowly unbutton her heavy woolen jacket. “Mr. Dupree?”
“It’ll weigh you down in the water.”
