The horizon stretched before me, vast and endless and unknown. I leaned forward, my heart beating faster than it should, and smiled into the wind. At the sky, at the sea, at the calm in my chest.
“Well, well,” came the familiar drawl behind me. “Our queen has finally found something to smile about.”
I didn’t turn, though my lips twitched. “I used to smile all the time.”
“Oh?”
“Until you arrived,” I said, spitting the words like a curse.
Theron let out a laugh and stepped into view, his sandals oddly silent against the wood. “I somehow doubt that.”
“You’re impossible.”
“That’s what my mother used to say. Just before she told me I was a mistake.”
I raised a brow. “So you do have a mother. Here I was thinking you’d clawed your way out of the Underworld fully grown.”
Theron’s grin curved, lazy as sin. “Didn’t I? Maybe I just borrowed her womb for the occasion.”
A laugh caught in my throat … but it was uneasy. He’d said it like a jest, tossed out carelessly, but there was something in his eyes that made my skin prickle. I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or … if there was a bite of truth in there somewhere.
There was a moment, one of those strange, suspended moments where I could feel him watching me, but I couldn’t bring myself to meet his eyes. The wind caught a curl at his temple and tossed it loose.
I focused harder on the water.
“You’re standing awfully close to the edge,” he said, all silken arrogance. “Lean too far, and you’ll fall. And then someone would have to dive in to save you. Not me, obviously, but someone.”
I scoffed. “They needn’t worry. If I fall, it’s only because I want a sea monster to devour me quickly so I don’t have to hear your voice again.”
Theron’s grin tilted. “Your Majesty, I wouldn’t say that so lightly. Some monsters take their time when they feast.” His eyes lingered on mine, unsettling. Then the grin deepened. “Nevertheless … you wound me.”
“I’m barely trying.”
“You should try harder. If you’re going to wound a man, make it worth the scar.”
I glanced sideways. “How many of those scars did women leave on you?”
“Oh, several. All invisible. All deeply traumatic.”
I snorted, and his eyes flicked to my mouth like he’d won something. “Ah, there it is. The smile again.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“I won’t. I’ll savor every one you give me.”
His words stopped me cold. Sweetness hadn’t seemed to be Theron’s weapon of choice, and my pulse stumbled as I searched his face, half convinced he was mocking. But there was no gloating or pointed edge … only that steady gaze, disarming in its rare honesty.
A lull stretched between us, broken only by the steady dip and pull of the oars, their blades slicing clean through the surface in perfect rhythm. There was something almost sacred about the sea, the way it stretched, endless and wild, far beyond anything I’d known.
“First time at sea?” he asked, his voice softer now.
“Yes.”
“And?”
I inhaled deeply. “It feels like … like everything I’ve missed without knowing it.”
He studied me for a beat too long. “There’s more where this came from, you know. Whole worlds. Forests that glow, cities that sing, mountains with stones older than memory. Islands that rise and fall with the moon’s pull. Caves that whisper secrets from before time began.”
