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Walking through the Imperial City was an event for the senses. Summer was at its height, and nycta bushes bloomed everywhere, spilling from rooftops and exploding in the gaps from one building to the next, a riot of greens and purples and pinks so thick that the air was seasoned with their scent. So sweet that Kai could nearly taste them as he walked beneath their scattered canopies, honeybees humming in his ears—and an undeniable spring in his step.
Ridiculous, really.
He still had the Sealgair to worry about. Still had to convince Daithí to take his people in. Still had to find a thoughtful, careful way to break the news to his people that, despite all the trust they had granted him, he could not join them in Nua Laune without compromising their safety.
There was still so much to mend and settle, and yet knowing he had left Adeline in her bed, sleepy and smiling and sated from having come no less than seven times since last night—
Well. Kai couldn’t fault himself for walking a little lighter as he made his way to the shore.
The pale stone roads were warm beneath his soles and blindingly bright, shimmering where they caught the midday sun and forced his eyes to narrow. He turned past the docks, where fishermen called to one another in rough and rapid tones, wafting the briny smell of the ocean as they unloaded their wares into wooden carts that creaked with each deposit. The streets beyond them were a cacophony of noise, of carriages rolling uphill, and horses clipping, and merchants hollering enticements to passersby. But the shore, when he approached, was quiet. Empty, too, just one long stretch of powdery, golden sand and the high tide lapping away with its gentle froth.
Not a soul to be seen, despite the letter that had found him in Adeline’s bed less than an hour ago,Urgentinked across its folded side and underlined with three bold and even scores. Despite himself, Kai had huffed a dry laugh as he unfolded the letter, knowing at once who had sent it and how little it affected his bright mood. Even Simon had seemed uncharacteristically amused as he handed it over.
“Your friend is rather grouchy in the mornings,” he’d said jovially.
“My cousin,” Kai had told him as he scanned the letter—but something about the strength and confidence in the boy’s tone had called to his attention, and he’d glanced up belatedly. Simon had changed, even in the few days since Kai had last seen him. His pallid complexion had erupted in golden-brown freckles, and his once tense frame was loose, as though all he’d everneeded was the sunlight to melt the frost from his joints. Dhalias suited him; Kai had told him as much and could not help but laugh at the broad, boyish grin it had elicited.
“I’m a new man, Your Majesty,” had been the valet’s bright response.
And with no further insight, he’d left Kai to read his cousin’s summons, with promises to return with tea and a late breakfast for a still-sleeping Adeline.
Os’s letter detailed plans that some of the Merrow had made to meet for a leisurely afternoon on the shore.I would have told you in person, had you not disappeared from the ball last night,he’d written.Kai had smothered the boyish irritation that struggled to bleed through him at those pointed words. And the ones that had followed, too.Perhaps this could be an opportunity to keep our people informed.
That same irritation squirmed within his chest now as he stood on the empty shore, but he breathed through it, unwilling to part with the weightless, buoyant feeling he’d found that morning. It had all been far too heavy of late: Selma’s death, all that had passed between himself and Adeline, the pain he’d caused her, and the expectations he’d invited by promising his people a new home only to arrive in Dhalias and find they were not entirely welcome. His body and mind had been aching beneath the weight, and however fleeting this respite might be, he was determined to enjoy it. So Kai tilted his face to the sun and basked in the quiet lull of the waves.
His Adhlian pendant began to seep its cold into his sun-warmed skin, pulsing in time with the lap of the tide. It was gently insistent, almost as though reminding him of its presence. A reminder he did not need; in truth, the temptation had been there since the moment Daithí laid that cold shard against hispalm, and he had been ignoring the dry ache in his veins for nearly two days.
He could not even say why.
But witnessing the rush of the sacred power that barelled through Adeline as he’d held her, and her euphoric daze after Wielding her magic, the temptation had only grown keener. This moment of solitude was the best opportunity he could have asked for, really.
Kai kicked off his boots and stripped down to his undershirt. With the water so clear and the sun so keen, the warmth of the tide enveloped him with every wading step he took into the depths. At shoulder height, he let the waters take his weight and lay back, floating for a moment on the gentle blue sway of the Dhaliaan ocean. Here, in the swaying embrace of the waters, with the pendant all but calling to him, Kai’s veins were hollow and wanting.
Waters,his too-thick blood hummed within him.Call the waters.
Tentatively, he reached for them; cast out that secondary awareness, that call that had so long gone unanswered. For a moment more, it was met with nothing but further silence. And then, slowly and ever so slightly, the ache in his veins eased. It was not anything close to what he remembered; the immediate rush of magic moving through him as naturally as his own breath. His reverent call, and the Mother’s resounding response.
This was muted; a tentative question and a muffled reply.
But it was there all the same, and the relief that washed through him was a physical thing, a sigh felt through every nerve ending. There was a shift in the water on his skin; a currentsinging through it where it sank into his pores and roused something intrinsic.
And he knew, in the root of all that he was, that Adhlas had once more braided her Self to the fabric of his being.
Kai lifted a hand and saw his own palm splayed out against the clear summer sky; then, with his blood singing and his heart gliding like a ray on the waves, he slowly coaxed a thin rope of water up the length of his arm. He felt the tug of it in his chest, the waters drawn from within him as much as from the oceans that buoyed his weight. Kai watched that blessed magic, shimmering as it wove a path over his skin and caught sunlit sparks at his fingertips.
The salt that stung his eyes was indecipherable from the vast ocean around him.
“Koo!”
At the sound of Ceri’s voice, Kai rolled into the next wave, the Wielded waters still writhing over his skin, cool and distinguishable even in the split second he was submerged. He found his footing on the sand and emerged, facing the shore—and his sister’s awestruck face. Kai lifted his hand, the waters spinning faster over his forearm, catching the light as he waved. Ceri broke into a grin and then a sprint. He watched her tear through the shallows like an excitable pup, and the burst of laughter in his chest was warm beneath the chill of the pendant’s green glow. Ceri arrived at his side breathless and splashing, and with no preamble, she spluttered, “It works?”
“It works,” he confirmed.
She grabbed his arm and examined the spinning circlet of water.
“And you’re not going to grow scales?”
