“The lightning kraken. It spat us out.”
Marin nodded as if that made sense. It didn’t.
“I don’t know if it was sentient, or if it just didn’t see us as prey, but when the storm tossed us into the air, the kraken… I thought it would swallow us, but instead it flung us out of the storm and across the sea. In a way, it saved us. Maybe it was trying to, or maybe we were just in its way and it was tossing the trash out of its path. Either way, it threw us out of the storm.”
If it hadn’t been a magic storm…The magic had both endangered and saved them.Yay.
Marin sucked in a jagged breath and leaned against Dax’s chest. His arms closed around her, gentle and warm. She felt him breathe as she breathed, and she closed her eyes, letting his aliveness sink into her.
They hadn’t died.
They’d survived, and they were out of the storm. All they had to do was find Ree, find Perri, find her boat, and sail away. But for now, she just breathed.
“When I woke… you were there, so still.” His voice hitched,and his arms tightened around her. “I didn’t know…” He broke off, unable to finish the sentence.
“I’m okay.”
He tried again. “I haven’t…” He swallowed so hard that his body shook. “I’ve been lucky. Sheltered. I know. There’s never been anyone who… I don’t even know if my parents are still alive. I don’t think they’d have told me—wouldn’t want to interrupt my genius.” His voice was bitter.
She didn’t ask who “they” were. It didn’t matter. The words were pouring out of him.
“I barely remember my parents anyway. And I’ve never…” Another swallow, so hard that it was like the last gulp of a drowning man. She hugged him tightly. He continued. “They don’t want you too close to anyone. It distracts. I had roommates to start with, but then they moved away. Or were moved. Yes, were moved. There was a girl once, nice girl, pretty voice, a laugh like sunshine—she liked me and I liked her. At the winter solstice, after the performance, we kissed, and then she was gone. Left the school, they told me. I never saw her again. Never heard her laugh again. Never said goodbye. They wouldn’t tell me how to reach her. It was better that way, they said. They were looking out for me, wanting what was best for me. But you don’t… You don’t stop caring for people just because… There was a teacher I had, a voice teacher, and he was like a father. Like I think a father would be. Should be. He went home for the holidays, and when I went to his classroom the next semester to begin lessons, the woman standing in his room, by his piano, breathing his air, said he’d died with his family, an illness, and would I demonstrate my breath control for her on Vivaric’s Fourth Adagio in D.”
Marin wound her fingers through his hair and around his horns, holding him as close as she could. His breath was jagged as he talked.
“All of my losses have been far away. Taken away. Shut behind doors. Away from the city. Across the ocean. But when I woke and saw you, lying there in the sand… I couldn’t…” His voice brokeagain, and he buried his face in her neck instead of finishing the sentence.
“You didn’t lose me,” Marin said.
He drew back so he could look in her eyes. He put his hands on her cheeks, cupping her face, and he stared into her eyes as if they held secrets. All words fled from her head. He was so close and so alive and was looking at her so intensely, as if she was all that mattered in the world. She’d never been looked at that way by anyone.
With zero thought to any consequences, Marin kissed him.
His lips tasted like seawater and, improbably, cinnamon and peaches. It started as a sweet and gentle kiss—a reassurance. A “we’re alive” kiss. And then it deepened. He pulled her closer until her wet clothes were mashed against his. His hands were on her back, then her neck, then in her hair. His tongue was tasting hers, and she was breathing him in. They kissed like they were each other’s last inhalation, or first.
And when they broke apart, Marin felt dizzy. Dax leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. She stared at him, his features so close that they swam into one another, and then she closed her eyes too.
“Marin—”
She didn’t want to talk, not about this. It was too new, too real, too perfect, too terrifying, and she didn’t want to destroy it with words. She just wanted to soak in the heat of his body, feel the rhythm of his breath, and not think about what this meant or what would follow. So she cut him off. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know.”
They were on a beach. She’d guessed that much, due to the abundance of sand on her skin, but now she was seeing it and actually processing it. She wondered if the kraken had tossed them onto a beach like they were driftwood. Dax had said it had flung them across the sea—had it thrown them all the way here, wherever here was, or had they washed up on their own?
This wasn’t a shoreline she recognized. Not that she knew everyshore, but she thought she’d probably remember this one. Just beyond the sand were trees with metallic silver trunks that curved toward the water. Willowlike branches curved from their tops, and each branch was dotted with crystal-like leaves that shimmered in the sun. The crystal leaves were tinted pale blue, pale pink, and pale yellow, and in their branches, mice-like creatures with bright green leaves instead of fur scampered, leaping from tree to tree. Above them, birds with scarlet red feathers flew, bright against the blue sky.
“We need to find Perri and Ree,” Marin said. She pushed off him to stand up. Instantly, she felt colder without his arms around her. Her knees wobbled, but she stayed upright, which felt like a minor miracle. She could have broken every bone in her body when they’d been tossed ashore. How had they been tossed ashore withoutSilver? She’d tied the knots attaching them to the boat herself. “The knots should have held.”
“I untied us,” Dax said, standing, “when we capsized. Like you said to do.”
“Capsized? We flew.” She remembered that, at least from before everything disappeared. She remembered the moment the storm scooped them up, though she’d blacked out before the kraken intervened—after which, according to Dax, there had been even more flying, when the kraken tossed them.
“We did,” Dax said grimly. “And then we didn’t.”
“If we were thrown here…”
“After the kraken flung us out of the storm, we landed in water. Upside down.”
