I whirled. “You ass. You sneaky, egotistical—this is just another ploy to keep me under your thumb, to use me.”

The wind ran through his dark hair like fingers; it tugged at his black shirt. “No. That’s why I need you to get the prophecy from the Mage Seer,” he said, soft, impassive. “She will tell you the truth.”

“What do you care whether I believe it or not?” My hands were fists, clinging to my now-damp dress. “I have this power—that I cannot control in the slightest, mind you. Why not just force me to use it regardless of whether a prophecy proves you right?”

He gave me a sullen look. “I do not wish to force you—”

“Oh, how good of you. Thank you, Your Majesty.” I gave an angry laugh. “You want me to want to go on a mortal hunt for a powerful deity, because it’s my divine duty.” My anger was wholly untethered, whipping through me. “And what could possibly be more rewarding than fulfilling it? Who wouldn’t want to die a hero in service of one’s king? I have no desire to be like you—” I jabbed a finger against his chest. “To scrape myself empty for others and call it noble.”

He’d gone rigid, eyes locked with mine. There was only the sound of the wind snapping through the sails. The sea crashing against the hull. That plucking sensation came again in my chest, deep in the middle, and I wished I could cut it out. Theodore and I stood still before one another, an abyss between us. I saw no way of bridging it.

I didn’t bother trying to stifle the tears that rolled down my face. Theodore looked… stunned. Helpless. He blinked too much; his full mouth opened and closed as his mind clearly reeled.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded, through my weeping.

He shook his head. “I… I don’t know what to do with you.”

I swiped the windblown hair from where it stuck to my wet cheeks. “You do. You’re sending me to my death—”

“Stop. No.” He covered his face in his hands for a moment. “Right now. With you… emotional… in front of me.”

I cast my gaze out over the horizon, toward the red, sinking sun. I tried to school my features, steady my breaths. The ship pitched and swayed, and even I knew that the crew would need to return to their posts soon to keep us on course. One last deep breath of salt air. “Another day and this bond will settle. Then we can both enjoy some space from one another,” I said, gaze stuck on the last dash of sunlight. Without glancing back at him, I started for the confines of the stateroom. His warm hand wrapped around my wrist. I glared down at it, then up into his eyes.

They bored into me with a fathomless expression. “An embrace,” he said.

“A what?”

He tugged on my arm, forcing me a step closer. “Lachlan said an embrace—closeness—might help ease things.”

Had he not had the direst look on his face and a patch of red creeping over the top of his collar, I would have thought the suggestion was in jest. I might have laughed at the ridiculousness of it had my chest not felt like it were caving in.

I gave my head a confused shake. “You hate me.”

His brow pinched. “I don’t—”

“You called me a gnat.”

“Imogen.” His grip tightened on my wrist, and I stopped breathing. “I would like to find a way to make you feel better right now.” His voice was all warmth, curling around me. “This is what I can offer.”

I thought of our escape, when he’d held me to calm my shaking body and how the bond in my belly had glowed. I remembered the outline of him, the feel of his heart beating against my spine. The memories alone filled me with frisson.

There were many misguided things I desired, and I suspected it would always be so. Just as sure as I was made of flesh and blood and bone and sea, I was also made of want. Excising it, draining it like a bad humor, would never do, but this one time, with this one man, I could stop myself from being the fool.

“I don’t want an embrace,” I whispered. When he released me, my wrist was cold.

Head high, and with Theodore trailing in my wake, I made my way across the deck. There was an emptiness, a hopelessness, that rankled, but I tried to let this truth soothe me: Nothing good had ever come from me taking what I wanted.

OceanofPDF.com

A full day and a half later, I clung to the rail of the ship as it glided across a crowded bay, toward Panos Port. I was ready to be off the water and touch solid land. To sleep soundly, dreamlessly, without being jostled by the sea’s merciless surface. I’d fallen into a malaise after my row with Theodore, and that Godsdamned plucking in my chest wouldn’t cease.

Agatha stood close at my side, face pinched in a troubled scowl. Theodore lingered not far behind me. I could nearly sense what direction he paced in, bow to stern, and back again.

Our blood bond still had not settled.

“I think something’s wrong,” Agatha said, leaning toward me so he wouldn’t hear. “The two of you shouldn’t be ill any longer.”

I frowned at the thought and stared into the water below. It was so clear, I could see straight to the bottom. Clusters of fish darted this way and that, looking like silvered arrowheads. Bright sprays of coral dotted the white sand of the seafloor.

“You don’t know that.” I tried to keep myself from sounding as worried as I felt. “It’s not even been three full days.”

She only offered me a sharp look, jaw tightly set. “And as I’ve said, it should only take two.”

“You performed your binding a long time ago. Maybe you’re misremembering.”

“It was two.” She was adamant. Then she paused to think. “Though our binding was different from yours. We didn’t spend time apart during those two days. We…” She looked at me sidelong, then away quickly. “Were together often.”

“Together?” I caught her meaning a beat later and grimaced. “Oh sweet Gods. Let’s assume it’s our lack of togetherness that’s the problem, then.”

“You could…” Agatha glanced at Theodore over her shoulder, then back at me. Her brows rose suggestively, disappearing into her thick curls.

“No. We couldn’t.” I scoffed. “He’s more interested in sending me off to be tortured in a severing ritual than bedding me.”

“Still—you can’t be this sick indefinitely.” She brought her voice even lower. “I don’t think he’d say no.”

“Think about what you’re suggesting!” A briny gust rolled over the water and wound through my loose hair. “And he most certainly would say no. He thinks I’m nothing but a superfluous imposition.”

Agatha shrugged. “I’d wager you’d be no imposition at all in this.”

The suggestion was laughable. Theodore and I had hardly spoken since he’d told me what my task was to be. Since he’d told me that he thought I was the descendant of a Great Goddess. That was laughable too. I knew my story. I was an orphaned child of noble birth. Nemea took me in because of my family’s money. Nothing more. But despite my lifelong surety, Theodore’s belief had left me bereft. Agitated, I brushed my thumb over the heap of scars that sat in the middle of my palm.

“Do you think he’s right?” I asked Agatha. We both leaned on the rail, and I pressed my shoulder to hers. “Do you think my power is like that of the Great Goddess Ligea’s?”

Agatha stared out over the water. At the little white stone buildings clustered tightly around the docks. More fanned out to dot the sprawling green hills of Varya. She shook her head. “She was the last Great Goddess to survive, but I never saw her. I knew all the stories of her power, though. Sailors would say the sea called to them, but it was her pull they felt on their bones. It was her call that rushed silently through their ears. And she could ruin them all without lifting a hand. They would pray to her and ask that she fill their nets. They’d ask for calm seas. And she would oblige, where she saw fit.”