Page 47 of Pearls of Salt and Sacrifice

She also was not where she was meant to be.

“I know I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he said, lifting a hand to press his palm against the barrier. “But I needed you to see this. I wanted you to understand that this is my heart. This city. This place. These people. I would do anything for them, Reva.”

Reva felt a tugging at her heartstrings. The earnest declaration resonated with her, as if he were speaking the words of her own heart. In the end, was that not why she’d been at Black Rock? Why she was still trying to work out an arrangement with Felix? To preserve her people, her kingdom?

She drew a bracing breath. “Jareth, I understand what you’re trying to tell me. I do. And I can’t deny that I feel something for you and your people. However—”

The hope that flared briefly in his gaze transformed to panic. “No. Please don’t.”

“However,” she repeated as firmly as she could, even though her heart whispered this couldn’t be the right choice. “I cannot simply abandon my duties to my own people. Jareth. My people are starving. And if I don’t find a solution, I’ll lose my people too.”

“But I told you that we’d help find food solutions. We just need a safe place to go. I’m not asking you to feed my people. I’ll worry about that. And I promise to help you figure out a way to feed your people too. It may take some time, but I know our people can coexist.”

She hesitated. “And that right there is the problem, Jareth. Neither of us have time to figure this out. My people are starving now. We’re at the end of the growing season: many of my people won’t last until spring let alone until the next harvest.”

“And Calypso is dying as we speak! We lost three people today, Reva. Three innocent people who shouldn’t have returned to the sea yet. But they’re gone.”

Jareth grabbed her hand and pressed it against the invisible barrier, pinning it in place. Reva tried to tug it free, but she couldn’t help staring into the chamber beyond. A chamber that had returned to the sea and taken lives with it. Tears stung her eyes.

Reva refused to look at him and made herself stare into the gloom beyond the barrier, at the sea elves salvaging supplies from the wreckage. “You need to take me home, Jareth,” she whispered.

“I can’t.” He caught her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “Because I’ll be taking you home and giving you to him. He doesn’t love you, Reva, and he doesn’t care for your people. He barely cares for his own people. He’s using you.”

The horrors she’d witnessed at Black Rock flooded over her memories in pulsing waves. “And how are you any better?” She stared at his mouth, refusing to look him in the eye.

She wasn’t sure she could stay strong if she faced him.

Jareth’s hands tightened around her exposed arms. “I’m not.” He barely breathed the words, and she felt the warmth of his breath against her cheeks.

Reva let her gaze slide past his nose to the eyes that stared at her. What had Belen said? That he looked at her like he was drowning? The tears she’d been holding back pressed more fiercely against her eyes. She inhaled raggedly and tried to swallow them back.

“I’m just as bad as Felix,” he said.

Was that sheen in his eyes a trick of the fish lamp?

“I went to Black Rock because I needed you to help me save my people.”

“Jareth,” she choked. “I can’t. I’m just one person, and I don’t have the magic of the sea behind me. You’re asking too much!”

“But when I saw you standing on that beach, Reva.” He ignored her arguments and tugged her closer. “When you jumped into that boat and rowed out to sea to save Felix’s people…”

She closed her eyes against an onslaught of images—burning timbers, floating bodies, bloody wounds...

“I didn’t see a princess,” he said.

Her eyes flew open, searching for the meaning behind his words.

“I didn’t see a princess,” he repeated. “I saw a queen who would do anything to save the innocent. I saw a queen who was as at home on the sea as she was on the land. A queen who wasn’t afraid to walk in two worlds. Who wasn’t afraid of risk and danger. And I knew. I knew in that moment that—that—”

As his voice broke, a tear escaped at last and trailed down her cheek. This tear fell along and unhindered, because little Calix was hiding in her pocket and wasn’t there to catch it.

“You knew what?” she asked, unable to squelch her own foolish curiosity.

“I knew that there wasn’t any other woman for me. Only you. And if you couldn’t save me, no one ever would.”

She squeezed her eyes closed against the thinly veiled confession in his words. “What are you trying to say, Jareth?”

“I love you, Reva, as crazy as that sounds. I’ve loved you since I first saw you in that blasted dinghy with the sun on your skin, and the wind and salt in your hair, and determination in your heart—”

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