Page 41 of Blood on the Tide

I shift uneasily on my feet. I don’t know what to do with this version of Lizzie. I don’t know how to comfort her in a way she’ll accept. “There’s no thanks necessary. Like I said, I wasn’t going to let you die.”

She lifts a hand. “Come here.”

I want nothing more than to go to her, but I still plant my feet and force myself to stillness. “We both just had a big scare. I hardly think that jumping into the bath with you is the right solution.”

“Probably not. But it can’t hurt.”

chapter 20

Lizzie

I don’t exactly intend to use sex as a distraction, but I can’t seem to stop shaking. The bath cleans the salt from my skin, but it also reminds me how close I came to losing everything. The water shakes with my little tremors, giving lie to my determination to be fine. I can still feel the press of the depths against my skin, eager to rush in the moment I lost my last bit of oxygen and my instinctive desire to breathe took over. Can still feel the way the kelpie tensed and twisted against me, its magic holding me helpless. I underestimated the water horse. All my strength, all my cunning, and I was as helpless as a civilian.

If Maeve hadn’t come after me, it would be feasting on my flesh right now.

“Lizzie.” Even the sight of Maeve, naked and glorious, isn’t quite enough to push back the feeling that’s shaking me down to my bones. Fear. It’s been so long since I’ve felt it that I hardly know its flavor.

No, that’s a lie. For far too long, fear was my bread and butter. It was the only nourishment I was allowed. My mother cleaved to the belief that if she overwhelmed me and Wolf through most of our youth, we would never feel it again. That, at worst, we would become immune, and at best, we would be bosom friends, able to twist it to our will. It’s certainly not true for my brother, but I’d mistakenly thought it was the truth for me. Wrong.

“How do you stand it?” I don’t mean to speak, to expose my quivering heart, but the words come all the same. “Down there. Where there’s nothing to see but blue and black. Where anything could be coming for you.”

Maeve’s expression softens. If I see pity in her eyes, I will flee the room, but there’s only a deep understanding. “It still scares me sometimes. But I don’t look at the depths as something that finite. It can be multiple things at once. I was taught as a child to respect the sea, and that respect and no small amount of fear reside in me today.” She moves closer and takes my hand, holding it between two of hers. “But fear isn’t the only thing down there. There’s freedom. Beneath the surface, there’s nothing constraining me, nothing holding me back. I can fight and twist and play and hunt to my heart’s content.”

“I don’t understand,” I whisper. My teeth try to close around the words, my mother’s training nearly overwhelming. Never admit weakness. Never give anyone something that they could use against you. But this woman isn’t anyone. She’s Maeve, and there’s something about her that makes me feel safe in a way I don’t completely understand. In a way that has nothing to do with physicality and everything to do with my heart. It’s because of that beacon of safety that I confess my deepest sin. “I thought I was going to die. I was terrified. I stopped thinking strategically—I stopped thinking at all. I was panicking.”

“Lizzie,” she breathes. In the next moment, she’s sliding into the tub, wrapping her arms around me, and pulling me close. The water that previously felt almost hostile morphs into something warm and welcoming. Because she’s there with me.

I’m falling apart. I don’t understand what’s happening to me, only that I’m increasingly worried that it might not be reversible. I tell myself to get out of the bath and put on my clothes and go terrorize the crew so I feel more like myself. But I don’t do any of that. I cling to Maeve and bury my face in the curve of her neck.

She holds me until the shakes work their way from my body. She doesn’t speak. She just strokes a hand down my spine and hums a haunting melody that burrows into my brain and slowly unwinds the fear sinking its claws into me. It still takes far too long before I’m able to draw a full breath.

“They say drowning is the sweetest way to die.”

I jolt. “That’s a horrible fucking thing to say.”

“Is it?” She allows me to ease back and there’s no amusement on her face. Only an aching seriousness that makes me want to kiss her.

But I can’t let that absurd statement stand. “There’s no good way to die, Maeve. Only good ways to kill so you’re the one to walk away from the fight.”

She shrugs freckled shoulders. “All living creatures die eventually. Some just take longer than others. There’s peace in knowing that.”

I stare. “The idea of dying doesn’t feel like peace. It feels like failure.”

“It’s understandable that you feel that way. You’re one of the most alive people I’ve ever met, for all that you hide it behind a wall of ice.” She smiles softly. “I’m still not certain if my mother lied to me about drowning, or if it’s just something that people say because we live in a realm ruled by the sea. She claims that it’s like giving in to the inevitable, to the tide, to the elements. The sea feeds us, and eventually we’ll feed it right back.”

I understand what she’s saying in an abstract sort of way. I can rationalize the poetic justice of it, the circular rhythm to life. But it’s abhorrent to me. Vampires don’t live forever, but no one’s ever been able to determine if that’s because we’re incapable of it or just because we’re too busy killing each other off. It doesn’t matter, because living forever is still the goal. It’s what we strive for, the ultimate endgame. What Maeve is talking about might feel peaceful to her, but it makes me want to scream my defiance to the universe. “There is nothing peaceful about being drowned and eaten by a water horse.”

Her brows draw together, a line appearing between them. “I am absolutely not suggesting that you should have given up and breathed in water. I wasn’t going to let you die, Lizzie.”

That, more than anything, gives me something besides drowning to focus on. I look at her with new eyes. I’ve seen her in her seal form for several days now, but I think a part of me still associated her with the helpless little seals back in my realm who are playthings for larger predators.

There was nothing helpless about her in that fight. She was violent grace incarnate, easily dodging the attacks from the water horse, managing to free me, and then snapping its neck in the space of minutes. If we hadn’t been yards below the surface with the pressure closing in around me, I would’ve wished for the fight to go on longer just to witness her beauty. “You were amazing.”

She blushes in a way that has nothing to do with the temperature of the bathwater. The rosy glow creeps up her chest and takes up residence in her round cheeks. “I couldn’t let it take you. I wasn’t thinking. I just reacted.”

Really, there’s nothing to do but kiss her. I frame her face in my hands and brush my lips against hers. The first time aboard the Serpent’s Cry was a frantic flurry of hands and mouths and bodies. Desire pent up for far too long, spiced with no small amount of fear.

This is different.

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