Page 14 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

“Cassie—”

“No, let me finish.” I looked up at him and let my anger show for once instead of hiding it as I did with most people. I didn’t need to pretend here.

I never had with him.

“Every time, every time, I banished the pain by thinking of you. You and Mircea and Rhea and Tami and Gertie and so many others. But mostly you. Your face got me through that night, just as your power gave me light in the darkness. I followed your footsteps to that portal, and it was the thought that they were yours that kept me going. I don’t know that I would have had the courage to do it otherwise.”

“You would. You always do—”

“Shut up!” This time, it was my eyes blazing. “I’m trying to tell you that I do need you! I needed you that night like I need you now, by my side to the end. We can do this—I know we can. And the damned fey can go hang!”

“You came to rescue me, then?” Pritkin asked, his voice raw but his eyes lightening with something he didn’t want to let himself feel.

“I came to fight beside you. Because I need you, in so many ways I’ve lost count. And because I love you.” I stared up at him. “Are you really going to turn me away?”

I didn’t get an answer in words that time, but I didn’t need them. Incubi spoke with other things, with lips and tongues and fingers pressing harder now, as if to reassure himself that I was really there and hadn’t dusted away in some magical battle he hadn’t even known was happening. Maybe that was what was eating at him, as it had me, not knowing what the other was doing and whether all this fighting was for a brighter future we wouldn’t share because the most important person in our lives might not survive to see it.

But we were together now, I thought, kissing him back. And this was what I’d wanted, what I’d needed, what I didn’t think I could live without. What I’d dreamed about when he was gone, and the world had felt so big and empty without him.

He was still angry; I could feel it in the rigid set of his shoulders, see it in the frown on his forehead, taste it in his kiss. But he was more relieved, vastly, vastly relieved, that we were together. And together, I thought, drawing him closer, we could handle anything.

Chapter Five

Our lips met, and he immediately deepened the kiss. I made a little sound and started trying to figure out how to get the damp shirt off of those broad shoulders. It was the last one I’d bought him, the one that said “I may look calm, but in my head I’ve killed you five times” and I didn’t want to tear it.

But before I could get it over his head, he picked me up, I assumed to lay me on the bed, but he appeared to have a different destination in mind.

“Is the smell really that bad?” I asked as we crossed the room and entered what I guessed was a bathroom.

“No. But I thought you might prefer not to have an audience.”

I didn’t know who he was talking about until one of the Horror Twins gave out a screech of what might have been approval. Or absolutely anything else since their language made nails on a chalkboard sound soothing. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about them already.

But they didn’t follow us inside, although there would have been plenty of space. The bathroom was big, black, and weird, with half the size of the expansive outer room but without the windows that lightened things up. Instead, there was a plunge pool almost big enough for somebody’s backyard, surrounded by plants and mist that didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere but was wafting among the leaves. There were also small lights in all that, like fairy lights on a string only without the string, and possibly made out of real fairies.

I wanted to poke one, just in case, but couldn’t reach it.

There was another archway to the left, which I guessed led to the facilities or a closet, and a large, black stone area on the far, right-hand side down a short hall that looked like it might be a shower, although there were no nozzles for the water. Just a jutting piece of black rock that looked naturally occurring but probably wasn’t, that formed a sort of bench. On which Pritkin sat down after carrying me over there since it was the only option.

I was disappointed, as the bed would have been more comfortable. But I could make do, I decided, and finally got the damned shirt off. And then everything else before straddling him, still dressed myself because I was in too much of a hurry to worry about me.

“Take it easy,” he said, as I accidentally bit his lip.

“This from an incubus?”

“Half incubus, and one who doesn’t want to get stabbed by—what is this?” he demanded, and I looked down to find out that my dress was morphing back and forth from pretty evening wear to a set of full-on, medieval-and-then-some, silver scale armor. It seemed confused, and then so was I as I looked about.

Because this shower wasn’t like any I’d ever seen.

“What’s happening?” I whispered, wondering if we’d triggered a ward.

Pritkin chuckled, his bad mood momentarily forgotten, maybe because he’d just figured out how to collapse the top half of my suit into the base, leaving me topless. And trying to think past the hands, lips, and tongue that immediately took advantage of that fact wasn’t easy. But my eyes nonetheless kept following the floating water globules that were suddenly everywhere.

I didn’t know why or how they were floating about as weightlessly as if they were on the space station. But there they were, with an iridescence that showed me back my clueless face as I stared at them in surprise. Some of them were larger than my head.

They kept coming from all directions, even the floor, starting small but then fusing together to make floating puddles or shattering apart into fragments by collisions. There were a lot of the latter because they were coming fast and furious, until it was less like being caught in a rainstorm and more like swimming with occasional air pockets. It left me trying to breathe between getting punched in the face by the latest water-balloon-sized burst.

Until I miscalculated and breathed in when I should have exhaled and choked.

---