Page 87 of Veil of Death and Shadow

The sun highlighted all the angular perfection of his face, the strange, almost iridescent ink of his tattoos, the mesmerizing flecks of gold, amber, and green in his eyes.

He watched me with such yearning, but it was different from the yearning at Incendiary. This wasn’t motivated by sex or lust. This was different.

He looked almost sad.

I found myself wondering what his life was like, about the plane or realm or world that he spent most of his time in. But not for the same reasons as before—not to satisfy my own curiosity.

I was curious about his life for his sake.

“What does it . . . feel like?” he asked, his voice so low and quiet that I almost didn’t catch his question. “What do you like about it out here?”

“It’s cold.” I closed my eyes, focusing on the specific sensations. It had been so long since I’d taken the time to really notice them. “But not in a bad way, not freezing or anything. It’s the kind of cold that shocks you, wakes you up, like a livewire running through your body.” I pulled my arms through the water, focusing on the feel of it. “Like even though I know this lake is probably filled with hundreds of dead fish and other gross things, there’s something remarkably refreshing about it, something that feels so rejuvenating and pure.”

“And,” I continued, “I can feel the temperature shift and change as I move through it. The water on the surface is a few degrees warmer because of the sun. But I almost can’t feel the bottom half of my legs from the cold. And I think I’m more aware of my senses and my body in the water than I am on land. Not sure why. There’s something really cool about going below the surface, and even with my eyes closed, I can sense my way back up. And it’s quiet, isolated. Even when people swim or pass by, most of them tend to preserve the peace of it out here. Sometimes it feels like I’m watching the city from the outside, part of it but also not, between two worlds, almost, or in another one entirely.”

Which was maybe how I felt most of the time—caught between two worlds—but out here that didn’t scare me in the same way it did when I was surrounded by people.

I shifted onto my back, floating as I used my arms to move me parallel to the board, Kieran just above me. I closed my eyes again, letting the sun kiss my skin.

“But more than the way the water feels, I think I just really love howIfeel when I’m in it. The way it makes me feel weightless. It’s freeing, how little effort it takes to move through it, to float. How it squeezes and forms to me, like that feeling of pressure from a really good hug. And I guess it’s a little terrifying, too, how vast and powerful it is; how small orirrelevant it can make you feel to be a person floating in this giant, connected ecosystem. But those are the same things that make it exciting.” I opened one eye, squinting against the sun. “I don’t know, does that make sense?”

He leaned over, studying me, until his face was hovering just above mine, blocking the worst of the sun from my eyes. “Yes, Agony, that makes sense.”

“Good.” I started to smile, but it wavered. My stomach tightened as our eyes locked, his unreadable as always, but also unexplainably tender, and I found myself strangely wishing that I could reach up and kiss him.

But then I remembered that this was not last week, and the circumstances of our nearness now were entirely different. So, instead of leaning into the impulse, I took a deep breath and went back under water, not surfacing again until the tightness in my stomach loosened.

I swam for a while, never going more than twenty feet away from Kieran and the paddleboard. Each time I let myself glance back, I found him watching me, the lines of his body oddly tense, and when I swam a bit further out, he called me back, his voice strained with traces of concern.

It reminded me a bit of when Amto Amani used to do the same.

If you’re not careful, habibti, that current will steal you away from me far sooner than you’re meant to go.

Which was maybe the biggest reason I liked it out here. I felt closer to her, closer to who I was before I lost her.

Only when I pulled myself back onto the board, soaking it in icy dregs, did Kieran finally relax.

He worked a muscle in his jaw, his focus suddenly on everything but me.

“You okay?” I asked.

He nodded, the dark expression slipping back into his more familiar mask. He’d been guarded last week, but he was so much more so now. He was stiff. Unreachable. “Great.”

I paddled us back to the launch site in silence, my body looser and lighter than it had been before making this trip.

“Thank you,” I said, finally breaking the quiet.

“For what?”

“I think I needed this.” I shot him a look. “I mean, don’t get all cocky or anything, but maybe you’re not the worst guardian angel in the world.”

Something shifted in his eyes, until the gentle teasing that had been slowly making its way back to the surface, slipped back under, like it had been taken down by an invisible anchor.

He watched like a silent sentinel, while I deflated and packed up my board, and exchanged pleasantries with some other people heading out into the water.

For a moment, I’d almost forgotten that Kieran was invisible to them and there’d been several times where I had to swallow my use of “we” back at the last second.

It was only just before we made it back to Frank’s that we spoke again.

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