Page 72 of A Magic Deep & Drowning

“You betrayed me again,” she told him, her fingers never stopping in their long trails up and down his chest. “It was Iwho was supposed to offer myself to Thade. I was ready, and I wanted to do this one thing to atone for the sins of my people. But you did not give me the chance to prove myself before you took matters into your own hands.”

She drew in a ragged breath, let it out, a small white puff that evaporated into the air. “But I understand. And I understand that to love means to allow the possibility of being hurt again, and I accept that.”

He could reach into the locket and retrieve his voice right now, explain that he adored her beyond all reason and that he didn’t want to hurt her, would spend his entire life endeavoring to deserve her trust. He would tell her how he bargained his seat on the throne, his very life, to the dire whales so that there would be no more power struggles within the Water Kingdom. But he had sworn to let her speak, and so he let his hand fall away from the locket and instead cup her own cold hand.

“There is something else... something that took me too long to understand. It was not until I saw the Water Kingdom, the destruction that my kind wrought on it that I truly understood. You should have hated me, or at the very least, not tried to help me. I represented everything terrible that happened to your world. Yet you have been generous in your love, never judging me for my people’s sins. I owe you an apology, and am sorrier than you can know for the part I played, knowingly or not.” Her fingers stopped their idle exploration, and she placed her hand over his heart. “I think that in your deceptions there is a need to protect, a noble instinct. But if you are to be in my life and my heart, I need to know that there are no secrets, no lies between us. Can you do that?”

His nod was quick. Her shoulders sagged a little, the cloud lifting from her brow. She gave a nod of her own.

“I believe you, and I trust you. But most of all, I love you, Maurits. I only wish I knew your true name.”

Her words carried to his ear on a blissful whisper. He closed his eyes, letting them wash through him. It was all he had longed to hear for so long. He could have his voice back, shift his form back, knowing that she loved him completely and unconditionally.

He braced himself for his mother’s curse to slide away and leave him the man he had always wished to be. But the moments passed and there was no great change.

Clara was propped on her elbow, watching him. “Maurits?”

Of course his mother would not have made it so simple. Of course there was some unmet stipulation. He smiled, and found that he did not care. His happiness was that she was here, that he had her love. Taking her face in his hands, he pressed a kiss from lips that could speak no words, yet told her everything.

Chapter Forty-Four

Under Clara’s careful gaze, Maurits pierced the bubble and released his voice from its cage. He tipped his head back and let the flickering light find its way to his mouth. His throat warmed, like the madeira that he had drunk once on land, a tonic rich and smooth that blazed a comforting trail through him.

Once he felt his voice settle back in his throat, he measured is first words carefully; he did not want to squander the impact of his long-awaited declaration. “I love you, Clara. I always felt that I was something in between, not quite a man, not quite a creature of the water. But now I am simply a thing that lives to worship you. Will you let me worship you, Clara?”

A tear slipped from her eye as she cupped his jaw, but she nodded.

There was so much he wanted to say; he was desperate that she know the depths of his true feelings. How could she begin to understand how perfect she was? The way that she was at once a completely unique creature, yet seemed to have been created solely for him? “I live in anticipation of your next smile, the way a dove awaits the break of dawn. If you leave, my life will be one long stretch of darkness. There is nothing on this earth or beneath these waves that could make me forget that you are the reason my soul is alive.”

Clara stared at him for a moment that seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon and back. Above them, terns shrieked and bickered. Still she did not speak.

He had misjudged her feelings, terribly. She loved him, but not in the all-consuming, soul-afire way that he loved her.

Her tongue darted out over her lips and he told himself that he would not reduce himself to begging if she got up and walked away from him.

But she did not get up or walk away. “How long have you had those beautiful words inside of you?” she asked him.

He blew out a long breath, desperately relieved. “Too long,” he told her, his grin spreading.

She returned the smile, leaned into him and imparted another kiss.

He was overtaken by a desperate need to be closer to her, to give her a piece of himself. So he murmured the only other thing he had to give her against her neck.

She pulled back. “What?”

“You asked my true name before. That’s it.”

Her puzzled expression shifted into one of pure joy, so beautiful that he wished he could bottle it and keep it forever. She tried the unfamiliar vowels on her tongue, failing to even closely replicate it. It was terribly endearing, and his heart swelled at her effort. “It’s beautiful.”

“It will always be as much a part of me as my very bones, but I prefer to look forward. Besides, I want to hear you say my name often, and with no offense intended...”

“Maurits, then,” she said with a laugh.

“Maurits,” he agreed.

Night had settled over the beach, the twinkling lights and chimney smoke of Amsterdam just far enough to make it feel as if they were in their own world on the beach. But the scales on his tail were beginning to chafe, his body reminding him that he was not a man, and that he needed to return to thewater soon. Clara had a life up here now, one that he did not know how he fit into, despite her declaration.

“I must go, my love. But I will return in the morning by the canal.”

---