Page 23 of Depths
My fingers clutched at him as if he was currently in danger of falling. Or perhaps because I was. I was utterly in danger of falling in love with him all over again.
And that would be treacherous.
I had bound myself to this tournament. To this kingdom. Sahar had warned me that once the tournament began, there was no ending it. Not until I wore rings around my neck, one thick golden ring for each husband I took.
“Of course I looked for you, Via. How could you even ask that?” Mateo’s tone held a bit of hurt that I wanted to soothe away. He turned over the arm I held so that his hand clasped my elbow as I held onto his forearm. He didn’t flinch at the feel of my scales. When he stared into my eyes, it felt like he sawme. Not the princess or the sea sprite. Not the queen. Me.
I edged closer, my eyes tracing his face, and the urge to kiss him nearly overwhelmed me.
But I couldn’t.
My eyes darted to the side. Felipe and the other guard were very pointedly not watching us. But the reminder that we were not alone was all that I needed to release his arm and take a step back. That step back created a chasm between us, and he knew it, if his wince was anything to go by.
My chest locked up tight, like a box, and it felt as though someone was trying to fit the wrong-sized key into it. Wrong. It felt so wrong to have taken that step back. Though my eyes apologized to him, my feet didn’t move closer. The gap remained.
Sard it all.
“Why the mountains?” I tried to keep my tone light and curious when all I wanted was to throw my arms around him and clutch him to me.
“Dragons hid in the caves near Macedon after the last Fire War. There are so many cliffs and crags that are hard to get to … It was impossible for us to rout them out entirely. I thought the beast who’d taken you might’ve gone there. Ithoughtit was a good bet. Of course, turns out I miscalculated horribly.” He gave a laugh that was bitter and full of sorrow.
Pity smacked my cheeks and turned them pink.My poor Mateo.
He’d been on a fruitless quest to save the princess. All because his hunch had been good … but wrong. I briefly wondered how many people died without reaching their goals, perished without answers, simply because their intuition had taken them in the wrong direction. Picturing Mateo climbing the massive mountains of Macedon with cold wind ripping at his skin, the howl of the canyon beneath him, where he was one slip from his doom …
I had to shake that thought away because it wasn’t productive and made my heart falter. Instead, I glanced up through my lashes and asked, “How’d you hear what had become of me?”
He gave me a half grin, one that let me know even before he spoke that I was not going to love his answer. “Declan figured out where I was. Your sister’s husbands found me.”
Declan’s smug expression from earlier suddenly made sense.
But Mateo’s presence made me feel like a brass scale, weighing two things, one against another, favor tipping in his direction when it shouldn’t. It couldn’t. I needed to sit down. A myriad of thoughts raced around my head like a school of fish. This was why Declan had come. This was why he had urged me to cancel the tournament. Why hadn’t he simply said?
Unless he’d been uncertain Mateo was alive. Or uncertain he’d come. Had he been waiting to find out?
I pulled out a chair and sank into it, my mind a sloshy mess. I had cursed my brother-in-law for interfering. I’d been stubborn and determined. I’d been wrong.
But I’d chosen my path and declared this tournament because my heart was mere weeks from collapse. That dragon had delivered me to my birth mother, and I’d learned my heritage. But I’d also learned about sea sprite magic. When Bloss had come to rescue me, I’d learned my chest housed not only my own heart, but the heart of a monster. Because in order for a sea sprite to access magic, they had to sacrifice their humanity, their heart. They had to physically remove it from their own body and place it in someone else’s for safekeeping. But then, their host had to stay near, had to remain true, couldn’t put that heart at risk. My own mother had chosen to make me her marionette, thinking her daughter would do as told, that her own flesh and blood would never betray her. But she hadn’t planned on her enemies kidnapping me and hiding me on land, raising me as their own, denying her powers. She hadn’t planned on my own loyalties switching. When Bloss told me that Mayi’s heart was in my chest, I’d taken a dagger to myself to dig the rotted thing out. But I’d damaged my own heart in the process, foolishly counting on others’ magic to heal me. Now, Bloss’s undead castle mage, Lizza, had given me a prognosis of merely a month to live unless I handed off this damaged heart of mine, placed it in someone else’s body, and embraced my sea sprite heritage so that I could access my power. Then, maybe, possibly, Lizza’s experimental spells could keep me from becoming a monster just like my birth mother had been when I accessed that power. I needed to find a puppet of my own.
Mateo pulled out a chair with a peacock-patterned cushion and sat down beside me, turning so our knees nearly touched, and I studied the planes of his face, memories flooding me. Our first kiss had been spontaneous and full of laughter. We’d snuck out of Bloss’s ballroom with two glasses of wine, both of us caught in that pleasant floating sensation that lay somewhere between tipsy and drunk. Our hands had linked, and my belly had felt tickles, as though a hundred feathers whirled within it, teasing my insides. Our eyes had burned like twin fires, flames stoked by our mutual gaze. He’d pressed me into the wall of the castle, and my heart had pounded so loudly it thrummed in my ears as he’d leaned forward, his lips hovering just over mine until I’d shoved up onto my tiptoes and closed the gap between us, pressing our lips and souls into a precious kiss.
Mateo’s eyes heated, as if he could sense my memories. Perhaps he could.
I knew, if I asked him, Mateo would gladly take on my injured heart, wear it inside his chest like a badge of honor. But I also knew that asking him would be a mistake.
I broke our gaze, and my head sank into my hands. I had learned many things from my birth mother, most of them terrible. I’d learned that the darkness that a sea sprite was capable of was infinite. But one of the things I did believe from her life’s tale was that a heart wasn’t a trifle to give away. A sea sprite couldn’t give her heart to someone who couldn’t protect it.
My Mateo, sweet as he was, was merely human. A few months ago, when I thought thatIwas merely human, we had been a perfect match. But now, I was something else. And I needed a host for this weak heart, a host with the magic to protect it, someone I had no compunction about controlling. I couldn’t do that to the man in front of me. I’d never be able to force Mateo to do anything.
Which meant I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t run from this tournament or this kingdom or the doom I’d signed up for. I couldn’t steal away, elope, and havehim.
My heart gave a plaintive thump of longing.
It disagreed with my logic. But then it faltered, and all my reasoning simply gained more weight.
I should have sent him away. I knew it at that instant.
But I was weak.
