Page 22 of Depths
His light blue eyes studied me for a moment before he answered, “Set a goal and work toward it.”
For some reason, those words made me breathless. They shouldn’t have. For all intents and purposes, he’d simply called me a goal. But it was the way that he said it, the rough scratch underlying his words, the fierce burn of his gaze scorching my stomach. The shy, reserved varnish had been scratched for a moment, and the determined predator beneath revealed … Somehow that revelation made my heart skip.
Of course, my heart skipping turned into my heart stumbling, and I had to force a smile as my idiotic organ fumbled inside my chest.
The door swung open just then, and relief swept over me; Sahar had come to take these men away, and no one would witness my struggle to breathe.
But Sahar didn’t step through the doorway.
The one man who could ruin all my plans did.
6
A clouded mind cannot see the sun. Those with clouded minds end up burnt.
—Sultan Raj of Cheryn
* * *
Shock mademe forget to breathe as I stared across the room at one person I never thought I’d see again, the one person who could make me weak enough to change my course, to leave everything else behind.
Mateo.
Was I dreaming? The brown eyes that blinked back at me in shock as he took in my new sea sprite appearance told me I wasn’t. I thrust my fins behind me, suddenly self-conscious, as nervous and uncertain as the first time I’d seen him.
Shite. I’d forgotten there were other people in the room. Witnesses.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” I cleared my throat as I stood, struggling not only with my shite heart but with the weak knees that were a side effect of seeinghim.
Immediately, Stavros and Humberto stood and bowed, exiting the room with curious glances in Mateo’s direction, which were to be expected because he’d arrived fully dressed as a sky breather. But neither man said a word, and I hoped their more reticent natures would assume that Mateo was merely a messenger from one of the “dirt-kicker” kingdoms, as Sahar told me people called them. I plastered a court-appropriate smile onto my face and waited until the doors had closed behind them before I turned back to Mateo and truly took the time to study him.
He was tall as he’d always been. Not slight but not quite muscular either, he had a scholar’s build. He had on black pants that clung to his lean legs and black leather boots swallowed his calves. His white shirt was clean but clearly patched near the collar, which was unusual, because ambassadors were typically dressed by their queens in order to properly represent the status of their country. Macedon wasn’t wealthy, but it was a proud nation.
Mateo’s eyes scorched a trail down the scales that edged the outside of my arms, then down my calves below the hem of my knee-length skirt. I bit my lip when his eyes went to the betta fish fins erupting from my back, or wings, as I thought of them. Was I too changed? Too freakish? I hadn’t inherited Mayi’s black eyes; my own were violet, but I didn’t look at all like the girl he’d once loved.
He, however, still tugged at every heartstring I had as his dark hair wavered, curls loosely swaying when he smiled brightly enough for his dimples to show. His pale skin was a sudden change from the striped people and colored tails that constantly surrounded me in the sea kingdom. A sudden but also very familiar change that set off a nostalgic ache in me.
At first, I thought he looked exactly as I remembered, but as I stared, I noticed little things that weren’t there before. His jaw was lined with a light smattering of stubble. His hair was a bit unkempt, as though he’d gone too long without a trim. Back when I knew him in Evaness as the Macedonian ambassador’s son, he was clean-cut and his grin was as bright as the morning sun. Had that really only been months ago? Everything before the dragon seemed a lifetime away.
Mateo smiled at me now, but there was a desperate edge of grief lining his expression. When he stepped closer, I was overwhelmed by feelings of relief, urgency, and regret so thick that it lined the inside of my ribs like a bad meal.
Oh, what could have been.
“Via?” he asked softly, using the nickname he gave me.
I nearly laughed—no, I nearly cried—to hear that name again, a name he had only used in secret when we were alone together. A few months might as well have been a decade for all that I had changed over that span.
“I sent a letter asking after you,” I said. It was a poor greeting, but I was desperate to know why it hadn’t been answered. I had sat at this very table and written a letter, sealed it with wax and love on one of the first days after I’d taken over the sea kingdom, hopeful that Mateo would be sent as an ambassador to me and that he might help me with all my issues, from this shite heart to matters of state. I’d still retained a bit of my girlish naivete, wishing my true love would swoop in and help me with all my problems. But the lack of response from Macedon had convinced me that the other country did not take my requests seriously. That, or Mateo had refused the call.
And what could I have done about either? Nothing but make alternative arrangements. Move forward as I cried into my pillow each night.
“I was up in the mountains of Macedon.” Mateo cleared his throat, and his eyes scraped the floor. “I was still searching. For you and the dragon. I hadn’t heard that you’d been … found.”
I couldn’t help myself. I moved slowly around the side of the table until I was in front of him, so close that the water between us grew warm with our shared heat. His eyes finally met mine, and they were devastated.
Oh my heart.
My fingers landed on his arm, gripping it tightly. “You were still searching for me?” My emotions were caught somewhere between elation and confusion. He’d gone up into the mountains of Macedon? The ice-coated cliffs? The horridly narrow paths etched into the rock, where a single wrong step could send a man plunging into the afterlife?
