Page 37 of Elemental Hall: Nautica
“Sera?” His words are slightly slurred.
“Darius, are you okay? What happened?” I help him to sit up, propping him against me while I try to work out the best way to get help from the others.
“I’m… not sure,” he says, looking puzzled. “I was at the stone circle. I took a drink of water. The next thing I know, I’m tied down in a cave. I can’t think. Why can’t I think, Sera?”
I realize the answer almost at once. “Someone must have drugged you. They wanted to make sure you couldn’t use magic to get free.”
“Everything feels… strange.” He lifts a hand, staring at it as if he can’t quite understand something about the way it moves. He looks over at me. “You’re… so beautiful.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s the drugs talking, Darius.”
“No. It’s not. I… I’ve always thought it. Since I first saw you. So beautiful, but I couldn’t say it. Saying it would be bad. Saying it would just make people hate me more.”
“People don’t hate you,” I say.
“Of course they do,” Darius replies. “Luminans hate me because I’m from Umbrae, Umbrans hate me because I ran away. But you don’t hate me, do you?”
“I don’t hate you,” I agree.
He looks at me then, his eyes searching mine for something I can’t quite place. Slowly, he closes the distance between us.
This kiss has nothing to do with getting air to a drowning man. Instead, Darius kisses me as if Iamthe air, as if he needs me more than anything else in the world, as if he might die if he doesn’t. There is so much pent-up passion in that kiss that it takes me aback, and for several seconds all I can do is kiss him back blindly. Our arms wrap around one another, and I desperately, so desperately, want to go further than this.
I don’t, though. I push him back gently.
“Sera,” he begins, a pleading look in his eyes.
“Not like this, Darius,” I tell him. “Not until I can be sure it’s you, and not whatever someone has drugged you with.”
“It’s me,” he assures me. “I want this. I’vewantedthis since I met you. I just never thought… I never thought it could happen.”
It’s still hard to see how it might happen, not when I’m still caught up in my deal with Orion. That’s a thought for another day, though. For now, I help him to stand, half carrying him, moving him back inland.
I spot Nissa first, and I’m glad it’s her, because she is the one best able to help now.
“Someone drugged him,” I say. “Can you do anything, Nissa?”
“The best thing is probably just to give it time to get out of his system,” Nissa replies. “If I don’t know what they used and I start trying to heal him, I could do more harm than good.”
That’s frustrating, knowing that there’s nothing we can do right now to help Darius. What’s more frustrating is that this has happened at all. Darius has become a target because the Umbrans think he’s a traitor and no one else on Nautica cares enough to protect him. They go to the same classes, take on the same challenges, but they look at Darius with hatred every time they see him.
I silently vow that I won’t allow that to happen again. I’ll be there for him, even if it means going up against Umbrae’s emissaries.
Chapter TWENTY
The Umbrans leave the next day, their ship gliding out of the harbor with smooth oar strokes. I stand there, watching it go, mostly because I want to make sure that they are truly gone.
None of our students has gone with them. It seems that no one trusts Mereth’s promises, or maybe she doesn’t want any of the others. Yet, a half dozen Umbran students are left behind, a quiet group of young men and women who wear the black and gray uniforms that Darius had when he arrived, and who look at us as warily as we look at them.
“I can’t believe we’re taking in their students after what they did to Darius,” Cara says, standing beside me.
“I thought you and the others didn’tlikeDarius,” I point out.
“He’s… intense, but it’s obvious now that he isn’t some Umbran spy,” Cara replies. “Maybe we all misjudged him a little.”
More than a little, but I don’t say that. If I don’t push too hard, maybe there’s a chance that Darius will eventually be accepted into our small cluster of friends, rather than being stuck alone.
“I need to head back to the library,” I say. “Do you want to help me prepare for the water flow challenge?”
