To her credit, she showed no signs of fear despite the combustible cylinder planted against her cheekbone. “It’s broken.”
“Won’t know for sure until I test it out.”
She looked me right in the face, daring me with those beautiful silver eyes shining brighter than platinum, and I found myself staring again—maybe it was the ice water flowing through her veins that kept the sun’s heat out. “Do it, then.”
I pulled. The trigger clicked uselessly against metal. My other hand moved.
A whip of air and I was down again, the knife spinning away. “I’m leaving.” She wiped off what sludge she could from herself, looking royally pissed that I’d dared to fire. “Please don’t follow me.”
“Like hell I won’t.” Even as I said the words, I knew them to be bluster. I had no weapon and no backup. For all I knew, the mirage was still hiding nearby, and I didn’t want to stick around for it to say hello again. “You owe me a gun.”
She smiled. “Send me a bill, then.”
Air patterns kicked up the soil, briefly obscuring her from view. When the dust settled, I was face-first in sand again with a mouthful of gravel.
Spitting out pebbles and cursing, I scrambled up, but she was gone.
“Arghh!” I snarled at the sky, frustrated and embarrassed that I’d been bested by a little slip of a girl, goddess be damned. Salla would probably yell at me if she knew I’d let her live.
If she knew, I reminded myself, returning to the whale remains. I was angry, and humiliated—and relieved, when I thought about it. If she’d really wanted me dead, I’d have been just as gutted as that whale.
Besides, I had almost-fresh meat, so it wasn’t like I’d be returning empty-handed. Despite the explosion, this whale alone could last the whole clan many weeks.
I remembered the eyeless mirage, the way it sounded out twins and breach and heal us without ever using a tongue. Its words sounded far too similar to the Sun Goddess’s claims that she could bring things back to life.
Not possible. The world’s too broken to repair. And they don’t get points for wanting to revive something they destroyed in the first place.
I could think of reasons why it knew the Sun Goddess’s name.
But how in the sand-encrusted hells—and this’d be the catalyst for all the bad dreams I’d be having in the coming days, that much I was sure of—had it known mine?
Hell and sandrock.
I retrieved my knife, rubbed off the worst of the blood against the side of the aspidochelone, and, grimly, set to work.
Chapter Three
Odessa, Breaker of Storms
I WAS GOING TO TELL Lan I was in love with her at that dinner.
I still am.
If I tried to make it up to her, would she accept? Would she even forgive me? I’d only ever been courageous that first time we met, when I had looked up from the pages of The Queen and Her Hunter and found her staring at me the way Erik the huntsman might have looked when he’d glimpsed Queen Rahne for the very first time. That had been two and a half months ago, not long after I’d started sneaking out.
That first time had been such a rush. I remembered how my hands shook, how I’d been convinced I was going to be caught. But I always timed it well; easy enough to put the guards to sleep for a couple of minutes or so, as they were already exhausted from overusing their Stonebreaker armor. Easy enough to disguise my hair, to locate the lone city bookshop where I’d occupied myself before Lan had sauntered in and changed my life.
Easy enough to hide my condition; I was never gone from the Spire for long. I actually felt better in the city than back in the tower—time spent with Lan gave me the energy that the other Catseyes’ healing couldn’t—which only stiffened my resolve to keep playing truant.
And then the kiss. Sweet Mother, I’d been dreaming of the kiss every night since it happened; the way the book spines dug into my back, the mortifying noises I made, the look of pure lust on Lan’s face as she stumbled back, unwilling to scandalize Mr. Wallof any further, long enough to ask me out.
Have dinner with me, Ame, she’d whispered, still as formal as a graveyard despite my swollen lips, like she hadn’t been the reason for them. Stay the night.
I was thrilled.
I was frightened.
But Mother just had to decide another Banishing was imminent on the morrow and placed me under heavier guard. I was to have a new Catseye, she told me, one of the best in Aranth—except every Catseye unlucky enough to be assigned to me was the “best in Aranth” until they couldn’t heal me, so I had little faith in her assertions.
I was going to miss Lenida. Catseyes could heal everyone but themselves, and Catseye Lenida had both horrible eyesight and a narcolepsy problem, so it was easy for me to sneak out while she snored for three hours. A new Catseye was going to make playing truant harder.
The new Catseye had wound up being the very date I’d stood up.
It would have been the best-case scenario for my situation, actually, if it wasn’t for all the lying I’d done beforehand.
Was that the real reason you never showed up? she’d asked me in that quiet voice.
I don’t know, Lan. I don’t know if I was going to show up at dinner even if Mother hadn’t posted more guards. Because I couldn’t promise you forever. Because it was only a matter of time before you learned that I lied, and you’d despise me for it. And I was right.
But I wanted to make things right now. Now, after realizing that I could actually lose her—
A wave of exhaustion passed over me. Don’t get too worked up or you’ll get sick again, I told myself, rolling over till I was facedown, groaning into my pillow. My intended apology/confession had wound up strangling itself in my throat instead, at the look of genuine hurt on her face. I had a lot to make up for before she’d trust me again.
I knew it was ridiculous. I had literally battered down seas, dispelled storms. Surely coming clean about my feelings was an easier task.
That’s because you wouldn’t care if the seas rejected your affections, Odessa. You didn’t lie to the storms about not being a goddess of Aranth.
Confessing was not as spontaneous or easy as I thought it would be. The girls in the romances I’d read never seemed to go about planning their love admissions like they were strategizing for a bloody war. More common for them to blurt it out in the heat of the moment, like the words would burst out of them eventually anyway.
I’d been trying to work out a plan to apologize: complete the Banishing, set up a lovely candlelit dinner afterward to make up for the one I didn’t get to, then confess as honestly as I could. Beg her to give me a second chance. Tell her yes, I wanted to spend the night. Eventually. One day. But I needed more time to process everything she meant by that, once I stopped dissolving into a heady mess of dirty thoughts and mentally flailing every time I let my mind slide in that direction.
I mean, she was right next door now! I could sneak over in the middle of the night and—
You know you haven’t the guts, Odessa!
But first things first.
Twenty minutes later, once the dizziness had passed, I sat on the bed, wearing my best defeat-the-Banishing dress—a blue silk affair that flattered my too-skinny figure and flared around my hips, with sleeves that ended at my elbows so I didn’t have to keep pushing them back from my wrists. And there was lace involved—by the Mother, so much lace. I had no idea what Lan’s preferences in clothes were, so when dressing for seduction, I’d opted for the tried and true.