“It’s more like whom—they have my brother.”
My head jerks up to him with plummeted brows. “I thought you said he was dead.”
“I thought he was.”
“Then how do you know otherwise?”
“I’ve been searching for him.”
“Tobias,” I say softly. “Why haven’t you told me?”
He gives me a feeble grin. “Didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
He means his hopes up.
Tobias’s younger brother, Lorne, disappeared when they were children and, for about five years now, Tobias had exhausted all reports of him. No leads of a young man with a scar in the middle of his forehead that he followed were successful, and it only grew his ongoing irritation. To the point where Tobias suddenly stopped searching because each time cracked his heart more and more.
“Do you know if he’ll be there when you arrive?” He shakes his head, averting his gaze from mine. I turn over the dagger in my hand. “Take this, I want you to be safe.”
Tobias looks up to the blue sky. We don’t have ceilings in the castle because it never rains, and I like the sun on my skin. “I have swords, little one.”
I gesture toward it with my head. “You humans can never have too many weapons. Take it.”
He reaches out his palm, and I gently place it there. “Thank you.” I bow my head in acknowledgment. “I’ll miss you.”
I glance back up at him but don’t say a thing.
“I miss us when we were children. Time has changed a lot of things.”
“We grew up.”
“But did we have to grow apart?”
No, we didn’t. I’ve just been pushing him away because I didn’t want Father to find him here. It wasn’t safe, he’d kill Tobias, and there wouldn’t be anything I could do about it.
My sisters, I could stop—the King of Lacuna, also son of Poseidon, there wouldn’t be enough words for him to listen to make him decide to keep a human alive that’s trespassed onto our island.
Everything got worse when I submitted myself to Merindah, my father became more on his guard, more weary of the sea. He has my sisters checking my every move, and the moment one of them leaks that a Viking is here—he’ll die too.
His fingertips graze my cheek, and my body relaxes at his touch. “I think about you all the time.”
“I don’t sing,” I retort. “You’re not sired to me in any way.”
“No, you just looked at me that night with challenge and fear in your eyes, and I knew that I’d never be the same after meeting you.” I glance at the small scar on his left cheekbone from my knife that fateful night.
I owe Tobias everything, and in return, I’m saving his future by attempting to keep him away from this island—it hasn’t been working very well.
I just never have the heart to make good on my word to hurt him the next time he comes to visit. It could also be because I’m selfish.
I enjoy the outside world coming into mine or the vexatious feeling of how much I care about him. Tobias was that breath of fresh air, the person who never made me feel like there wasn’t a limit to what I could do.
“You should go.” The longer he stays, the more risk.
“But you don’t want me to. I can see it in your green eyes.”
“I’m not a map, Tobias,” I counter.
He grins. “No, you’re just the X on mine.”
Fixing him with an exasperated look, I never wanted him to be more than the boy on the boat. Never thought I’d see him again, until I did back at Coral Cove. He waited for me there, he said, for two weeks.
I should’ve let him starve to death.
But apparently I have a conscience, and he did the unthinkable going against his shipmates.
Which doesn’t explain half of the things that’s wrong with Tobias.
Things that can’t be overlooked, but somehow I do because he’s more than the boy who rescued us.
He’s the man who may have stolen some of my heart.
“Thank you again,” Tobias finally says when my silence has stretched to more than he can bear. “I’ll bring you more things when I—”
“You might not want to come back,” I cut in, not wanting to entertain the idea or excitement. “My sisters are getting leerier. You don’t belong here.”
Tobias smiles. “Do any of us belong?”
“Answering my question with another question won’t get lost on me, Captain.”
He lifts his shoulder with a half-shrug. “I tend to live on the dangerous side of life, Princess. No offense, but your sisters don’t scare me. I might be a fool, but I’d travel around the sea twice to see your eyes light up at something small like a blade.”
I fix my jaw, trying my best to look annoyed. “You are a fool like Atarah says you are.”
He chuckles, tucking his chin into his chest. “Maybe I am. Regardless though—” He looks up at me. “I’ll take my chances.”
“You don’t understand. There is a—”
“There isn’t anything you’re going to say to make me change my mind,” Tobias alludes with a stern tone to his voice. “You’re the only thing that makes my life—see you in a few days with some news.” He turns on his heels, evading my effort to keep him free from harm.
And I’m not the only one in denial about what this is. How our friendship is a dangerous game we’re playing and neither of us wants to fully stop.
“Tobias, please. You don’t—”
“Why do you keep pushing me away?” he snaps, twirling back to face me. “What did I do?”
I open my mouth like old times. That’s how they feel when we’re together. When we were younger and wilder, more free and reckless.
I wish a thousand moons I could go back because I’d be able to talk to him out loud instead of in his head. For him to hear my anger and worry when I tell him that this is for the best.
Because it is, and I can’t bear the thought of losing him. It’d be like losing my right arm, loss of function and ease.
“I’ve loved you forever,” he censures. “But you weren’t an option for me. I can’t live in the sea and you couldn’t live out of it. And now you’re walking on an island, with legs and lungs that can withstand the air, but you don’t want anything to do with me.” He inches closer. “We used to dream about it, remember? You told me that we’d hold hands on the sand and let the waves sink our toes into the beach. You said you’d—” He stops, locking his jaw while his nostrils flare.
Tobias is an easygoing man, and it breaks my spirit to see him upset.
And to know that I’m the cause for it.
“It’s not that I don’t want you here,” I mutter. “It’s how you’re here.”
“I told you, Davina, I don’t know how I can get by the veil. There’s something wrong with it.”
“There can’t be anything wrong with it because you and—”
“Me and what?”
I straighten my spine. “No human has been able to get through it before nor can they see it.”
“I only know about it because of you. You showed me.”