Chapter Twenty
Neve
They climbed down the outcroppings of stone lining the cliffs to the short strip of beach, rocky sand that bit into the soles of Neve’s feet once she’d worked them free of her caked-up boots. She picked her way gingerly to the tide line, though there was no tide here to speak of. No waves, either—the Endless Sea was glass-like beneath the gray sky, flat and rippleless as a pool of spilled ink.
She glanced at Solmir lingering behind her. Shirtless and mud-caked and still, somehow, able to look arrogantly regal, his posture perfect and his chin held imperiously. The impression she’d had before, of him being built like a knife, was only intensified by the lack of a shirt—broad shoulders tapered to slim hips, all of it pale and muscled without being bulky.
Her cheeks flushed; Neve turned back to the strange ocean. “I can touch it, right? It won’t make me go mad or start sprouting thorns?”
“You looked good with thorns, as I recall.”
The flush in her cheeks flared hotter.
“But no, touching the water won’t cause any undue effects.” She heard him approaching, crunching over the rocky sand. When he reached her side, he dipped a hand into the water and rubbed it over his face, attempting to scrub mud out of his short beard. “You’ll remain un-monstrous.”
“Maybe I should be monstrous,” she muttered, the words coming out before she could reel them back in. She still felt raw inside from where the Oracle had cut through to her soul, unraveled all her truths; they lived closer to the surface now and were harder to deny. Vulnerability, here in a place where she couldn’t afford to be vulnerable.
With a person she couldn’t afford to be vulnerable with.
A pause. Solmir turned to her, dark brows drawn together. His irises were still blue, she noticed, but there was a thin ring of black around their edges, and the veins at his throat seemed darker than before. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged, stepping out into the shallows. The water was strangely warm, closing over her feet, her ankles, dragging at her torn nightgown’s hem. “After everything I’ve done,” she said, speaking to her wavering reflection instead of him, “it should mark me somehow, shouldn’t it? Everything you did marked you.”
She could’ve said it like it was a barb, one of the sharp jabs they’d grown used to throwing at each other. But it didn’t come out that way. It was just a truth, offered with no judgment.
He rubbed at the scars on his forehead, sighed. When he spoke, he didn’t look at her, staring with narrowed eyes out at the empty horizon. “I know you’re not going to believe me—you didn’t before—and I know me saying it doesn’t mean much, anyway. But you are good, Neve.”
Her eyes pressed closed. He was wrong. Both in the statement and in his assumption that it wouldn’t mean anything coming from him.
“Everything you did was because you loved your sister.” His voice was prayer-low. “You love without restraint, without settling. And that’s a good thing. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.”
It faded into the air, floated across the water. It hummed between her ears.
You are good.
The air hung close and expectant, chill against her skin. She could feel his eyes on her like a touch, and she turned to meet his gaze.
Solmir’s arms were crossed across his bare chest, his jaw rigid beneath his beard. An expression as hard and unforgiving as any she’d seen on him before, but something in his eyes had changed—softer, less guarded. “You are far better than me,” he murmured. “I know that isn’t a revelation. But it’s why I need you for this. Why it has to be you.”
Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
He swallowed. Then he shook his head, turning back toward the horizon. “Nothing new,” he said, and his voice was different, back to his normal just-shy-of-arrogant tone. “You know. Prophecies, First and Second Daughters, doorways. All that shit.”
“Ah, yes. Perfectly normal shit.” The air felt diffuse again, the charge of the atmosphere settled. Neve was left somewhere between disappointed and relieved.
If Solmir felt the same way, he didn’t show it. He dipped his hand into the water again, ostensibly to wipe at his face, but he splashed some purposefully her way as he turned back toward the beach. “Wash up. I won’t look.”
Her cheeks burned anyway as she tugged off his coat, pulled her nightgown over her head. She grabbed a handful of sand and used it to scrub her clothing, one piece after the other, doing her best to loosen the packed mud ground into the weave. When the gown and coat were as clean as they were going to get, she ducked her head under, floating for a moment in the completely still waters as if she were suspended in a womb.