The Kiss That Saved Me (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 2) (34 page)

I’m most definitely turning out to be a giant masochist. I suppose Titus’ love of causing me pain has rubbed off and now I’m keeping up the habit, for old times’ sake.
 

This is, as I now realise, an extremely bad idea and honestly all my fault. She has every right to be chronically pissed. I had broken almost every secret handshake and promise spoken in twin language that I possibly could have. I had shattered the oldest and most sacred bond in my life with neither spectacular grace, nor reason. I sigh, I am so bad at appearing humble. Centuries of feeling the power of the deep will do that to a person.
 

Especially one as narcissistic as I.
 

I don’t want to do this, but something inside me won’t let it drop. I’m afraid, for the first time in a long time, of her rejecting me. Of things never being repaired from how completely they had been decimated. I had risked it all for a relationship that was built on lies. I had allowed myself to be used for my power, and after watching Orion skulk around the Alcazar Oceania, I know that I can’t let my soulmate get away so easily.
 

Things are screwed up, but nothing is too screwed up when it comes to family. Or so I’m hoping.
 

“I can hear you out there you know. You sigh when you’re anxious.” I hear Star’s dullest tones move toward me and I smile.

“How do you know that?” I move around the doorway into her chambers, the room has pink crystalline flooring, so pink in fact it reminds me of vomiting as a child after eating too much salmon. I pull a face, before realising she can see me, something which after so much time in the shadow I’m not used to. I smile, trying to seem breezy
.
 

Did I actually just say breezy?
I guess I really am losing my edge.

“I know that because it’s what I do when I’m anxious,” she’s sat at a vanity, near a stained glass window, the pattern on which is a wilting orchid. A metaphor of my life. It could have been so beautiful, but I lost my sunlight and died a magnificent death, plunging into rot and dirt instead.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to disturb...”
 

“I think you hanging in my doorway is the least of our worries with regard to privacy, wouldn’t you? I mean you waltz through my head on a daily… no, make that hourly, basis.” She’s disdain filled. I move my charred scales left and right, swaying into the room. I sit down on the edge of her four-poster bed; the pink silk sheets look like liquid rose-petals. Beautiful and sweet, just like she once was. Before I destroyed her. “Make yourself at home, why don’t you?” she snaps. I flinch, not having let words touch me in a long time, this is going to be harder than I thought.

“Look, I know I don’t deserve your kindness. I don’t want it even. I just want to apologise.” Her head snaps around and a look of shock rests between her perfectly arched brows. She looks at me, at the colour returning to my scales, the blue of my eyes that match hers. I can feel the power of the dark fading. It’s hard. But I know she can see it. She moves to open her lips, to retort in that bitchy way she uses as a defence.

“You… want to apologise?” she whispers, her eyes suddenly brimming. Whoa.

“Yes. I’ve been lost for a long time, I got poisoned by a snake. By Titus, but I shouldn’t have let it happen that way. You’re always going to be the most important person in my life. More important than any man,” the words I speak cut me deeply. I remember now why I didn’t want to do this. Vulnerability isn’t really my style. Starlet places the conch comb down on her vanity, crosses her hands in her lap, and looks attentive, unable to resist the pull we feel to each other.

“You’re doing this now?”

“Yes. Why? Is it a bad time? I can come back,” I find myself totally disarmed. I didn’t think my sense of timing would be the issue, I thought it had been that… you know, I had let her be captured and tortured…

“Our father died… he wanted nothing more than to see us together again Azure… and all you can do is this… it’s too late,” she lets a tear fall and crystallise, and I wonder if it’s for what we’ve lost in each other, or what we’ve lost in our father.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry about father. I am. I just… life is too short, even when you’re immortal.” She nods at me and I shift uncomfortably on top of her mattress. “I know things will never be like they once were. I don’t want things to be the same, I want them to be better.”
 

“How can things possibly be better, Azure? They’re falling apart! Orion can’t cope on his own, father’s gone, Shaniqua left. Saturnus is becoming angrier by the second about not being Crowned Ruler. To top it all, now the girl who I thought could save us all is gallivanting off somewhere with a tentacled mess of a man, claiming she ‘doesn’t need anyone’. Things are about one step away from imploding!” She pants, slightly out of breath from her rage and then something terrifying happens. She begins to sob, uncontrollably and in an unstoppable torrent of emotion that has been mounting since the day I left. She breaks. I don’t know what to do, but the only thing I can think of is to move from the mattress, dropping to the bend in my tailfin and reaching for her hands.
 

“Oh Star, please don’t cry.” The darkness within me is rising, condemning me for my pity out of habit. I remain strong, looking into the eyes of my sister, battling it back, for her.

“You left me…” She snots, Goddess, she isn’t attractive when she cries.
 

“I know… Shhh,” I coo her, and place my hand into her silky blonde locks, like time hasn’t passed, wiping her tears away. I am the eldest, if only by minutes, and I had always taken care of her. I had died first too, and I wonder in this moment how I ever chose the dark over my twin. She used to be so innocent, the girl who had been trapped in a convent for her visions, who had never been with a man. A girl for whom there was only me. Time has hardened her, as it has me, but underneath she is still the girl who cried with me, who held my hand at my brother’s funeral, who gave me a reason to keep going. I move up off the sand that is sweeping across the crystalline floor, moving my arms around her neck. She puts her arms into my dark hair and begins to weep diamonds down my spine.

“He’s really gone… isn’t he?” My sister gasps, unable to catch her breath. I feel the truth of her words hit me, and in an unexpected moment of weakness I feel the loss take the sustenance from my lungs for the first time. I had been kidding myself if I thought I could outswim the tsunami of my grief at this destruction of familial bonds. I know that now. Together, my sister and I sink to the floor, sobbing, and holding onto each other for dear life after all this time.

ORION

There isn’t anything left to do but this. I need to get rid of all evidence she was ever here, ever filling the hole I had pushed her into, deforming her into something unrecognisable.
 

It’s a tiny circle, a beautiful shackle that I can’t let go of; I clench it in my palm, scared to set it free. I know I need to do this; I know I need to cleave myself.
 

I look out across the Occulta Mirum, the mer that move through the streets, The Knights on the outskirts, scouting weaker, lower level demons that have been slowly making a re-appearance. Something is coming, something powerful and it isn’t good. I see Saturnus moving in the streets below.
Rat bastard.
He can have the stupid crown. I don’t and have never wanted this.

Now, as I stare down at the streets, rather than seeing happy mer, chatting, unaware as to the encroaching danger that seems to be building every day, I see their lives in the palms of my hands. My decisions are the ones keeping them safe or killing them.
 

I had used Callie as a distraction and ruined my relationship in the process by putting too much onto her, because I can’t handle it. I hate how she always flees from me. I need someone far stronger than that to help me rule. I hadn’t listened when my father had wanted to teach me, I had always run too. I hadn’t even wanted to stay in the Alcazar Oceania for fear of him trapping me under the responsibility. I wonder now how I could have been so stupid. Had I honestly thought he was going to live for eternity?
 

I suppose I couldn’t imagine a world without my father in it. So the answer to that was yes. I move backward slightly and sit in the throne. The seat is too wide for me, far too wide. I don’t fill it like I should. I think back to my father now, his silver hair, and gold eyes, the wisest of any man I had ever known. I should have listened to his advice, but there’s no bringing him back now. He is dead and I am in a giant royal mess.
 

The crown sits on my head firmly, a burden I can’t seem to get rid of. The ring still in my palm, I look down at it. I want to hate Callie for what she’s put me through. I think of her, lying, splayed out with his hands crawling over her like parasites.
NO.
I mentally slap myself. I am not going there, and that’s that.
 

I rise again from the throne, feeling my fin trail along the stained glass of the floor slightly, reluctant to take this next step. I release the ring, letting it float slightly in front of me before I push it away from me using the air in the surrounding water. I push it at such speed, never wanting to see it again. A silly human ritual. For a silly, too human girl. I watch it reach the panoramic glass window and shove it open with a larger blast of air, letting the ring and all my feelings wash out with the current. I stand and watch it zoom, exerting my will over this mini tide using the air within each water molecule to propel the memory of my love for her as far away as possible. The ring is a tiny, blue glimmer, like a star in the distance when I finally let the current drop. The ring is lost out there in the deep. Another piece of meaningless, worthless junk, sweeping across the ocean floor along with the ashes of a man whose place could never be filled. Let alone by me. The son who didn’t listen.

 
I hear something move behind me and turn.

“Starlet, you can come out, I know you’re there,” I move, keeping my palm clenched. She comes out from behind the door of the throne room where I am suspended, motionless, unable to move forward. She isn’t alone though, and much to my surprise, Azure follows her into the space of stained glass, stained with bad memories and bloodshed surrounding the throne.

“You’re…” I start and they both give a slight smile, but Azure’s eyes flash a warning.

“Together,” Starlet finishes, turning to Azure. “She was worried about you… I mean, we both are. Orion… are you okay?” Starlet has softened, the presence of her soulmate, after all these years of absence, healing her broken heart. My spirits rise and then crash again, looking at their happy faces, a reminder of a kind of happiness I had only grasped for mere moments and will never share again. The kind you only get from finding the other half of yourself.

“She’s gone. It’s really over.”

“No, it isn’t.” Starlet looks over her shoulder.

“You should have seen her Star, her hair, her eyes. That’s not my girl. That’s not my Callie. It’s…”

“Darkness,” Azure says with a soft simplicity, moving around Starlet’s body, coming into full view. Her hair is still black, but her eyes are back to the familial ice blue.

“Yes…” It comes out, a breathless exhalation at the shock of looking directly into those ice blue eyes for the first time in years. Azure looks different, a slight improvement on how she appeared at the coronation. I can’t help but smile. “You look different,” I say, trying to be sweet.

“I got a rather large smack to the head. Put things in perspective for me,” she quips and I rub the back of my neck nervously.

“Sorry about that,” I apologise and she shrugs, moving toward me, head bowed.

“After everything I’ve done, I should be the one apologising. But I don’t really relish the idea of getting all weepy,” she breathes in deeply before continuing. “Instead, I’ll say this… Callie and I, we may not be the same case, but we were infected by the same source. Titus. She can come back from this, Orion, she has to want it, but it’s possible.”

“How do you know that?” I ask her, imploring some magical solution.

“Because if it’s not, then I’m screwed.” Starlet snorts and Azure laughs, it’s a beautiful sound, like a lost relic that’s been missing for centuries, only to reappear, stunning you that you’d not noticed it was gone.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. It’s not like I’m cured. I could turn back into super-bitch on the turn of a dime and if I do, please, just let me be. Tempting the beast only makes it worse,” Azure is pleading with me and I nod.

“Okay. If you want a room…” I offer, gesturing to the surrounding structure. She shakes her head.

“It’s best if I stay nomadic for now. I get smash happy when the darkness…”
 

“Say no more,” I hold up a palm and she nods. Starlet grasps her hand and they share a look, like one they had shared when they were children, the night I left for war.

“Orion… we need a plan. This whole Psiren thing is getting out of hand,” Starlet reminds me. It’s something I’m constantly aware of, prickling my irritation levels. I quell them.