The Kiss That Saved Me (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 2) (39 page)

ORION

Starlet’s eyes cloud over, turning a brilliant bone white. She’s having a vision and as her mouth contorts in horror, I know it can’t be good.

“Starlet! What do you see?” I thrum my musculature backward, propelling the water away from me and moving toward her. I place my hands on her shoulders gently, shaking her ever so slightly.

“They’re coming… the city… the city is tumbling… cracking.
 
Glass, everywhere,” she’s mumbling but I get the general notion of what she’s saying.

“When? When are they coming? How much time do we have left?” I shake her again, harder this time. Her eyes clear, turning that familial glacial blue, and I watch her lips form the word I most dread in a single, terrible exhalation.

“Now,” she looks like she might lose her tread in the water, tumble backwards.

“We need to summon The Knights of Atargatis! Someone get me Cole, Ghazi… Everyone! Someone find Saturnus!!!” I’m babbling, freaking out, as Callie would say. They’re coming. A swarm of darkness larger than anything we can hold back. We’re out of time. Luckily for us, I suddenly remember, we don’t have to hold them back at all.

“Where the hell is Saturnus!!!” I bark. Nobody is here… I’m suspended in the throne room barking orders and there’s nobody to hear them. I have asked the guards to back off, leaving me with my misery.
 

How stupid am I? I’m wasting valuable time.
 

Panic stricken, I speed through the water shoving the double doors of the throne room forward with a blast of air exuding from my outstretched palms.

“Starlet! Come on!” I bark behind me.
 

I hear her gasp slightly, as though I’d broken a sort of daydream with my abruptness, but I don’t have time to check if she’s okay, I have to make sure everyone else will be first. I move into the column that runs through the centre of the palace, plunging as fast as my tail will allow, pushing through the water with a wilfulness I haven’t found for a long time.

Cole is floating, diligent, at the double doors as usual, he sees me and his mouth forms a grim line.
 

“Cole! The Psiren’s, they’re coming! We need to get everyone ready. Summon the Knights. Ready the weapons!” I bark at him. He nods, looking concerned. He has every right to be. I know we have the glimmer protecting us, but I’m not taking any risks. Not after last time.

“Sir, yes sir. I’ll get Ghazi.”

“Good. I’m going to find Saturnus. Do you know where he is?” I speak quickly, unable to find patience, my heart beating heavily within my chest. I’m a fine example of a ruler. I should be calm, but after the centuries I’ve lived through, the wars I’ve fought, when it comes to laying the responsibility of it all on my shoulders I feel like I’m ready to crumble.

“I think he’s in his study. He said he didn’t want to be disturbed,” Cole muses.

“Well, I don’t think he’ll mind on this occasion,” I mutter.
 

Starlet catches up to me, touching my back gently. “Come on, we’ve got to find Saturnus,” I remind her.

“What about Azure?” she asks me, the concern for her soulmate evident on her face. I wonder why I haven’t thought about Callie. Maybe she’ll be a part of the army, so far gone as to attack a city she had once loved. Maybe she hadn’t entered my mind because I’m finally grasping that nothing could ever be as important as my role as Crowned Ruler, or maybe I am just too afraid of the consequences of her attacking my city.

“She’ll be okay. Azure can take care of herself. Come, we need to find Saturnus,” I repeat myself, Saturnus’ name a prayer, a magic solution, on my lips.
 

I know we’ve had our differences, but maybe this was what we need to come together. He had been right when he said we needed him and I had never felt more thankful for his protective walls around his city than today.

I grab Starlet’s hand and pull her out of the now open doors of the Alcazar Oceania.
 

As we glide among the coral stalks of the palace gardens I scan our surroundings, paranoid of every single speck and sliver of shadow.
 

After a few moments of looking around, desperately hoping to see nothing, I breathe a sigh of relief. No sign of the Psirens yet, but it’s high noon on the surface world. Perfect for mer slaughter, you need only expose them to the sunlight above for half a minute and they’ll turn to sand.
 

I frown, hating that glowing ball of light. We need to stick low to the ground today; I’m not taking any chances.

“Orion! Stop!” I feel Starlet grab at my wrist, but I jerk it away. She isn’t having any of it. “ORION!” She yells. I stop, turning on her, irritated.

“What?” I bark.

“Calm down,” she reminds me.

“How does that help anything?” I demand, as she narrows her eyes, crossing her arms and smiling, like she has some big secret.

“You’re forgetting, brother, that you’ve done this before, so have I. Maybe not with an army this size, maybe not with the Psirens, but we’ve done this before. We’re still standing. So breathe. You fluttering around like a pissed off butterfly isn’t going to help anyone. You need to be thinking clearly.”

“I’m wounded that you equate this with fluttering,” I say, my expression deadly serious. She cocks her head to one side, her white blonde hair falling over one shoulder and her magenta facial scales shimmering wildly in the light of the high sun. “Okay. I’m breathing,” I respond, annoyed at how right she can be. Out of everyone in our family, I’d never peg her for the smartest, but if there’s one thing Starlet is, it is reason in a sea of chaos, calm in a crisis.

“How do you do that?” I go limp slightly as I ask her this one, very important question.

“Do what?” She asks me, taking my hand in hers and squeezing it.

“Stay calm and rational when everything is falling apart?”

“I watch,” she says the sentiment simply as I feel the blood pulsing around me begin to slow. I’m looking deeply into my sister’s eyes, being lulled into what I know, letting her ground me.

“What do you mean, you mean like how you see with visions?”

“No. That’s seeing. I watch.” I frown slightly and she inhales, smiling.

“Dad, he used to know what to do in a crisis. I watched him for so long, it’s what happens when you aren’t allowed to fight, you observe. You learn,” she admits, looking like she might cry.

“He’d be proud of you Star… At least he raised a ruler in one of us.” I lean forward and kiss her cheek. She blushes slightly.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“For what?”
 

“Being the man I know you are,” she winks at me and smiles, the biggest smile I’ve seen pass her lips for years. She reaches up and puts her arms around me, an uncertain gesture but one that hasn’t lost its nostalgia, even though it’s been years since we last embraced. “Come on. Let’s go, before we both turn into blubbering idiots,” she laughs, wiping underneath her eye, embarrassed.

“It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?” I whisper to her, as we begin to move out of the coral gardens, close and synchronised in our strokes.

“What makes you say that?” She tilts her head. I look out onto the horizon, watching as a black mass begins to rise into the aquamarine hue of the midday ocean.

“Because,” I say, looking deeply into her eyes, “something about that embrace you just gave me felt like a goodbye.” Her eyes widen slightly and her lips sag, unable to form words to express what’s running through her mind.
 

I wait, but she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to.
 

I just hope she’s wrong.

CALLIE

We sit, opposite each other, aching as the sand from whatever blasted us apart settles. I look down at myself.
 

I have changed.
 

My tailfin is aquamarine again, my hair falls in blonde around my shoulders. I stare into the now murky water, head throbbing. Vex is slumped against the opposite wall, holding up his arm to the light.
 

He’s examining the white flesh of his limb, which is now mapped with dark veins of black magic. I examine my own skin, nothing but pale white flesh and aquamarine scales, shimmering madly.
 

I look between my own form and Vex… his eyes have turned dark… almost like he’s taken on my own darkness along with his own. Wait a minute…

“You… you took my darkness!” I exclaim, not sure whether to be relieved or angry.

“Wait… what?” Vex rises slightly, looking at me from across the length of the corridor. He looks just as confused as I am and his voice sounds husky, like he needs to cough. I move back from him slightly, scared as to what such an influx of power will do.

“How did you do that?” I ask him, my eyebrows raised. He shrugs, shoulder rising with an angry suddenness.

“How the bloody hell should I know! You’re the one with the bloody ‘kiss me, kiss me’ eyes!” He flutters his stumpy fingers around his eyes, batting his eyelids.
 

It would be comical if he weren’t so terrifying. His face is covered in black veins and his eyes are completely black too, rage filled. He looks like Titus from here, just with tentacles.
 

It’s with this recognition that I remember staring at my reflection in the shattered mirror of the hotel room. I know that’s exactly what I had looked like.

“You kissed me!” I exclaim, disgusted at his insinuation that I had been the one to initiate.

“Don’t give me that bollocks!” He sweeps a hand around himself, as though he’s pushing my retaliation away.

“What bollocks? There’s no bollocks here! You came back to rescue me, remember? You’re the one who started all this! You should have just let me rot!”
 

“Well…maybe I should have! Don’t worry, Love, I’ll be letting you next time! You’re a bloody lousy kisser anyway!” His argument is weakening as the hysterical nature of what’s going on seems to infect his thought process. I’m slowly lulling him back from the edge with banter. I continue.

“Me?! At least I don’t taste like an ash tray!” I spit, pretending to expel his taste from my mouth.

“Better than the taste of Nancy boy…” he quips. This comment suddenly reminds me of why I was trying to escape in the first place.

“Orion! The city! We have to go, stop them from leaving!”

“Bit late for that, Love. They’re gone,” Vex looks at me, his eyes slowly returning to their usual lilac. His skin is still mapped with veins, but he is beginning to look more like himself again.

“What do you mean?” I ask him, immediately rising off the floor and straightening my spine, tense.

“I mean they’re on their way, Love. The revolution has already begun.”
 

ORION

“Saturnus!!” I am hammering on the door with my fist, Starlet at my back. The door doesn’t open. “Back up,” I order Starlet. She does with one quick movement of her tailfin as I expel a blast of air from my palms, knocking the door back, swinging on its hinges.
 

I enter quickly, looking up at the high tower where Saturnus keeps his extensive collection of books stacked tightly into the curving shelves of the cylindrical tallness of the study. He’s there.