The Palace of Impossible Dreams (59 page)

“You feel like crap now, right?”

Reluctant though he was to admit any weakness to Cayal, Declan nodded. “I've felt better.”

“And the best you'll ever feel is when you're swimming the Tide,” Cayal warned. “Learn to live with the disappointment. And learn to deal with it. You'll find a way eventually, but you're in for a fun time of it until you do.”

“Why do you care?”

“I told you, Rodent. I need your power and I need you with some idea of what to do with it.”

“Ah yes, I forgot about your altruistic motives there for a moment.”

They stood watching the ship pull away from the dock, their conversation completely at odds with their surroundings.
Is this what it's always going to be like? Pretending to be normal, while the world recedes into the distance? Fighting the urge to plunge into the Tide and never return? This fidgety, unsettling absence that can only be filled with the Tide? Tides, my skin's on fire
 . . .

Finally, Cayal said, “You'll find out the hard way, Rodent, that in the end there's nobody who cares for you but you. Altruism is for mortals who never have to learn that lesson the hard way.”

“Is cynicism a side effect of the Tide too?”

“No, that comes from living too long.”

“So I have that to look forward to as well? Eternity sounds like just one fun thing after another. I can't wait.”

“You won't have to if Lukys succeeds,” Cayal said, an odd emotion in his voice that gave Declan a glimmer of the suicidal desperation driving this man. “Why don't you go back to the others?” he said a moment later, his instant of weakness gone before Declan had barely registered it. “I'm sure explaining everything, all over again, to Medwen and Ambria is going to take a while. Good thing you and Arkady have sorted things out.”

“Why?”

“Because if you're anything like me, Rodent, the quickest way to cure what ails you right now is to find a woman—if possible a willing one, which I've always thought preferable to taking them by force—and take your ease
in her warm and understanding embrace.” Cayal smiled. “I wonder how grateful Medwen's feeling, right about now, about being rescued?”

Declan shook his head, idly wishing bashing Cayal's head into a bloody pulp would actually achieve something useful. “You are crude beyond belief, Cayal.”

The Immortal Prince smiled. He didn't seem bothered by Declan's low opinion of him. “But sadly right, Rodent. It's one of the things nobody gets about wielding the Tide. There's a
reason
, you know, why none of us want anything to do with Elyssa after she's been swimming the Tide.”

Declan shook his head. “I suspect, if I had any brains, I'd get on that ship and have it take me as far from you and your lunatic kind as I can get.”

Cayal looked at him then, his expression bleak. “Only we're
your
lunatic kind, now. And you can't ever escape that. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. I've tried.”

Cayal was right about one thing: Declan was not looking forward to the whole “how is it you're immortal?” conversation again, this time with Medwen and Ambria. Fortunately, he was saved from it—temporarily, at least—by Arkady. As soon as the last of the fleet sailed out of view, he and Cayal turned for the village and Arkady ran down to meet them.

Apparently she wasn't any more enamoured of the company of these new immortals than he was.

“Do you think they'll be back?” she asked as the immortals approached.

Cayal glanced back over his shoulder at the now empty channel and then shrugged. “Not for a while.”

Her gaze fixed on Declan. “Were you . . .?”

“Using Tide magic?” Cayal finished for her. And then he laughed. “Tides, you two must be having a time of it. A year ago you didn't even believe it existed. And look at you now.”

“Cayal,” Arkady said impatiently. “Just shut up, would you?”

The Immortal Prince smiled, their dilemma a source of endless amusement, it seemed. “I will, I will. We have a deal, after all.” He turned to Declan. “Why don't you and Arkady get lost for a while, Rodent? I have to talk to Medwen and Ambria anyway, and it'll be easier if they're not sitting there staring at you, wondering where the hell you came from.” With a knowing smile, Cayal left them standing in the street, and headed up the road toward the three immortal women and their Crasii servants.

“Do you want to go back to the others?” Declan asked.

“Tides, no,” she said, taking his hand. “Let's get out of here. I've had all the immortals I can handle for a while.” She smiled up at him and added apologetically, “Present company excepted, of course.”

They walked in the opposite direction from where Cayal had gone, the sky darkening with the clouds that had been building up all morning. Declan realised it would rain again soon, and wondered if the Tide magic he'd been wielding had affected the weather, or if this was normal for this time of year in the wetlands.

Arkady must have guessed the direction of his thoughts. She looked up at the clouds and then squeezed his hand. “It's all right, Declan. I don't think the coming rain is the result of anything you did.”

He smiled humourlessly. “How would you know?”

“I don't, I suppose,” she said with a shrug. “But I've been in the wetlands for about three weeks now and it's rained like clockwork twice a day, every single day, so I'm guessing there's nothing to worry about.”

Declan wished he was as confident. “It's scary, you know, having that sort of power, and then not even being sure you've done anything with it.”

She looked at him curiously. “What's the Tide feel like?”

Their walk had taken them beyond the limits of the village. The path narrowed, the vegetation crowding the edge of the well-worn track that led (so Tiji had informed him with a rainbow-coloured blush) to a hot spring. He was still holding Arkady's hand, still acutely aware of her touch, acutely aware of everything around him. It was as if swimming the Tide heightened his awareness a little more every time he touched it. His skin still itched and burned and despite Cayal's crass suggestion about how to calm his raging senses, Declan knew he wasn't far off the mark. Arkady would only have to look at him with the slightest hint of desire, and he'd be on her, right here on the path, a few hundred paces from the village.

“Declan?”

He realised he'd forgotten what she'd asked. He looked at her, and although she was wearing quite a demure shift, all he could see, in his mind's eye, was her statuesque body in that wretched slave skirt.

Arkady stopped walking, letting go of his hand. “Tides, are you even listening to me?”

The loss of contact with her hand was almost painful, his skin was so sensitive. Thunder rattled overhead. The sky was dark now, the heavens
set to open any moment. He shrugged apologetically. “I'm sorry. I'm . . . distracted.”

She smiled. “No? Really?” And then she looked skyward as the clouds rumbled threateningly. “We're going to get drenched if we don't find shelter. Did you want to go back to the village?”

He shook his head. “Let's keep walking.”

She fell in beside him again as the first few raindrops plinked onto the broad leaves of the bushes bordering the path. “What was Cayal talking about, back there?”

“What do you mean?”

“He said something about a deal.”

“He wants me to go to Jelidia with him. He seems to think I can help him die.”

“And can you?”

“I wouldn't mind trying.”

Arkady didn't seem to think that was very funny. She stopped walking again as large raindrops spattered the vegetation around them with a loud plopping noise as each individual drop landed and then skated off the shiny leaves toward the ground. “You shouldn't mess with Cayal, Declan. He's dangerous.”

“You're telling
me
that?”

“I know this must be hard for you,” she said, reaching up to wipe a stray raindrop from his face. “But you have time, Declan, to work out how to handle this. I don't think you should rush into anything.
Particularly
anything to do with Cayal.”

He grabbed her hand, not sure he had the strength to resist if she touched him like that for too much longer. “Who are you really worried about? Me or Cayal?”

She frowned. “I thought we'd agreed to let the past go, Declan?”

He released her hand, taking a deep breath. “I know. I'm sorry. I'm just . . . on edge . . . It's something to do with the aftermath of swimming the Tide. I feel like my skin's on fire. From the inside.”

As if to emphasise his point, the clouds rumbled once more and the sky finally opened. The downpour drenched them in seconds. Arkady squealed involuntarily and moved closer to him for shelter. Declan pulled her to him, the noble, conscious part of his mind intending only to shield her from the rain. But there was another part of him now—a part of him that was alive and humming in tune with the remnants of the Tide, a part of
him driven by something more primal, far more visceral. Something not easily contained by a veneer of civilisation.

He kissed her, and she responded without hesitation, although a part of Declan feared it wouldn't have made a difference if she had resisted. The rain pelted down on them, but Declan hardly noticed. He pushed her backward off the path until the bole of a slender palm prevented them moving any further, drinking the raindrops from her skin like a man dying of thirst. If she said anything, he wasn't aware of it. She moaned as he pulled the drenched shift from her shoulders but he had no idea if it was from pleasure or pain, and was a little appalled to realise he didn't care. Although he wasn't drawing on the Tide, the magic had left its mark on him. It had scoured him internally, leaving raw flesh behind that could only be soothed by the total immersion of himself in something that required no thought, no conscious effort. Arkady cried out at some point. He wasn't sure why. He might be hurting her or she might be lost in the ecstasy of their coupling.

Declan didn't have the wit to tell the difference.

It wasn't until he was spent, exhausted and finally back in control some time later, that he thought to wonder about it. Time to realise what he'd done.

Full of remorse and self-loathing, Declan let Arkady go and stepped back from the tree. Arkady sagged against the trunk, staring at him with an unreadable expression. Her shift was drenched, her breasts exposed and the skirt pushed up around her waist.

“Tides, Arkady, I'm so sorry . . .”

She smiled weakly and began to straighten her clothes. “For what, exactly, are you apologising, Declan Hawkes?”

Declan was a little surprised to realise she wasn't angry. “I didn't mean . . .”

“Yes you did.”

An awkward silence followed her words that seemed half statement of fact and half accusation. He wondered if he'd destroyed everything between them, yet again, but it seemed Arkady was more forgiving than he gave her credit for. Perhaps there were some things, he thought, that old friends could never put into words. And that sometimes you didn't need to.

Perhaps Arkady knew him too well to need an explanation.

He threw his hands up helplessly, not sure what else to say. “Did I hurt you?”

Arkady shook her head. “Not especially.” She held her face up to the rain for a moment and then looked at him curiously. “Is that going to happen every time you use the Tide?”

“I don't know. Didn't happen the last time, after I healed you.”

“Only because I stormed off in a huff.”

He smiled.
Tides, was a man allowed to be this lucky?
“I don't deserve you.”

“No, you don't,” she agreed, pushing off the tree. “You appear to be stuck with me, however.”

Declan glanced up at the sky. There seemed to be little chance the rain was going to stop for a while. “Do you want to go back to the village?”

Arkady shook her head. “Isn't there a hot spring along here somewhere?”

“I think so.”

“Then let's go find it.” She held her arms out wide and shrugged. “It's not like we can get much wetter.”

It seemed too easy. Arkady seemed far too ready to forgive. Perhaps her time on the Justice Tree really had changed her, but Declan wasn't sure he wanted to wager his future with her on that. “Are you
sure
you're all right?”

She nodded. “How do
you
feel?”

“Better.”

“Then it's all good,” she said, offering him her hand.

Declan took her hand and accepted then that maybe it was. Whatever the future might hold, for now it
was
all good, or at least about as good as it was ever likely to get.

A week later, when there was still no sign of a returning fleet full of vengeful physicians or slave traders, Arryl cautiously announced they'd probably made their point and the wetlands were, for the time being, safe.

Cayal, who'd been champing at the bit waiting for the women to declare themselves ready to leave for Jelidia, could have cried with relief when she made the announcement. Of course, it didn't solve all of his problems, but it meant one more thing out of the way, one step closer to the end.

At least, it
should
have meant that. Cayal truly believed it did, right up until Ambria and Medwen announced they weren't going anywhere.

Cayal wasn't surprised to hear Ambria refuse to leave the wetlands. From the moment they'd rescued her, she'd made it quite clear that she wanted nothing to do with Cayal or his plans to die. She was going to stay in Senestra, partly to ensure the Physicians' Guild or Cydne Medura's family didn't return, partly because the swamp fever epidemic was still far from over and the Crasii needed her healing skills, and partly, Cayal suspected, out of sheer perversity. Ambria and Cayal had never really been friends. She considered him—even on a good day—to be almost as dangerous as Kentravyon, and she really didn't care to help him with anything. Not even to die.