Chapter 20

20

K yree leaned against the wall and watched Honour as she swirled and twisted, practicing strikes against clear water. It had taken Kyree some time to find Honour. Not because of searching for the warrior mer, but searching for herself.

Kyree could deny her attraction to Honour as much as she could deny her attraction to Hudson. They were both warriors, and while Kyree still found the contradiction between her own way of life and theirs hard to accept at times, she didn’t want to lose them. Either of them.

Her mind had already been made up before she searched for Honour. But now, she was even more determined than before—she had to go and find Hudson. She had to bridge the gap between them. And maybe, just maybe, Hudson could also help Kyree understand Honour’s perspective more. She might even be able to explain Kyree in ways Honour might understand.

They weren’t good when it was just one or two of them. They needed all three in order to understand and know each other. Kyree sighed heavily. This wasn’t going to be an easy conversation, but it was one that she needed to have. And despite Honour’s refusal to communicate, Kyree wasn’t going to fall into the same trap that Honour had set for herself.

She had wanted to say goodbye.

And she wanted to tell Honour exactly what she was going to do and where she was headed next.

Instead, Kyree pushed off of the wall, and with the smallest movement of her fluke she turned away. There was no way Honour would understand what Kyree wanted to tell her. They might speak the same language, but they didn’t understand each other enough to even have one conversation without Hudson there. At least not right now. They weren’t prepared for that.

“Kyree?” The water rippled around her as Honour approached at great speed.

“Honour.” The breath left with Kyree’s voice, her heart lodged in her throat. Her gaze dropped to Honour’s arms, to her chest, to the strength in her muscles—the arms and hands and chest that had once held Kyree so sacredly.

“What are you doing?” Honour’s voice was sharp, penetrating Kyree’s reverie.

Kyree dragged in a deep breath and blew it out slowly, bubbles rippling around her. She flicked her gaze up to meet Honour’s. It was now or never, and Honour was forcing her hand—the one that Kyree had been too chicken to push for. The words left her lips before she could stop them. “I’m leaving.”

A cold hardness set into Honour’s face, and Kyree’s fingers itched to reach up and smooth those edges away with her touch. She hated that she was hurting Honour by this. But there was no other way. They needed Hudson, and they shouldn’t have ever let Hudson go.

“You’re leaving?”

Was Kyree hearing an unspoken me at the end of that? Did Honour think that Kyree was abandoning whatever was left of their broken and tumultuous relationship that had barely even started?

“I’m leaving to find Hudson. I’m leaving to bring her back.” Kyree stared directly at Honour, hoping and praying to the gods that she would understand, that some seed of knowledge would lodge its way into Honour’s brain and start to sprout.

“She won’t come here.” Honour’s voice came out as cold as her features. “You know that.”

“No, I don’t.” Kyree would keep that hope alive in the center of her chest for as long as she could. She couldn’t believe that what had happened between them was just sex. Because it was so much more than that. She wouldn’t have given up her life in the deep soundings for anything less than love.

This was why they needed Hudson. Hudson, the most unlikely interpreter between them, but the one that seemed to make their wheel spin. She missed Hudson. She also missed the ease and softness she had learned to see in Honour’s actions.

“Go find her then. See if a few more orgasms can change her mind.” Honour sneered, and the look was one of the ugliest that Kyree had ever seen—filled with self-loathing, anger, and oh so much pain.

“Honour.” Kyree raised an eyebrow to make her point. “That’s unfair and you know it.”

Honour didn’t reply, though Kyree saw the regret in her eyes before she turned and swam back to her training.

With a shake of her head, Kyree swam out of the training room and didn’t stop until she was out of the boundaries of Reine. No one stopped her on her way. No one asked questions or tried to get her to stay for her safety. If Honour didn’t come back to her, she was more alone than ever. And Kyree had to fix this. She had to bring the three of them back together because it was the only way she was going to survive up here.

It took longer than she had hoped to find Hudson, but her heart swelled at the sight of the sleek beautiful mer with the dirty blonde locks flowing around the familiar face. Kyree’s lips spread in a natural smile.

“Kyree.” A line appeared between Hudson’s eyebrows as the laugh she had been sharing with her men dropped from her lips.

Murmurs followed Hudson’s swim, but Kyree couldn’t make out the words. Hudson didn’t seem overly phased by the voices that trailed along the bubbles she left behind with a flick of her fluke.

“What happened? Is Honour okay?”

“She’s a stubborn mer who won’t see reason.” Kyree pursed her lips, the mention of Honour souring the enjoyment of seeing Hudson again.

Hudson chuckled. With one arm draped over Kyree’s shoulders, she led her to a small rock shelf just out of sight of her men.

“So she’s her usual self.” Hudson half lay on the shelf, the gray and green moss-covered stone contrasting with the blonde of her hair, though both her body and the stone held firm edges that made Kyree’s mouth feel as though it were filled with moss.

“I need you to come back and talk to her before she goes and does something stupid.”

Hudson lifted one eyebrow, that smirk on her lips making Kyree feel like she had missed something vital in the minimal words Hudson bothered to utter.

After a ripple of silence that drifted unsettlingly between them, Hudson pushed herself back up a little higher but still more reclined than Kyree thought the conversation required.

“What exactly happened? And why do you need my help?” Hudson never was one to beat around the bush, was she? She wanted facts, much in the same way that Honour did. Kyree clung to that knowledge, something tingling in the back of her mind that she’d missed how to convince Honour that this was the right decision.

“We’ve found where they have Soulara.”

“Why are you here then?” Hudson looked more confused now than before.

“What?”

“Why aren’t you going and getting your princess back?”

Kyree huffed a stream of bubbles from her mouth. “What is it with you two? You’re so obsessed with going into a battle, of fighting without stopping and thinking about looking beyond the next step.”

Hudson rested back against the rock shelf once more, the smirk on her face even more prominent as she listened to Kyree continue to rant her frustrations about the similarities between Hudson and Honour.

“And would you stop lying there all sexy with that smirk as though you know the secrets of the ocean?”

“Sexy, huh?” Hudson was damn near gleeful now.

Kyree shut her eyes and gulped in a deep breath, stopping herself from growling and having Hudson take that the wrong way as well.

“And I don’t want to know the secrets of the ocean. It’s far more fun not knowing.” Hudson twinkled her fingers into the water, as if she was playing with an invisible creature.

“So why are you still smirking, then?” Kyree squinted, needing more of an explanation.

“Because I’m not the only one so like the General Honour.” Hudson pushed up from her perch. She moved swiftly and nearly soundlessly as she swam into Kyree’s space.

“What does that mean?” Kyree channeled the frustration and the anger. She didn’t want to get all worked up with Hudson’s scent so close that it made her skin tingle. She didn’t want to give Honour any more ammunition toward her accusation about Hudson and orgasms.

“Did you tell anyone where you were going when you swished away from the city to come find me?” Hudson circled her slowly, fingertips brushing ever so lightly across Kyree’s skin at surprising intervals.

“Yes.”

“Anyone other than Honour?”

Kyree opened her mouth and snapped it shut a mere moment later. Hudson’s chuckle came from behind her moments before another brush of fingers stroked up her back.

“Will you come back with me? Will you talk to Honour?” Kyree changed the subject, now understanding how brutal it felt to be called out like that.

“No.” Hudson stopped in front of Kyree, her hand cupping Kyree’s cheek. “She’s right to want to go and get Soulara. It’s what I would do. And it sounds like the only reason you aren’t is because the King has given his orders.”

“That’s how it works. That’s why leadership exists.”

“That’s not leadership, my sweet. That’s blatant authority. But is that why you came up from the depths in the first place?”

“Please come back with me, Hudson.” The lump in Kyree’s throat caught the words and rasped them out.

“I have my own things to deal with.”

“She was right about you.” Kyree fired back, ignoring the burning in her eyes as she fought back tears.

“Most likely.” But Hudson’s words weren’t those of the cocky rebel Kyree had met in the beginning, when her hands were tied and her freedom taken.

Guilt burned like bile in her stomach. From her words, from her accusations. But her pride couldn’t take any more rejection as she swallowed back the apology she would have given willingly. Before Hudson had left Kyree and Honour to travel on to the city without her. Before those moments of being with them meant more than the battles they all fought individually, and the war they all had to fight.

“Be safe, Hudson.” Their eyes met and for a moment Kyree saw her Hudson shining back at her.

“You too, Kyree. Don’t tell her she was right.” With a wink, Kyree’s Hudson disappeared once more.

But now she knew Hudson was there, behind the duty and need to finish her fight. Kyree nodded, not caring that her hair tickled her face before she turned and swam away. Hudson didn’t need her and didn’t want her there.

At least at the palace, someone wanted her help to fight these humans.

She couldn’t hold back the hope that Honour still wanted her as well. And maybe she was right, maybe they both were.

But who would Kyree be if she let go of what she’d always seen as the core of herself for…for what? How had Honour described it? A few orgasms.

She didn’t bother brushing the warm water that spilled from her eyes and brushed her cheeks as she swam. It didn’t matter that she cried. It didn’t matter if anyone saw. They didn’t see what mattered most. The war she fought within herself.

Ripples of water brushed the end of her tail, and for a moment, Kyree’s heart stuttered. Had Hudson changed her mind and come to find her? Did she want to apologize? Would she come back to the palace and talk to Honour?

But reality wouldn’t let her indulge in such fantasies for long as her mind asked another question.

Would she find her to simply get another one of those orgasms, for some kind of last taste before she stupidly got herself killed by rushing into some fight without proper preparation?

The idea, the thought, reignited Kyree’s fury.

They didn’t care enough about her to be safe. They didn’t want her enough to stop and listen to her, truly listen to what she said. Too busy proving themselves tougher than any mer, man, or maid.

Channeling her fury to her fluke, Kyree pushed harder toward Reine. If Hudson came looking she wouldn’t find Kyree, not until Kyree was ensconced once more in Reine, ready to do what was necessary to win this war.

Another ripple of water touched Kyree’s fluke, dancing up to her waist. It sent shivers over her body as though she were back in the depths of the soundings.

Pushing harder still she forced her body to its upper limits.

Even as a shadow covered her and her heart beat frantic unrhythmic pleas against her ribs.