39. Cross

“Do you remember the ocean?”

Leni peers out at the lazy navy waves. The sun is flirting with the horizon, laying bright gold over the water, and basking in the reflection.

Sunset is the ideal time to launch an attack. The shadows change shape quickly, elongating, widening, drowning, and harsh, roiling sunlight lends focus to unimportant things: the swirl of color in the sky, the puff of clouds, shimmer on water.

On top of that, I have my back to the city, feet dredged in sand, and I’m tuned into the curl of the waves. If Kadmos ever saw me like this, he’d shoot me.

I’d deserve it. Probably thank him for getting my head on straight.

Tonight, the risk is worth the reward.

Leni at the beach.

Her hair is blue again, chopped short. Three rings adorn her left hand, and my code is tattooed around her wrist in a wave of black markings. The tan straps of her sandals hang off her fingertips, and her toes curl into the sand.

A playful smile tugs at her lips as she teases, “Should I? Was there another gruesome attack here?”

If I hadn’t known she was the toughest, bravest female in the realm, I’d have realized it now. Mocking her own tragedy.

“You … there—” I shut my eyes. “There was an accident.”

“Why would I remember a little accident?”

I let out a cold, unfriendly laugh, hating myself. “Right. Of course you wouldn’t. I don’t know what I was thinking mentioning it. Forget I said anything. You grew up on the coast.”

“You’ve already told me that. Tell me about the accident.” Her gaze slices to mine. “Please. We’re already here.” She takes a small step across the cool, damp sand and unleashes frost on me. Her blue hair bathed in long bronze sunlight has turned her into a flawless portrait of delight. Skin like snow, eyes as pure as ice, outlined with neon pink lashes, and drenched in gold.

“Cross?” she asks, canting her head, worried.

It’s a bullet to the heart.

She’ll kill me with my name, and I’ll die smiling.

“It was the worst thing I’d ever seen,” I say finally. “You tried to drown yourself.” Another bitter laugh escapes my lips and I hate myself even more. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but you were always twenty steps ahead of me.” I shove my hand into my pocket. “You know what happens if a Phoenix dies underwater?”

“Fried fish?” Mocking, light.

I can’t summon a laugh. “You’re reborn underwater. You wake up and you drown. You keep sinking, you keep dying in this fucking vicious cycle until it’s over. The end. Black flames.”

I ball my hands to halt the shadows curling loosely over my knuckles. No need to question their appearance. There’s no mind consuming grief as overwhelming as losing Leni. Losing her like that … it pulverized me. She would’ve died with fear as her last memory, again and again.

“I …” she groans, clutching the shoulder that used to bear a wave.

The pain steals her from me, just for a moment, just enough time for me to move closer without her flinching, enough time for her cheeks to dye pink, for her eyes to bleed into a dark, devastating blue.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps, lashes wet, blinking rapidly, as if searching for the usual frosted blue color. “I hate that. I …” A sigh wracks her entire body. “It’s getting worse. I’m having more flashbacks. I’ll never be normal, I’ll—”

Needing to touch her, I slide a knuckle along her jaw. “I like it.”

“That I’m crazy?” She gifts me a soft smile, cool skin lessening the bite of my scalding power.

“No. Gods, Leni, your suffering haunts me endlessly. I hate that you’ve been hurt. I’ll never forgive any of it, but …” I wipe a tear from her cheek. “I need you to remember how strong you are. How you didn’t survive the worst, you beat it. You won. As if you’d do anything less, even when dealt a losing hand.”

Hand flat on my pounding heart, she lingers in our closeness, in the sound of waves and me, in the wrap of my gift.

Just as brief as her surrender comes her escape. In one fluid movement, she wrenches herself from me, coils her arms tightly around her stomach, shifts her gaze to the water. Wets her lips like a bad taste is stuck to them. “So what happened?”

“I gave you the gist.”

Fire in those icy eyes. “Don’t compliment my strength and then try to take it from me. I want the truth.”

My chest tightens painfully. “Alright.”

She wags her finger at me. “And no sugarcoating.”

I smirk. “So unlike you.”

“There’s an exception to every rule. Now stop stalling.”

“Alright,” I repeat, dread making ribbons of my guts. “No sugarcoating. I found you choking to death in the arms of one of Draven’s sentries on the docks in Tallinn. I killed the Gorgon responsible the second I was in range. Cut straight through his heart. It was storming, attackers were inbound, and I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around you, to inspect every inch of your body for injuries, and inhale the honeysuckle on your skin, but there wasn’t time.” My lungs feel scratchy, and suddenly I have to rip the words from my throat. “I had to let go of you to fight. I put you behind me, unleashed my power, and you ran. You ran away from the shore, and you didn’t jump, you threw yourself into the ocean.”

I swallow a lump in my throat, heart pounding. “I almost caught you. Almost.” A bitter, angry laugh. Almost is death in war. “The waves swallowed you whole. You vanished instantly.”

A polite retelling. The black water hadn’t swallowed her, it’d devoured her, sucking her down forcefully. I’d felt every part of my body shatter apart. “I was so …”

“Worried?” Icy eyes lock on mine.

I shake my head, unable to look away. “Worried? No, I was fucking terrified. And furious. And proud.” My hand reaches out instinctively to cradle her chin, keep her looking at me, needing her to hear this. “I lost myself. I went rabid to hunt you down. I dove in after you without a plan, without a thought. I wrecked my gun, lost my boots, destroyed my phone. I’d have given anything to get you. All that mattered was getting to you.”

My Fated.

“It was so dark.” My hoarse tone turns broken, distant. “I searched. For so long. I couldn’t find you anywhere. I thought you might have hit the rocks, or maybe you were floating onto shore. I kicked to the surface. Minutes kept passing. It was too long.” I have to pause, clench my jaw, widen my eyes to keep the tears at bay.

“I would’ve forced Poseidon himself remove me from his waters without you. I dove again, thoughtless and desperate, and there you were. Eyes closed, unmoving, just … floating.” I hold a trembling hand in front of me, smooth, rock it. “So beautiful, and fragile, and still. Too still.” I clamp down on a shudder and push off the image as hard as I can. Blue hair a crown around her face, lashes settled gently against her cheeks, her veins had glowed silver with ichor, the will of the Gods the only thing keeping her alive.

“And I snatched you like you were mine,” I tell her, raw, hoarse, a wholly possessive primal energy thrumming through me. She was mine, even then. Before then. “I tore off your coat, and hauled you to the surface. Your lips were the same ice blue as your eyes and you were so quiet, so cold. It felt like I was freezing over too.”

Dark vitriolic emotions wrack me. The damning weight of fear, anger, and devastation claws a hole in my chest and nesting there, branding the inside of my heart. I shut my eyes against it, yank back on my gift. “You feel like that in my nightmares, skin like ice, you’re too cold to shiver.”

The nightmares follow the memory exactly.

Me cradling her limp body in my arms as storm waves surged over us, lightning cracking across the sky in great bursts of white. The dock too far away … too far to make it alone, impossible to reach with her. Us bobbing in the surf. Me begging her, begging her with all the air left in my lungs for her to fight.

I’d thrown so much of my power into her, so much of me that my skin had blistered instantly, heat had swallowed me whole, deafened me.

We shouldn’t have made it back. She should have drowned or frozen. I should have charred in her blast.

Against the Fates, we made it, as if one of the Olympians themselves guided the tides just for us. For a nameless male and his heart.

Aching and brittle, I clear my throat. “I thought …”

“I could’ve killed you,” Leni interrupts, eyes wild, features ravaged. “You were holding me. If I’d died, you would’ve—I would’ve killed you.”

As if I wouldn’t happily burn for her. “I would never leave you.” I rasp, not caring how reckless or foolish I sound. “I got you out. I cleared the water from your lungs. I warmed you with every miserable speck of my power until you finally …” I laugh harshly, a hard drumming in my chest. “You finally looked up at me and Gods, you hated me.”

Her brows slam down. “I couldn’t.”

“You did. You hated that I killed Draven’s men, that I didn’t regret it for a second. You hated that I stole your choice, hated that I was exactly the same as the male you were escaping.” I set her free from me, take two steps across the sand, ignore the horrible knot in my stomach. “I didn’t care. I’d let you hate me forever if it meant you were safe.”

I am monster.

No better than her dead prince.

Arms wound around her middle, Leni turns to face me. Why is it she only looks at me to cry? “I’m sorry,” she chokes out, tears spilling down her cheeks.

Needing to comfort her, I rub warm palms over her shoulders. “You don’t apologize for anything, Leni. You—”

“I can’t remember,” she blurts, pushing me away, voice cutting like a knife. “I can’t remember any of it. I can’t remember you and …” Her palm stretches forward to touch me, but she pulls back. Always pulls me.

Tears prick my eyes and I blink them back, shove my hand deep into my pocket. “No one remembers me, pyro. It’s okay.”

If possible, Leni becomes even more distraught. “I’m sorry! I don’t mean to … I see things. And they scare me.”

“That’s my fault,” I say, too sternly.

She flinches, frosty eyes darting to the sand.

Fuck. “It’s my fault,” I try again, softer. “Not yours. That’s my fault. Now, what can I do? What do you need? I’ll do anything.”

Her simple plea nearly shatters me, nearly makes me wish she’d just done it, whipped me into her flames, devoured me alive instead of burning me slowly like this. “I want Atlas.”

My gut clenches. I look down at the sand. Swallow. “Then let’s go get him.”

Anything, no matter how it kills me.