Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(55)

Yamaa’s expression was cloudy, but her eyes were bright. Some of the tension left her shoulders, or perhaps he was only imagining it.

“My mother used to sew,” she said quietly.

Cayo thought back to their discussion at the teahouse about his interest in fashion. “What did she sew?”

“A bit of everything. Dresses, sheets, dolls.” Yamaa turned her face to the sun and closed her eyes, some of her wet hair slipping over her brown shoulder. “But that was a long time ago.”

Cayo wanted to ask more, but he was struck by the sudden vulnerability in her, the way the sunlight caught drops of water on her eyelashes. They spangled across her body like diamonds, as if she were worth more than any amount of gold.

He thought back to his halfhearted plan to charm money out of her. His father’s plan, really. Seeing Yamaa like this, more a girl he could have met in the Vice Sector than a noble in a gilded house, he realized that he could do it—he could get her to warm to him, sympathize with him, play a slow yet steady game of seduction.

But after only a moment of planning, he shook his head and looked away. It would be wrong to use her. Wrong to ignore this new and sudden fascination that drew his gaze back to her like the sun toward the horizon.

Eventually, he found his voice. “You mentioned needing to clear your mind. Has something been troubling you?”

“I…” She hesitated, startled by the question.

“I shared something about myself,” he said with a half-teasing grin. “Only fair you should, too.”

She scoffed, but it was more amused than annoyed. She smoothly slipped back into the water and crossed her arms on top of the rock. “I lost someone recently. Someone I thought I knew well, but now I’m realizing that maybe I didn’t know them at all.”

Cayo watched her legs slowly treading under the semiclear water. “I’m sorry to hear that. I know what loss is like, and it never gets any easier.” He thought of his mother on the balcony, humming her favorite songs. Thought of Soria coughing weakly into her pillow. “Especially when you have to watch someone you love waste away before your eyes.”

Yamaa looked at him as if for the first time, her guardedness dropping. “Yes,” she said. “Or you realize someone you love wasn’t who you thought they were. When someone who was supposed to protect you ends up betraying you instead.”

Cayo blinked at the cryptic words but decided not to press it. Yamaa rested her cheek on her arms, staring at the water, and the two of them were silent as they listened to the distant cries of gulls and the sound of the wind blowing past the cliffs. Cayo finally relaxed, his mission in the Vice Sector momentarily forgotten.

How long had it been since he had sat beside the ocean to merely exist and think? Probably not since his mother was alive. It was a sad thing, to realize that there was no one in his life he could completely be at ease with. Not his father, not his friends. There was Soria, to an extent, but even then he was always on watch.

But here, he could share this with Yamaa: this careful removal of their masks, the outward shell of polite young members of the gentry. Here in this inlet, they could be the messy, flawed, tired truths of themselves. And that was something to be thankful for.

As the light of afternoon began to wane, Cayo slipped back into the water with her. As if by some unspoken agreement, they swam lazily around the inlet, sometimes passing one another and sometimes swimming together.

She still had that thoughtful, mournful expression on her face. Suddenly, he was overcome with the desire to wipe it away.

“Hey.” He pointed to the far cliff wall. “I’ll race you. Last one there has to tell an embarrassing secret.”

She gave him an incredulous look, but before she could reply he was already speeding away. She yelled at his back and kicked off, slicing through the water like a blade. Within a few seconds she had outpaced him, water frothing at her heels. In another few seconds, she was slapping the cliff face victoriously.

Cayo slapped it a moment later, panting for breath. “You’re fast.”

“And you have to tell me an embarrassing secret.”

He groaned and floated on his back, lacing his fingers on his stomach. “Fine. Let’s see…Once, when I was eight, I got my fist stuck in a vase at a duchess’s manor during a dinner party. I was trying to tug it off when everyone came into the foyer and saw it go flying.” He re-created the spectacular arc it had made with his hand over the shimmering water. “And crashed at the duchess’s feet.”

“It’s not a secret if people saw you do it.”

“No, the part that’s secret is that my father spanked me when we got home. I couldn’t sit down without crying for days.”

Although Cayo had lost the race, he was rewarded all the same by the sound of her short, clear laugh ringing over the water.

Unwilling as he was to leave the calm they’d created, the water was getting choppy. They climbed back onto the rocks, which created a makeshift shore. Cayo shielded his eyes and looked at the path of rocks they would have to climb to get back up to the cliff side.

When he turned to ask her if she needed any help, his breath caught in his throat. The fabric of her undergarments had clung to her with water, revealing the outline of a body threaded with corded muscle. The way she stood revealed the strength of her arms and thighs and stomach, a strength that was constantly hidden under silks and corsets. Water droplets rolled down her smooth skin, pooling in the crooks of her elbows and the hollow of her collarbone.