The Deepest Blue(87)

He kissed her, and she kissed him back. He tasted exactly as she’d been daydreaming ever since they were torn apart. “You’re alive!” she said when they finally had a chance to breathe.

“You’re alive!” he countered. “I thought—”

“I thought too! I was so afraid—”

“I was too. When they told me—”

“They told me too! You were dead. And then you weren’t. Or maybe you were, but I didn’t know. I believed you lived, but I didn’t know. And now you’re here.” He hadn’t died that day in the cove! He was alive and real! Elorna truly had saved him. He kissed her again. She kissed him back, feeling as if the rest of the world had faded into mist around them. She heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing, and tasted nothing but Kelo.

Then he drew back to look at her, only a few inches, and she studied him as if she wanted to memorize every curve and angle and crease. Tears were running down both their faces. She touched his cheek, half expecting him to vanish. How could this be real? It felt as if she were living inside a dream. “It’s a miracle,” she said.

“You’re a miracle. Mayara, I’m sorry I told you to be a Silent One. It was selfish. I thought if you lived, there was hope. But I should have trusted you, trusted in your strength.”

She cupped his face in her hands and started kissing him again. In between kisses, she asked, “But how is this possible?” She’d dreamed she’d find him after it was over, not so quickly and easily, as if fate had delivered him like a present wrapped with a bow. “Why are you here?”

“To find the queen’s family and stop the test.” He pulled back again. “Why are you here?”

She laughed. “Same. To find the queen and stop the test.” A secret part of her had been so afraid that Elorna was wrong or lying. She hadn’t let that part speak up, but it was there. She’d heard his screams. But he was here, and he’d been trying to save her all along. . . .

“All these reunions are lovely,” a woman in a ruffled skirt said, “but it would be even more delightful if they could be happening somewhere else.” She nodded significantly down the beach, where the prone body of a man lay.

Mayara couldn’t see who it was. She wondered if they’d killed someone. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But the guards at the fortress—they’d noticed the body too, and they clearly did want to know. Dozens were pouring onto the stairs to the beach.

Then an arrow struck the sand.

Mayara and Kelo both tried to step in front of the other, to protect each other from the guards. Together, they backed away. I won’t let them hurt him, she thought. She’d use her power if she had to. The ocean was still thick with spirits.

“It’s time to leave,” the queen said. “We must return to Yena and announce—”

Her eyes went wide, her mouth slack. Blood blossomed on her ivory bodice and spread between the pearls. The woman in the ruffles spun to scan the fortress battlements, as did Kelo. Roe reached for the queen. “Mother?”

And then Mayara saw Palia.

She stood behind the queen and held a glass-shard knife that was stained with blood.

“Mother?” Roe cried.

Queen Asana slumped forward into her daughter’s arms.

“No, no, what’s happening?” Roe asked. “Mayara, the angel seaweed . . .”

Angel seaweed couldn’t help this. Blood was darkening the sand as it leeched through the queen’s pearl dress. “Palia, what did you do?” Mayara breathed.

The woman in ruffles was uttering curse after curse. She knelt beside the queen and pulled powders and vials from her pockets. “Put pressure on the wound.” She ripped ruffles from her skirt and balled them up, handing them to Roe to press onto the spreading scarlet.

Blood soaked through the ruffles.

“She’s pierced a damn lung,” the woman said. “No potion in the world can fix that. Dammit. This was not the plan. Your Majesty . . .”

In two strides, Mayara reached Palia and grabbed her shoulders. She shook the older woman. “What did you do?”

Palia didn’t meet her eyes. Staring numbly at the queen, Palia let the knife fall from her fingers. It landed in the sand.

“Why?” Mayara asked.

“Because my daughter has dreams,” Palia said, her eyes fixed on Queen Asana slumped in the sand with Roe sobbing against her.

“Your daughter?” That made no sense. She thought back to what Palia had told them about her daughter, how she’d studied the tides, until Palia was taken and there was no more money to support her dreams. “This won’t help her! You were supposed to go home, go back to weaving sails, and send her to her last years at university. You were going to help her live her dreams. Remember?”

“She has dreams, but she also has powers,” Palia said. “She’ll lose everything if she’s discovered and forced to choose. It has to end. No more test. No more Silent Ones.”

Mayara wanted to shake her. “Roe was going to ask her mother to end the test!” This was the entire reason they’d come here! Everything they’d done to escape the island was for this very purpose, so why would—

“And it would work . . . until her family was in danger again,” Palia said. “Queen Asana has proven time and again that she can be controlled. The second her family is recaptured by them”—she pointed toward the guards who were running down from the fortress toward the sand—“the test will resume. My daughter won’t be safe with her as queen. We need a queen with no ties. Lanei will be the queen that Belene needs.”