The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(77)
“This was his favorite spot.” His throat closed, and he dug his fingers into the sand to ground him. To hold on to the faint trace of his father that he was convinced lingered here still. “We came here almost every morning unless it was storming. Usually we arrived after you and your family left for the shop, but sometimes you were here with Grand-mère, and you’d join us.”
“I remember.” She stretched her legs out beside his.
“Father would swim with me for an hour and then sit and watch me play for a bit on my own. There were others with us, of course. Our assigned guards and sometimes the castle steward or father’s secretary so he could work while I played, but I never saw them when I looked at the shore. I only saw him.”
“He was your hero.” Blue’s voice held everything he needed at that moment. Understanding. Grief. Permission to keep his memory a secret if that’s what he needed.
He wanted it kept a secret. He’d been guarding it for so long that letting the words out into the open felt like stripping bare in the dead of winter. But the secret was already bubbling up. Already scraping past his grief-closed throat and clawing for its freedom.
“There were dark clouds on the horizon. Heavy winds. He wanted me to get out of the sea when he did, but I begged him to let me swim just a bit longer. The waves were choppy, and I wanted to see how fast I could reach the edge of the shelf. I wanted to test myself.”
The pain in his heart shot through his veins as he remembered the slap of the waves against his skin, the thrill of pushing himself to beat the sea as it turned against him, and then the sharp surge of panic as a current—different from the normal rhythms of the sea and twice as strong—snatched him and flung him away from the shelf and deep into the bowels of the Chrysós.
Blue’s small hand wrapped around his, and he squeezed as if he were holding on to a lifeline.
“There was a crosscurrent, like there is today. It was moving away from the shore, and it caught me. It was so strong.” He blinked as tears burned his eyes, blurring the sea before him into a shimmering ribbon of gold. The numbness in his heart was gone, and in its place was a firestorm of grief and regret. “I couldn’t find the way up to the water’s surface. I couldn’t break free. I tried. I was a strong swimmer, but I was only eight, and there was no way out.”
“You were drowning.” She rubbed her thumb along the back of his hand, and he drew in a shaky breath, but the rest of the words were caught behind the terrible grief—fresh and jagged as the day he’d recklessly thought to challenge the sea and win—and he couldn’t find a way to give them life.
He met Blue’s brown eyes for a moment, and a tear slipped down her cheek. She whispered, “You were drowning, and he couldn’t let that happen. No father could.”
Turning back to the sea, he forced himself to say, “He was the strongest swimmer in the kingdom. He reached me just as I thought my lungs would burst.”
Hands reaching for him, grasping his shoulders with iron strength and pulling him to the surface as he kicked and struggled. As he panicked and tried desperately to beat back the sea that was determined to drag him to his death.
“He saved you.”
The secret trembled at the edge of his tongue, coating his mouth with bitterness, before spilling from his lips. “I killed him.”
“Oh, Kellan.”
He pulled his hand from hers and slammed his fists into the ground, his heart thundering in his chest.
“I was so scared, so panicked for air, that I kicked and fought the entire way up to the surface.” His voice was raw. “I kicked him, just as our heads broke through. There were people in the water coming for us. The guards. One of his stewards. But all I could see was him.”
Shoving Kellan out of the current’s grasp even as he spun away from his son, the water dragging him under.
“He surfaced once, and I tried to go after him, but a guard had reached me and was holding me back. I never saw him again.”
He’d screamed himself hoarse, beating against the chest of the man who was doggedly dragging the prince to the shore even as others ran to sound the alarm and call the king’s fleet of ships to scour the sea for their ruler.
“How many times have you come back here to swim in that same current?”
Swallowing hard, he said, “More times than I can count. When I was younger, I thought that somehow if I could just be strong enough and fast enough, I could undo what happened. If I could be the kind of boy who doesn’t need rescuing, I wouldn’t lose anyone else. But for the past few years, I’ve felt so numb inside whenever I returned to Balavata, that risking death and surviving it was the only way to truly feel alive. Stupid, I know.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid.” Blue’s eyes brimmed with tears, but her voice was steady. “I’m so sorry for all you’ve lost.”
“I’m sorry for all you’ve lost too.” He reached for her hand again and pulled her closer. She leaned against him, her head tipped against his shoulder, and for a moment he wasn’t a prince, and she wasn’t a commoner. They were just two grieving souls finding safe harbor in each other as they silently watched the storm rush toward them across the sea.
THIRTY-TWO
DINAH STOOD IN the front receiving parlor of the castle, Valeraine’s spell safely tucked in her chemise.