A knot forms in my throat. All those days and nights convincing myself that Enduvida was behind me, and my future was Shvathemar, but they hadn’t given up on me.
My eyes burn.
“So Mrath plans to become the next queen?”
Vann hums a yes. “But…I worry about that plan. She gave me a small magical object that we were meant to take to the throne. A seed, if you remember from when I first grabbed you. That seed is lost.”
“Fuck,” I say. “Is it really necessary to her plan.”
“From what I understand, yes.”
“So even if she comes?—”
“—she cannot truly take power. To sit upon the Throne of Living Wood while unworthy could lead to death.”
That puts an instant damper on our conversation. I wonder if all of this and everything is in vain.
“So now that it’s gone, does she have another way to fix the throne?”
“I don’t know,” he starts. “I hope for the best. I have to.”
The possibility of death looms over me anew.
Vann breaks the silence again, slicing through my fearful thoughts. “You know, I once knew a story about a man who fell in love with a lake spirit.”
I am taken aback. After everything, it’s such a mundane thing to say. After the pain and anxiety. The separation and isolation, it feels like coming home.
“Oh?” I take his bait.
He hums. “In a scroll I think you’d like. When we make it out of this alive, when we go home, I can find it for you.”
My gut twists.
“Why don’t you tell me now?”
He pauses. “All right.”
I hear him shift closer, recognizing the small bits of me that are giving him an opening. Maybe that’s dangerous, but maybe it would be nice to hear a story.
“Each dawn, this man left offerings of lilies and honey on the water’s edge, and each dusk, she sang to him from beneath the reeds,” he says. “Each day, he would wade a little farther into the water. The villagers said the songs would drown him, but he stayed anyway.”
I am familiar with the tone Vann uses when telling a story. It is soft and gentle. Very…him.
“One day, when he was deep enough to be totally submerged, at the point when everyone thought that he would drown and die, his love came. Love did not devour his soul. Instead, she…” His voice stops.
I turn my head to the side, looking at the hole. “She what?”
“She kissed him.” He sounds breathless.
Gods. It has been such a short time since I last saw him, but the tone in his voice brings back every memory. I remember his kisses with such fierce detail. On my lips, my hair, my hands, my breasts. My skin, now free from the fever, burns again.
And suddenly, I long for the greenhouse, when he grabbed my face after weeks of not seeing me and devoured me. I remember the delicious pressure. The taste of him. I miss it.
My own breath goes shallow, and I wonder if he can hear it.
“He must’ve died then,” I say softly. “I doubt he would’ve survived a kiss for long.”
I think I can hear that bastard smile. “The opposite. She gave him the power to breathe underwater, and they made a home at the bottom of the lake.”