Salt for Air by M.C. Frank

Author:M.C. Frank [Frank, M.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

30.

“I want to see you. The real you,” I tell him as soon as we’re alone.

He looks me up and down, and his eyes are serious and deep. Unblinking. “In the water?” His lip twitches.

“Well, yeah.” A thought strikes me. “Can you get into the water?”

“Can I…” He looks confused, like he doesn’t understand what the words mean.

But of course he does.

Has he ever been in the sea? He can’t have. Maia says he’s the prince of the ocean, and yet he hasn’t…My brain stops functioning. A fierce need to help him washes over me. Stop it, Ellie. Just stop it. “I mean is it safe?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention? Nothing is safe.”

“Ky…”

We’re on the third step, and as I say his name, he stops short and I bump against his shoulder. “What.”

“I’m sorry.”

Without turning, he reaches out a hand and touches my wrist. “Are you mocking me by apologizing?” He whispers. “To me?”

“I’m not. I mean, I am sorry because I know nothing about you. What were you doing before you met me?”

“Training,” he replies immediately.

Oh, so we’re having this conversation right here, crammed on the attic steps, with his bun nearly touching the slanted ceiling and my hand circled in his fingers. I shift my weight and stand there, to listen.

“Until I was fifteen, I spent all my nights training. Every single one of them. And other than that…nothing. I waited. I survived. I could have been learning so many things, how to be a friend, how not to be afraid…How to be a decent human. But I didn’t.”

“How could you?” I murmur. “You were fighting for your life.”

His eyes don’t leave mine. “You did,” he says quietly. “Anyway, I’ve never had a job, not even a summer job, it was too dangerous. This is the closest I’ve ever been to the sea.”

There doesn’t seem to be more that he wants to say, but he’s not moving. I swallow. “Training for what?”

“To survive the Vathi. To fight. I trained in my true form, I can handle it as well as I would if I’d been raised in the Kingdom since childhood. But it was always in bathtubs and flooded showers. A few years in pools, but then I got too big and my foster parents got too mean, so...” He lets go of my hand, to grab the nape of his neck.

“So you’re trained in combat.”

“Well, as a Kingdom creature I am. As a human…” He shrugs. “You saw.”

“I barely saw, it was less than a second. Who trained you?”

“He did,” he says and his voice takes on a quiet, reverend tone. “He crossed worlds and risked everything, his rank, his name, his life, to train an angry kid who had trouble keeping his legs human every time he so much as broke into a sweat.”

“He who?”

“The Defender,” he replies simply, as if that’s enough explanation, and starts descending the stairs again.

I hesitate a bit, then follow. “So about seeing you…”

“I’ll need Lorelei.” He says, talking quickly, as if he’s worried I’ll change my mind.

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