Page 12 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

“How I have missed you,” he said, setting her down. His weathered face was softened by his smile.

“How is Ama?”

“She misses you too. She finished her tapestry.”

Marjory smiled. “I can’t wait to see it.”

Her father’s eyes sparked with joy. “Then you will return with me?”

“I hope to, yes.”

“Let us go, then. I never get to surprise her anymore.”

Marjory took a step back and her father’s brow pinched in confusion.

“Adda, I want to return to you and Ama. But not without him.”

Her father scoffed. “He is a man. He cannot go where we go.”

“Ama did.”

He locked his gaze on hers. In his eyes, she saw millennia. She could see his hope and his anger and his love churning.

His voice was tight when he said, “Your Ama goes where I go because I love her enough to swell the seas and drown the land.”

She stood to her full height, drawing her shoulders back, her dark waves billowing and snapping behind her like a flag in a hurricane. “And I love him enough to make the seas run dry.”

He was quiet for a long time. Bargaining with himself, no doubt. Preparing to bargain with her.

“And if I refuse?”

She looked up into his face, blinking back sudden, stinging tears. Callum could be wounded or dying at this very moment. He’d been due home a week ago. That’s what the message he’d passed along to her had said. He was a week late.

But if he came home—whenhe came home, she said to herself—she could protect him. She could make it so he could not be killed, he could not be taken from her. Her father could give her this gift of his life, and she would never ask him for another thing again.

“If you refuse, I will spend eternity with a broken heart.”

She wasn’t trying to lay guilt at his feet. It was simply the truth. She would never stop grieving Callum if she lost him. She knew this deep down in her bones, between the marrow and the delicate web of mineral and salt. Her heart would break, and there would be no fixing it. Her father was the god of the sea and storm, not the god of the underworld. He might make a man immortal, but he could not raise him from the dead.

“Please, Adda,” she whispered, her voice crackling and thick. “Please.”

He sighed, a long, weary sigh that she felt as much as she heard.

“I cannot deny you anything, it seems. Even when I wish to.”

With a bright peal of laughter, she leapt into his arms again.

He patted her back before setting her away from him. “I do not like this. I do not likehim. But I love you. Your joy is my joy. Your sorrow is my sorrow. I only hope you do not come to regret this.”

“I won’t,” she gasped. “He is so good. You’ll see. He would never hurt me.”

Her father nodded. “Then I will return in a week. That should give you time to prepare him for his new life. May he come to deserve it.”

And with one last kiss to her cheek and a squeeze of her shoulder, he was gone, vanishing into the depths. She paced the beach for a while, too full of energy to sit still, all hope and fear and anticipation. After a while, she sat down once more in the sand, willing her breath to slow and her heart to beat more steadily instead of the battle frenzy it had been tattooing inside of her ribcage for the last week.

He was close. Maybe it was her magic. Perhaps it was merely their connection. But she could feel him drawing nearer. He would go to the cottage. She could picture him dropping his heavy sword and scabbard on the table with a thud, sitting in the chair to remove his various hidden dirks and daggers. He’d unstrap the ax from his back and hang it on the hooks on the wall. And then he’d come to the shore because he would know that she would be there.

She felt him getting closer still, and her heart pounded ungovernable in her chest again. The moon shone brightly, and she could feel her own joy and hope slicking out of every single pore. All would be well. All would be perfect.