Aqua Coral's Arc

Chapter 6 of 16

The next morning Aqua found Alden again at the rooftop basin. He stood at the wall, still looking south out of habit. She watched him and felt the closeness she had won turn heavy. He waited three years for a woman he could not name. Now she feared he loved that woman, not her. Not the half-fish thing with scales on her cheeks. She stepped forward. Her heart pounded. Better to break it now than let it break slowly. "You looked south for a dream," she said. "I'm not a dream. I have scales. My hands are rough. I can't stay dry long." She held her arm out. Light blue scales caught the sun. "This is what you get. Not the picture you kept." Alden turned from the wall. He looked at her arm. He did not soften his face. "I remember your hands," he said. "Rough. I noticed them on the rocks. Not your face. Your hands." He paused. "I didn't keep a picture. I kept a fact. A woman was dying. I stopped." "But you called me a dream." "Because you vanished. Dreams vanish." He stepped closer. "You're standing here. That's not a dream." Aqua's breath caught. Her scales read the small shift of air as he moved. "A king can't want a fish," she said. Her voice cracked. "Your people saw my scales at the gate. They knew what I was before you did." "They knew," Alden said. "They still opened the gate." He reached out and touched the scales on her cheek. His finger was warm. He did not pull back. "I built waves into stone before I knew why. Now I know. It was you. All of it was you." Aqua stood still under his hand. She had braced for a wall. She had braced for a kind lie. She got neither. He touched the part of her she hid, and he stayed. "Say it plain," she said. "No soft words." Alden dropped his hand to hers. He turned it over and looked at the rough palm. "I don't want the dream," he said. "I stopped looking south. I want the woman who told me to." Aqua let out a breath she had held for two days. The fear did not vanish. But it stopped ruling her. She closed her fingers around his. "Then I'll stay," she said. "Not as a guest. If you'll have me." "I'd love to have you." He blushed. They stood at the wall together. Aqua no longer felt the pull to run. She had asked the hard question and gotten a true answer. But she thought of Seph then, out hunting the man who threatened her, sure that kings only keep what they want. She had chosen to stay. Now she had to tell her brother she had maybe married her heart to the king he did not trust yet. And what’s more, to manage her store from afar.