Chapter 9: Not Forgiveness

Melina's POV

I ran out of the Tide Court before anyone could say my name.

I heard the shouting behind me in the cavern, and the old keeper's cracked voice rising over it, and Ligeia's high and furious.

"She is a washed-up mortal! The man is senile!"

I did not stop to hear the answer.

I climbed the sea stair three steps at a time and came out into daylight.

I sat down on the first dry stone I found.

My hands would not stay still.

A queen.

Ten years of a voice in the dark, and I had never once let myself ask whose name it was.

I had told myself it was a lullaby the sea sang to every castaway.

Footsteps came up the stair.

They were slower than they had been that morning, and I knew whose they were.

"I'm not going to say anything," said Kyros.

He stopped three steps below me.

He was bareheaded, with the pale band of skin on his finger where the ring had been.

"You gave it up," I said.

"I did."

"For Zoe."

"For both of you." He rubbed the bare finger with his thumb. "I didn't know it was both when I did it."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

"You have half a sea left."

"It's more than I deserve."

"You told them she wasn't yours."

"She isn't."

"You paid half your power for her anyway."

"Yes."

I looked at his face for a long time.

It was the face I had slept beside for four years, grey with tiredness.

There was a nick on his jaw where he had shaved in a hurry.

Everything I had believed was true about him had been true, and none of it was the whole of it.

"Walk me home," I said.

"To the loft?"

"Yes."

At the net store Stavros met us on the stairs with his cap in his hand.

"I took the girl to my sister's in the lower town," he said.

"She has six cousins and a goat.

I thought you might want the night."

He looked at the sea lord with no friendliness at all, then at me.

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