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THE MAKING OF A CHILD
Aknock sounded on Naia’s bedchamber door.
“Lady Naia, Lord Solaris is here to see you.”
Naia did not look up at Gianna, nor did she utter a response.
The door creaked. Footsteps shuffled. Gianna excused herself.
Solaris’s broad figure stepped into the warm glow of the candles lit in her bedchamber.
Naia did not acknowledge him as she continued weaving seashells on a string at her vanity. Her drawers were full of them from her long walks along the infinite shores of Kaimana. It was the only thing she could think to ease her mind after her father left her bedchamber.
“Naia,” Solaris said softly from beside her.
Naia’s frustration climbed up the back of her neck, heating the tips of her ears. With clenched teeth, she asked, “What do you want?”
“I hope you understand?—”
“Leave.” She had no interest in hearing his excuses.
“I am sorry, love.”
Her grip on the seashell between her fingers tightened as she crammed the straw through the small hole. “Fine. I forgive you.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Shut me out.”
The seashell slipped from between her fingers.
She snapped her head up at him. The reflection of the moonlit sea streaming through her skylight cast across his pinched brow and the look of torment in his eyes. “You are a fool if you expect anything different after what happened.”
He winced at the bite in her tone. “I cannot go against your mother.”
Naia slammed the half-finished bracelet down on her vanity and ripped up. Seashells scattered over the tops of her feet and across the moonstone floor. “You have disobeyed her wishes for months! We are supposed to lie together, but we do not!”
His eyes hardened on her. “That is different.”
“Forcing yourself upon me is no different from watching me drown, Solaris.”
“We are gods, Naia, we cannot die,” he said bitterly.
She balled her hands at her sides, fury warping her vision. “We may be immortal, but that does not mean we do not feel pain!”
“You are resilient.” He looked right at her, but she had never felt so unseen by another.
She gulped down the lump spreading in her throat, sick of crying for one night. “Just because I am resilient does not mean I am made of stone! You stole the jar and abandoned me to face the consequences. Trust comes in more than one form, and it broke for me as you sat silently and watched when she punished me for something you did. I do not wish to have relations with a man who has no honor.”
The hurt of her words flashed over his expression. Tension ground in his shoulders.
He shifted to face away from her, hands on his hips.
A long moment passed between them with heavy silence.
“You know what awaits us,” he said, his voice quiet and a forced steady. “We are to be husband and wife?—”
