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“It’s not me,” I snapped.
He pushed away, struggling to stand, when another, louder explosion went off, this one closer to us. Flames rushed through the hall, and large chunks of metal flew toward us, all of it headed for him.
I tackled him, pushing him to the ship's floor. He hit the ground with a thud, and I cried out in pain as the metal shrapnel raked across my back. His eyes lit, triumphant silver meeting mine. I realized what I’d just done and how it proved everything I’d said was a fucking lie. I pushed up and opened my mouth to hurl more insults at him, to prove I was still a lost cause, but the ocean beat me to it. Waves rushed forward, stealing our air and sucking us into the sea.
Santiago said Kaden had a contingency plan. If he failed to bring the shipment, if I had caught and killed him, the ship would blow up, and the cargo would go with it.
Kaden did not want to be found, and he was determined to make sure he wasn’t.
Thirteen
Samkiel
I blinked, slowly regaining consciousness. I felt the tug on my arm, strong hands dragging my body through the fine-grained sand. My vision swam, and my head throbbed, but I saw her. A goddess pulled me farther from the lapping waves. Had Oceanuna found me lost and adrift? I saw her lithe form, the large gash on her back slowly healing. Her dark, wet hair clung in a tangled mass to her shoulders and back. My body hit the ground with a thud, and my throat burned as I spit up thick, heavy salt water, my chest heaving and my vision blurry as I came to. Red eyes stared down at me. Not Oceanuna. Not a goddess. An Ig’Morruthen. My Ig’Morruthen.
“Dianna?”
As soon as I spoke, she was gone. Her form returned to the dark as if it owned her, and a part of me feared it might.
* * *
“You look rough,” Vincent quipped as I entered the main building back in Silver City. We were several floors up, and I’d hobbled through drenched in seawater, my shoes squeaking an ungodly amount. I had not gone unnoticed. “I’m starting to believe every time you leave that you will come back in disarray.”
“No more televised interviews. I want my face completely erased from the past ones. If the mortals wish to hear words of affirmation, you will do it, Vincent.”
“O-okay,” he stammered.
Dianna’s words rang through my skull once more. How careless and stupid was I not to realize how that would sting? I put my title, my job, before her.
I shook my head, ignoring the celestials gawking at me.
My wounds had healed, but my clothes remained slashed and tattered. I looked like I had fought off a wild beast, and some would say I had, but she was mine, and she held a part of me no one had touched before. My heart ached far more than the soreness now ebbing from my body.
Vincent strode next to me, a worried expression on his face. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
He grunted. “And I am assuming the ship is no more?”
“It’s currently at the bottom of the ocean. In pieces.”
“Santiago?”
“Dead.”
He shook his head. “She really is killing everyone involved.”
“It wasn’t her.”
We reached an elevator, and Vincent leaned forward to press the button. “You did it?”
“Santiago was one of the lowest of the low. No one will miss him, and I do not take kindly to those who attack me,” I said, my voice deepening to a low growl.
Or her.
Vincent nodded. “I am very well aware I just assumed we would hold him longer for information. Unfortunately, we still have nothing.”
The elevator door opened up, and we stepped inside. Information? All he’d given me were stories I assumed were wrong. Azrael still alive? Alistair on Rashearim when it fell. Stories. They had to be. I would know. I would have felt it.
