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Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.”
Isobel stopped there. Because that was where the words dissipated.
She frowned, feeling the thump of her heart grow heavy while she waited. The right-hand page remained bare. Could it be that was all he recalled of the poem?
Then Varen spoke, picking up the lines from the memory that hadn’t failed him, after all.
“But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”
He stopped there. Pulling his hand free of hers, he rose.
As he did, the boards beneath them began to loosen, softening into . . . sand?
Isobel gasped when the support at her back vanished, and she would have fallen if not for the hand that caught hers just as a surge of warm water rushed in around them.
When Varen pulled her to her feet, sunlight—blinding—broke through the dissolving walls, illuminating the crystalline waters that now enveloped her legs.
Varen drew Isobel to him, and she saw that his clothes had changed. In place of his long coat, he wore an old-fashioned charcoal waistcoat and, beneath it, a white stiff-collared shirt, sleeve cuffs rolled to the elbows.
Isobel pressed her hands to his chest, stunned and entranced by how much the timeless style seemed . . . right. Almost as if she’d always known him this way.
At her legs, she felt clinging folds of fabric much longer than her tattered pink party dress. She looked down to see that she now wore an off-the-shoulder gown the hue of white wine. Small burgundy bows held gathers of the fine material, pinning it around her in elegant drapes.
Touching her brow, her fingertips found a crown of velvet-soft flowers.
In a flash, she remembered the statue she’d found next to Varen in the courtyard and realized he’d transformed her into the living version.
A new wave surged in around them, and as it did, Varen swept her up and out of the water’s path. He swung her in a slow circle as the water rolled and crashed, frothing white.
Isobel’s heart swelled with the sea. She felt weightless in his arms.
Enwrapping his neck, she leaned in close, laughing as the spray of water sprinkled their skin and beaded in his dark hair like minuscule diamonds.
Pastel-yellow rays sliced through the puffy pink-and-blue-bellied clouds that gathered overhead. Straight as arrows, the light shot down to meet the glittering sea.
