Tempest Rising (34 page)

Kona had been a rock through the whole ordeal, despite the ugly things I’d said to him the day before. He’d stayed by my side, had fielded questions and condolences and basically kept people away from me. He’d wanted to come with me down the beach too, but I hadn’t let him. For me, saying good-bye to my mother was an intensely personal thing, though I had no idea how to do it.

I’m not sure how long I stood there staring up at her, a bouquet of fuchsia stargazers for her in my hand. Kona had given it to me earlier—another thing he’d thought of that had completely slipped my mind.

She’d been wrapped in an emerald green sheet of the finest silk so no one could see the destruction the Lusca had done to her. But then, I didn’t have to see it again to remember. Every time I closed my eyes it was there in gory detail. As she burned, the last of the sheet fluttered in the early afternoon breeze.

I was exhausted, my mind and body drained from everything I’d endured since leaving home. Even so, I’d lain in bed most of the night staring at the ceiling, afraid to close my eyes. Afraid to so much as blink. I’d eventually dozed off sometime before sunrise, but my dreams had been terrible things, odd glimpses of the moments before my mother’s death combined with images of Oliwa and those few seconds after I had plunged the shell into Malu.

As I laid the bouquet of stargazers next to the other flowers decorating the pyre, I wondered if Malu had a family. Were they somewhere right now doing this very same thing over
his
funeral pyre?

I hoped they were. Malu had died alone. No matter what he’d done, or what he’d planned on doing, nobody deserved that. I hoped he had a family that mourned him as I mourned my mother. As Kona and his family mourned his brother.

I figured I was supposed to say something profound to her as I stood here, to tell her all the things I hadn’t been able to say to her when she was alive. But I didn’t. Not because there weren’t things I wanted to say, not because I didn’t know how to say them, but because I didn’t believe she was up there. Her body, or what was left of it, was there, but the mother I knew—the one I wanted to talk to—was already too far gone from this place to hear me.

So I didn’t say anything at all. Instead I murmured a few small prayers left over from my childhood and then turned away. I didn’t want to be there when the fire finally went out. Then I simply turned and walked back in the direction of Kona’s house. I wanted to get out of this strange black dress and the heels that gathered sand. Wanted to get away from the prying eyes. Wanted peace.

But, in the end, I got none of those things—at least not in the time frame I was hoping for. I was about a half mile down the beach when I heard Kona calling my name.

I almost ignored him, almost kept walking, but something made me turn around and face him. Maybe it was the idea that now was as good a time as any to have it out between us—when I was so numb I couldn’t care about anything.

Only, he hadn’t called me to talk, at least not to him. Clutching onto his arm was an old woman in an emerald green suit the same color as my mother’s tattoos and tail. I wondered, vaguely, if it was a tribute to her, and then even that thought flew out of my head as Kona introduced us.

“Tempest, this is Queen Hailana. Your mother was her most trusted confidante for over three hundred years.”

What exactly am I supposed to say to that?
I wondered. It wasn’t like a curtsy and a how-do-you-do could compete.

The queen must have figured that I was completely out of my depth, because she reached one frail, trembling hand to mine and squeezed. “I adored Cecily. She was a daughter to me, a sister, a high-ranking member of my court, and the best friend I ever had.”

How nice for you to have seen that many sides of my mother
, I thought bitterly. Cecily had actually given birth to me, yet she hadn’t bothered to show me much more than the basics. And this woman, this queen, knew almost everything there was to know about her. Did she really expect me to be pleased about that?

In the end, she didn’t wait for me to comment. Instead, she said simply, “I have some things for you. They belonged to your mother.” Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a long, flat box made of mother-of-pearl. It had an odd clasp at the front and was inlaid with gold leaf on both sides.

She tried to hand it to me, maybe eager to be rid of its weight. But I recoiled the second it got close to me and the queen dropped it. Kona saved it by plucking it out of midair before it hit the ground.

They both stared at me, the queen with compassion and Kona with an emotion I couldn’t even begin to contemplate. If I did, I might never leave, and I had to get away from this whole sad, sorry mess. I had to get away from me, from the Tempest I was when I was down here.

“Don’t you want it, child?” the queen asked. “There are only a few things in it.”

“Of course I do,” I lied. “It just startled me. I have one almost identical to it back at home.” At least that much was the truth.

“Ahh, home. You mean San Diego?”

“Yes.”

Despite her age, the queen’s eyes were clear and shrewd when they looked at me. “Do you miss it?”

“Miss” was too mild a word for what I felt. I longed for it, longed for the way things had been only two short weeks before.

“You don’t have to answer that. I see that you miss it very much.” Her smile was sad when she continued. “Your father has done a wonderful job with you, Tempest. Please give him my regards when you see him again and tell him how dreadfully sorry I am that things ended up the way they have.”

“You know my father?” I blurted out the words before I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to care about her. Wasn’t supposed to care about anything.

“I met him, once, at your parents’ wedding. He was very charming and very handsome.”

That was my dad all right. “It was nice meeting you,” I told her. “Thank you for bringing me my mother’s things.” I turned away.

“Tempest.” There was an urgency to her voice that I couldn’t ignore.

“Yes?”

“Inside the box is a letter. From your mother. If you don’t take anything else from there, please take that. She made me promise to get it to you if anything ever happened to her.”

That’s when I knew I had to escape, knew that I wouldn’t be able to wait until morning. And there was no way I was taking that beautiful box—and its destructive contents—with me. I had enough guilt to last a lifetime. I didn’t need any more.

PART FIVE

K
ick-
O
ut

“Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll … Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.”

—L
ORD
B
YRON

Chapter 25

“So you have to go?” Kona’s face was paler than I had ever seen it, his mouth set in a grim line that reminded me I wasn’t the only one who had lost someone in the battle with Tiamat.

“I can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

“You know why not. Everything’s strange, foreign. I don’t fit in.”

“You’ve been here less than a week. Half that time you were unconscious and the other half you were battling sea monsters. I don’t think you can really use this time as an example of the norm.”

“Come on, Kona. This life isn’t for me. I don’t want to be mermaid. I never did.”

“Yeah, but do you really believe now is the time for you to be making that kind of decision? You’ve been through a lot. Can’t you just think on it for a few days?”

Why wouldn’t he just go away? Before all the emotions I’d been holding back came crashing to the surface and I lost it completely. He had to know how hard this was for me, saying good-bye to him when so much of my heart was tied up in his. Already I could feel the ice I’d wrapped around myself starting to melt, the numbness beginning to wear off.

I didn’t want that, couldn’t stand it. I didn’t want to feel right now—not what it felt like to be a murderer. Not what it felt like to know I would never see my mother again. And definitely not what it felt like to walk away from Kona.

I closed my eyes, worked on shoring up my defenses. If I didn’t look at him I couldn’t see the hurt in his eyes, the look that pleaded with me to stay with him. I wouldn’t be able to think about the small part of me that wanted nothing more than to do just that.

I won’t give in. I won’t give in.
I said the words firmly to myself, again and again, in an effort to keep the tears at bay.
I won’t give in.
If I did, if I let myself break down in front of Kona, if I let him comfort me, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to work up the strength to leave him.

He walked me down to the beach, his hand warm and soothing against the frigid skin of my bare back. “Here, take this,” he said when we were right at the edge of the water.

For the first time I realized he was carrying a small, waterproof backpack over one shoulder. “What’s in it?”

He grinned and for a second he looked like himself again, like the sexy, mysterious, happy guy who had ridden a wave all the way in to me. “A change of clothes—if that tail of yours comes back, your suit will rip and you’ll end up climbing out of the ocean in nothing but your bikini top.”

“That would be a bad thing.” I smiled at the image, then immediately felt guilty. How could I be smiling when my mother was dead? When Oliwa and Malu and so many others were gone as well?

“It would be a very bad thing, particularly if Mark or any of the other guys are out surfing.” It was the first time he’d brought up Mark’s name in days, and he nearly choked on it.

“I’m not going back because of him,” I offered, not sure why I needed to say it when I was so determined that things would end with Kona here.

“I know.” He shoved a hand through his hair and for one second looked much more like a vulnerable boy than the tough, strong guy I knew him to be. “Stay. Tempest. For me. For us. Please stay.”

I shook my head, backed away even as the need to do exactly what he said rose inside me. But I couldn’t. I had responsibilities back home—my family, school, Mark. I had a life back home.

Why then was it so hard to picture that life?

“It would be a disaster, Kona.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. I can’t spend my life pretending to be something I’m not.”

He shook his head and when he looked at me this time, I swore those silver eyes of his could see straight through the brave face I was putting on to the terrified girl who lurked just under the surface. “Funny. That seems to be exactly what you’re going to do.”

I stiffened, started to argue, but he laid a soft finger across my lips. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. You’re right—you need to be where you feel most comfortable. I just wish that was here with me.”

So did I. Dear God, so did I. The thought came to me too late, just as he lowered his mouth to mine. And then I couldn’t think of anything as my head started that familiar whirl it did whenever he kissed me. Only this time it was so much worse, because I realized that this really was the very last time he would ever hold me.

Thunder clapped across the sky, but I held it in check. This wasn’t the time for one of my temper tantrums. If this was the last moment I’d ever have with Kona, then I needed it to be about more than just dodging lightning.

Because he was so much more.

This time it was
my
hands that came up, my hands that cupped his face and held him to me as his lips moved over mine. He smelled so good, like cinnamon and the sea. Like love. I pressed myself against him, wanting to savor every sensation of this kiss. Not wanting to forget one single detail.

He inhaled sharply and tensed against me, then wrapped his arms around my back and pulled me even closer to him. So close that I could feel the tremors racking his body. So close that I could bathe in the heat of him.

It was a mistake—even as I did it, I knew that I was making a huge blunder. Because the numbness started wearing off the second he touched me, the cold dissipating under the onslaught of his warmth.

It soaked inside of me then, everything that was Kona and the two of us together. It lit me up from the inside, until there was nothing but the two of us, this moment and this kiss.

I wanted to devour him, to take everything I could get as my lips moved ravenously over his. I wanted to lose myself in his arms, to forget everything that was driving us apart and everything that might keep us together. If I could just get beyond the tenderness to the need, then maybe …

But he wouldn’t let me. Like me, he knew this was our last kiss. Unlike me, he wasn’t willing to waste it in the flash and dazzle of one quick moment of passion. Instead, he gave me the one thing guaranteed to choke me up, the one thing I didn’t want but desperately needed. Tenderness.

His mouth moved gently over mine, soft and sweet and oh so good. It was different from his other kisses, less exploration, more giving. And then it was my turn to tremble as his tongue stroked slowly over my own.