Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,96
waves lapping at mollusk-eating birds with mind-bendingly long beaks and hordes of minuscule horseshoe crabs the color and texture of glossy pink confectionaries in a box. Thickets of mangroves guard the litmus between sea and sand, their roots like bark soldiers standing alert and waist-deep in gemlike water.
But it’s the sound I like most.
No one tells you the ocean sings. They say it’s there, and that it’s big and dangerous and deep, but never that it has its own orchestra, constantly playing a soothing symphony as the waves scrape across the shallows and back again. It’s almost like breathing, like the world of Arathess itself is breathing.
“It’s—” I pucker my lips, my hands wet with cupped seawater. “It’s salty!”
“Of course it’s spiritsdamn salty!” Malachite shouts from his place stalwartly far away from the water’s edge. “It’s the ocean! You were on a ship for like, three days! How’d ya miss that?”
“No one threw me overboard to taste it!” I shout. “That was your job!”
“Come in, Mal!” Lucien calls, his pants rolled up as he wades the shallows with me.
“So the two of you can pull me under and drown me?”
“With love!” I insist. “Drown you with love!”
“Ugh.” He wrinkles his nose. “Pass.”
Lucien shoots a sly look to me, and I to him.
“On the count of three?” the prince proposes.
“Absolutely,” I agree.
“One, two, three—”
We dash out of the water and make a beeline for Malachite, and he tries to run to the safety of the tidepool rocks, but with Lucien holding his arms and me grabbing his weak spot ever so slightly (ears), we manage to drag him down the beach.
“You little—” He quickly pulls his sword off and throws it in the sand as the water approaches, desperately trying to do the same to his chainmail. “The salt’s gonna ruin my armor—”
“And we’ve had quite enough of you ruining our fun!” I chide, helping him unhook his chainmail and tossing it in the sand. With his massive strength, he could fight us off anytime he wanted, ear-captured or not, and that’s how I know he’s all right with it. Secretly. Deep down. Where no one else can see.
With Mal shed of his metal, Lucien smirks at me in an unspoken plot as he cries, “Heave, ho!”
We crash into the water face-first, dragging Malachite down with us. Salt floods my ears, my nose, the ocean so much warmer with the sun on it. It’s not bathwater, but it’s close, and the sensation of the tide pulling and pushing is perhaps the closest my unremembering Heartless arse can come to recalling what being a child in a crib was like. Malachite squirms, and I let his ear go, Lucien releasing his arms, and we surface, the waves tossing us as playfully as we splash the beneather’s face relentlessly the second he comes up.
“Stop!” Malachite snarls, eyes blinking rapidly with the assault. “Stop, stop it! I’ll duel the both of you!”
“Revenge is sweet!” I tackle him from behind and smack my mouth. “And a little salty!”
Lucien stops splashing, and there’s a moment where Malachite glares daggers into him, me hanging like a monkey on his back and grinning around his shoulder. Lucien’s smirk lights up his handsome face as he dares to flick one last tiny bit of water onto Malachite with two fingers, and Malachite explodes, scrabbling for the nimble prince as he swims away. I’m too heavy to swim with, and Malachite claws for me.
“You flirty little shit! Get off me!”
My shrieking laughter echoes up the beach, Lucien’s light taunts sending Malachite into a hilariously frothing rage as he tries to swim after the prince with my added weight. At some point I decide to let go and allow the boys to kill each other, Lucien’s taunts turning to pleas and Malachite gloating as he gives the prince a terrible underwater noogie.
And I just…float. The sun beams in the blue sky, blue-green sea rising up to kiss it. The water in my ears mutes the world, covers it in a muffled, gentle blanket so that all I can hear is the sand swishing and the sound of the air in my body moving in and out. I feel so small, in such a big ocean. In such a big world. Vetris had been my everything for so long, and the forest before that. Always confined to cramped spaces, wasn’t I? But I’ve seen more of Cavanos now than ever. More of the world than ever.