Page 171 of The Stolen Throne
But he acts as though he doesn’t hear me or feel me, staring instead at the Reverie. I look warily between them. Who or what does he see?
“Meren…you’re unharmed,” Cain says to her. I can hardly hear him over the roar of the water, but I can read his lips.
Which means…
Cain sees me. I mean, the Reverie as me.
My heart cracks like someone took a hammer and chisel to it. I saw the difference. I saw it.
Why can’t Cain?
“What happened?” he yells at her.
I tug harder on his arm. “Cain! I’m right here. That’s not me.”
No reaction. I might as well be tugging on a dead branch. Under my touch, his arms—hands still glowing yellow—are straining. His entire body is tensed. The struggle of holding back the water has to be taking its toll.
“Cain!” I shake him, then again harder—nothing. It’s like I’m not even here.
I slap him hard enough that his head snaps to the side, but he stays entirely focused on her, as if that didn’t happen.
The Reverie smiles and holds up the amulets.
Cain’s eyes widen, and his lips crook in that familiar grin. “Good job. Let’s get out of here.”
The cracks in my heart threaten to shatter, spreading outward, weakening me. He loves me. How can he not see the difference? The malevolence in her?
I shove my wrist with his cuff in his face. “I’m the real Meren.”
The Reverie smiles and lifts her hand. In a swirl of mist, an identical cuff forms around her own wrist.
The way his chest expands, a cocky smile slipping into place is like a horse kick to the gut.
He closes the distance between them, bumping me aside like I’m not there, then slides his hands into her hair and kisses her. Just a soft brush before he pulls back to smile into her eyes.
“I knew it,” he whispers.
My jaw drops, and for a shocked second all I can do is gape as he kisses her again. I mean really kisses her. Exactly how I used to secretly dream he’d kiss me when I was thirteen summer solstices old and had started to notice him in a different way. The way he touches her is all Cain—gentle and commanding and somehow reverent all at the same time.
A touch meant for the girl he loves with all his heart.
I snap out of it. “Cain,” I holler, not that he hears me. “Cain!” I try to shake him free, but he doesn’t react. “It’s a trick! It’s not me!”
Pulling away from their kiss, he wraps an arm around the Reverie’s waist. A bubble of water forms under their feet and lifts them up the open column of the Whirlpool. I try to hold on, clinging to his arm until I’m dangling. But the Reverie gives me a solid kick in the chest and knocks me off.
I land on my hands and knees, lurching right into the wall of ocean that slams my head into the ground. Backing out, coughing and sputtering, I jump up, searching overhead.
I ignite my own power, calling on the sands to lift me up the way the water is lifting them. Only once Cain and the Reverie get about fifty feet above me, the water held back by his power lets loose, collapsing in and crashing down on top of me.
On a scream, I jerk my hands over my head in some misguided attempt to pull a glass bubble around myself. Instead, shock rams through my panic as shadows come from every direction—from the night sky above and from the depths of the surrounding ocean. They curl around me. In an instant, they obliterate the light, and everything goes abruptly quiet.
Shaking, I slowly lower my arms. Either I’m dead or…I’m in shadows.
“Reven?” I try tentatively, my throat raw from screaming and coughing and sea water.
Silence.
This doesn’t make any sense. I don’t feel him close. My scars are still stretched thin. I reach out in the darkness, trying to feel for…anything…and swear that a hand squeezes mine. Warmth, rather than cold fear, steals through me, and my muscles ease their shaking.
