Page 57 of These Godly Lies
She waits, her eyes lingering on the spot she last saw him. The ocean is calm, but it does nothing to ease the frantic beating of her heart when a minute passes, then two, and he has yet to emerge.
The waves stutter. Shift.
Instead of crashing on the shore, the tide recedes until she sees Khiran’s dark head. The seapartsaround him, a wall of water on each side. Seawater drips from his hair as he plucks a piece of seaweed from his shoulder, lips thinning in irritation, before he flicks it away. The wall of water devours it eagerly.
“Come,” he says. “Kaia’s waiting for us.”
Kaia, the woman who once stepped from the depths of a river when he was a boy instead of a god. The one Eira once called friend.
Anna tentatively steps forward, heart in her throat and pulse drumming in her ears with such volume that it drowns out the tide. There are few things Anna fears anymore—she has lived through burning pyres and bombs of war and walked away unscathed.
The thought of drowning terrifies her.
A fire will eventually burn out and a dropped bomb only goes off once, but the sea… the sea is endless. If these walls of water crash around her, if the current sweeps her away, there is no limit to how many deaths she will suffer. A never ending cycle of choking, her body fooled into gasping for air even when she sees nothing but water. It’s the worst torture she can imagine.
When Khiran had left her on that island so many years ago, she thought she might lose herself in the fight between starving and drowning. Sometimes she thinks the only thing that kept her from giving up and going into the ocean was the fear that he might never be able to find her at the bottom of it. Being that she never learned how to swim, drowning was as good as guaranteed. It was safer to stay and starve.
Warily, she eyes the wall of water as it rises the farther in she walks. When it grows taller than her head, she hesitates.
Gently, Khiran folds his hand over hers, easing it away from where she has it tucked to her chest. “Don’t be afraid. Once we go a little deeper, the path to shore will be swallowed back up by the ocean, as will the open sky above us. It can be an unnerving experience, but I promise there is nothing to fear.”
Nodding numbly, Anna squeezes his hand with more force than needed, and allows him to lead her deeper. As he had warned, the path behind her is slowly washed away with a gentle sweeping of the tide. Anna’s surprised by how gentle it is. She had expected it to be crashing, a show of power. Instead, it’s like tucking a child into bed, the smooth sweeping of a blanket being pulled up to a little one’s chin.
Then the water spills over their heads, an invisible ceilingholding it up, and Anna has to close her eyes and stop. Khiran, ever patient, waits for her to collect herself.
Finally, when she feels she can breathe without the risk of hyperventilating, she reopens her eyes. It’s darker now that there’s no unobstructed view of the sky. When she looks up, she can still make out the distorted light of the sun bathing her face in rippled sunlight. A school of fish darts over their head, casting dappled shadows.
She releases her breath, but it barely touches the tightness in her chest.
Khiran reaches for her hand, lacing their fingers. “It can feel overwhelming.”
Swallowing, she confesses, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt claustrophobic like this.”
“I understand.” He squeezes her hand. Right now, it feels like he might be the only thing tethering her to the ocean floor and keeping her from being swept away. “Would it help to close your eyes? I could guide you.”
Anna thinks it over before shaking her head. “No. I think—I think that might be worse, honestly. Let’s just walk. Maybe moving will help. Just, please don’t ask me how I’m doing,” she says, because she knows without a doubt that her answer will only serve to remind her of how verynotfine she is.
“As you wish.” Gently, he pulls on their connected hands, subtly guiding her into taking those first few steps.
She only manages three before the wall of water shifts, wicking away from the path ahead of them, but to Anna the movement feels like a warning that all of it will come crashing down.
“Breathe, Anna.”
She is, isn’t she? Her heart is hammering against her ribs with enough strength that her entire chest feels like it rattles with every beat. No, he’s right. There’s no air in her lungs. She takes a breath. Holds it. Forces it out. Again. Again. Again. But the panic isn’t receding. It’s rising up and over her head, the strength of it sweeping her away, crashing down on her until—
“Look at me.”
She does. Because it’s a command. Commands are easier tofollow than the twisting, dark thoughts screaming at her to run, hold her breath, dig her hands into the ocean floor so she can claw her way back to shore.
Khiran’s eyes look darker here in the deep, the blue and green drowned by shadows, but they’re calm. Controlled. Anna seizes it with the same desperation as she does his offered hands. It is only feeling the steadiness of his touch in her white-knuckled grasp that makes her realize she’s trembling.
He takes a step backward. Over his shoulder, the water ripples. “Don’t look behind me,” he scolds, his grip on her sliding up her palms until his fingers snare her wrist.
Anna likes it. The hold he has on her feels stronger, less likely for her to be ripped away from him. She mimics the motion. He’s sure to sport bruises and the imprints of her fingernails later, but she can’t bring herself to loosen her grip.
“Look only at me. Do you understand?”
Tightly, she nods, forcing the breath in and out of her lungs and pinning her gaze to his.
