Finally, Nalia finds what she’s looking for. She swims over to Grom and hands him a thin piece of metal, disfigured and burnt, but sharp enough on one side to accomplish the task at hand.
He palms it, inspecting its capacity for cutting hair, and doubting his own. “You’re sure?” he says, unable to look at her just yet. “You’re sure this is what you want?”
“Someone’s coming,” Freya says, stiffening into the classic Tracker pose. “Better get on with this.”
Nalia nods. “Do it,” she tells him. “Before anyone sees me like this.” She turns her back to him and offers up her burnt locks.
He turns the metal shard in his hand. “You’re sure?”
“Poseidon’s beard, just do it already!”
Before she’s done yelling, he’s holding her severed hair in his hands. She gasps and whirls around. He hands it to her. “I’m sorry.”
She cradles it in her hands like one of his mother’s human relics. Then, of all things, she laughs. “Can you believe that just happened? And we lived through it?”
When he doesn’t immediately respond, she shakes the mangled locks in his face. “Admit it, Triton prince. That’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to you. And you’re welcome.”
Grom bites back a smile and swats her hand away, but she persists until he’s forced to grab her wrist and restrain it behind her back. By now, he too senses Yudor, the Tracker trainer, approaching with others he doesn’t recognize. “I saved your life, then cut your hair,” he says, letting her go. “You’re welcome.”
The smile fades from her face. She looks back, obviously sensing the party coming to investigate the explosion. She turns back to Grom, hesitant. “About that,” she says, inching closer. The water between them seems to heat up, but that can’t be right, can it? When her nose almost touches his, she says, “Thank you for not leaving us.” Then she presses her lips against his, soft and slow, and he feels an explosion, just like the one from the death ship, only this one is coming from inside, and it feels like a hundred electric eels slithering over him, every part of him, shocking him to life.
There’s no reason to think about pulling her closer; his hands do that all on their own. There’s no reason to worry about who sees; he couldn’t care less. There’s no reason to think about his plan to woo her, then reject her; he knows now that there will never be a time when he will reject these lips.
These lips, this kiss, they’re everything he never knew he wanted.
Nalia pulls away suddenly, looking every bit as stunned as he feels. She clears her throat. “I’d better get going.” But her expression tells him that maybe she’d rather stay, that maybe she’d rather keep kissing.
Grom nods, in agreement with it all. She’d better get going. He wants her to stay. He wants to keep kissing.
She lets the carcass of her hair sink to the mud below them, and for the longest time, she only stares at it, won’t meet his eyes. The Tracker party is close, within sight, Grom knows, but still she stays, immobile and hesitant and stunning.
Then, without another word, without meeting his eyes, she turns and swims away.
He finds her with Freya, sitting on the outer rocks of The Crag, the deep chasm etched into the seafloor, where you could swim down for hours and never touch bottom. They’re both peering over the edge of the cliff, as if they’re actually contemplating going down there.
“Don’t even think about it,” Grom says. “Your lionfish spike won’t work on a giant squid.” He’s amazed how natural it feels to settle down next to Nalia and hang his fin over the ledge.
She smirks up at him. “We waited for you. You’re slow.”
He laughs. Freya would have sensed him for a while before he arrived, but did Nalia? Can she sense me as strongly as I sense her? “Some things are worth the wait.”
“You’re slow and delusional,” she says without bluster. She peeks back down into The Crag. “I want a tooth from a dangle fish.”
Grom shakes his head. Dangle fish live in the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean, where they dangle a light in front of themselves as a lure to attract unsuspecting prey. Their teeth are as long as his hand. The Crag is a good place to hunt for dangle fish. “What could you possibly need that for?”
She scrunches up her face.
Grom raises a brow at Freya, who sighs in defeat. She has gotten used to this game. “She wants it to make a gift for you. For your mating—Ow! Poseidon’s teeth, Nalia, he’s a Royal!”
Nalia points her finger in Grom’s face, almost up his left nostril. “You need to stop bullying her. Sometimes it not your business.”