FLOOD

First Contact

Eli and I had a quick, whispered conversation in the hallway after Charlotte had gone.

"I'm coming with you. All the way there," he said, and it wasn't a question.

"I told you that already." I folded my arms over my chest, raising a brow at him. "I don't see what we're fighting about."

He had the grace to look embarrassed, and his expression softened. "I'm sorry. I just mean, I have a tendency to get left behind."

I flinched. He might as well have said I had a tendency to leave people behind. "Well, it's not going to happen this time. I told the king and queen we need you to take us there. That you're the only one who remembers the way there." I blinked at him when a wide smile spread over his face. "What?"

"Do you really not remember, or are you lying so I can come?"

I felt heat rush to my ears, and I was thankful I'd let my hair remain loose around my shoulders today. It would be the ultimate humiliation to be caught blushing like a school girl. "I was sort of in a rush to leave when we escaped," I said, and kept my voice as even as I could. "I don't trust myself to direct an entire army there."

Eli looked like he was biting back a smile. "Okay then."

Part of me wanted to smack the stupid grin off his face. Had he stepped closer to me? Suddenly he seemed very near. Close enough to see that that the top button on his shirt had come undone. To catch a glimpse of the tanned skin beneath it.

Close enough to reach out and grab his shirt collar, if I wanted to.

Not that I wanted to.

Downstairs the clank of plates and the drumming of heavy footsteps jerked me out of my thoughts. The noise had increased, which meant the army was getting ready to move out.

I cleared my throat and met Eli's dark eyes. "Are you ready to lead an army?"

He grinned. "You make it sound way cooler than it actually is."

I turned for the stairs. "It's cool. But when the fighting comes, you stay with me. You stay behind me. You're not a fighter."

"Neither are you."

"Yeah." I paused halfway down the staircase, tossing him a smirk over my shoulder. "But I can still kick your ass, and I'm not even a soldier."

We moved out a half hour later. Eli and I were in the front, with Eli pointing the way forward every so often, scanning the skyline with a frown creasing his brow.

At first I was struck by a wild fear that he wouldn't actually remember the way back. I would look like a fool in front of the king and queen and we would never find the island and Fiske.

But I should have trusted him, because Eli lead us straight and true for the next two days. Eventually I started to recognize things here and there, the forest became familiar. As if, in the midst of my anxiety, certain features of the landscape had imprinted on my unconscious mind. There was the big rock that Eli and I had rested beside, eating the last of the seaweed that King Aegir had provided. And a little while after that, the bent tree that looked like a chair.

We were getting closer to the sea.

A knot had been growing in my stomach for the last hour. I kept imagining us getting to the water and then not being able to go any further. The way I'd described it to the king and queen, I'd made it seem like I could simply summon King Aegir, and the sea god would show up and do my bidding.

That had sounded great back in the palace. But for all I knew I would call on King Aegir and he would laugh at me. Maybe his good temper and invitation to come live with him had merely been a mood he was in. Weren't the gods famous for their moods?