The Shell and the Star - Part 26

Welcome back to Part 26 of my aquatic Science Fiction Romance. 

If you're just finding this story for the first time, you can catch up on all the parts posted to date at this link:

 The Shell and the Star

If you've been reading along each week, first of all -- THANK YOU! This marks the beginning of the end of the story. But don't worry, there are still plenty of twists and turns--and maybe even a few backspins--as the story continues.

Last week we left Jinn on a lonely stretch of sun-baked rock, where she had walked, crawled and slithered to meet her fate. But Fate sometimes has other ideas. 

“What have you done, Jinn?” The angst-filled voice roused her from delirium. She opened her eyes to find a blurred form standing over her. Who?

Trey?

What?

Alive?

How?

Where?

Or was this only a fevered dream? Because this was not the Trey she knew—her gentle, confident, loving Trey—this was a shadow of his memory. A grim, defeated shadow.

Trey? Her Trey?

How could he look so sorrowful when she had found him again? He was here? There was still a chance for them. Or was this all just a final, fevered dream. A fading desire.

“Trey,” she wheezed, fighting the stabbing agony in her arms to reach for him.

“Shhh,” he hissed, kneeling beside her. “Don’t talk.” He slid an arm behind her back and raised her shoulders. “Drink.”

Feeling a drinkbulb at her lips, she parted them eagerly. He tipped the contents of glorious, sweet, wet, wonderful liquid into the desert that had once been her mouth. She clutched his wrists, drinking in greedy gulps of liquid salvation.

Choking. Drinking more.

“That’s enough.” His voice sounded gruff. Brusque. Lacking the regard she’d once heard in his words. He eased her back. “Rest.”

“You’re alive,” she breathed. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” he echoed, his voice quiet and flat.

Jinn blinked the sting from her eyes, trying to make sense of her surroundings. “What is this place?”

“A secret,” Trey replied darkly, “that I never had the chance to show you.”

“Secret?” Jinn slurred, fighting that darkness that wanted to claim her.

She curled her fingers beside her hip, feeling not hot rock and scorching sand, but softness. A downy pallet that cradled her body. Like her cushioned rack on Talstar?

“How did you know to find me here?” he asked harshly.

“I didn’t. I came here....” Jinn turned her head away, fatigue smothering her last words in a breathy whisper. “To die.”

“Jinn?” His voice sounded alarmed, but hollow and distant. He leaned over her, darkness in his gaze. Darkness all around her.

She let the blackness pull her down.

***

In time, she heard a voice again. “Are you hungry?”

She roused, blinking the fog from her eyes. “What?”

“I have soup,” he said. Trey’s voice. He was still here. Maybe this wasn’t just the fog of delirium then.

She felt him prop something soft behind her back and his weight settle on the cushion when he eased down beside her. But he didn’t hold her. Didn’t take her hand in his. Didn’t touch her at all.

“Where did you find soup?”

She recalled a short and foggy conversation when he’d asked how she’d found him here. But where was here?

She remembered black rocks. Climbing. Then crawling. Heat. Pain. Bleeding. Thirst.

Dying.

But then, his voice. Like an archangel. Like the heavens spilling open and plucking her out of hell.

“Where is this?” she croaked.

“Just eat.”

He touched her lips with the edge of a spoon and tipped the delicious warmth into her mouth. She savored the brothy flavors, almost choked in her hurry to swallow.

“Take it slow.”

More spoonfuls followed.

“It’s good,” she mumbled, drawing strength as she neared her fill. “Why is it so dark here?”

“It’s night.”

“Night?” Jinn squinted. “How—“

“You’ve been unconscious.”

“For how long?”

“A time. Eat now. When you’re strong enough, I’ll contact your father to take you back to Talstar.”

She swallowed another mouthful and shook her head. “I can’t go back. I defied my father…so I could return to you”

He stilled, lowered the spoon back to the bowl. “Why would you do this?”

“I had to. I had to come back to tell you…that I love you, Trey.” She angled her head to see his expression in the twilight but he wouldn’t look at her.

“Don’t say those words.” His shoulders went taut. “You rejected my bid.”

“My words weren’t meant to be a rejection.”

“You spoke the words --the traditional words--that signal rejection of a bid. And they were witnessed. That made me a pariah among the Perling. My father saw to it that I was pledged to another.”

“I heard.” Jinn drew a long breath and closed her eyes. “So this was your father’s doing? It wasn’t your own choice.”

“What does it matter? I have pledged myself to another, she accepted, and I am bound by law and my honor to take her as mate. There’s no place for you here now. No place in my life.”

Jinn cringed, ducking her head as if his words had dealt her a physical blow.

He rose to his feet and turned away.

“They all think you’re dead,” Jinn said. They think you swam into the Deep.”

“I didn’t,” he whispered on a shattered breath.

“I’m the only one who knows that.”

“Then I can’t let my family go on believing I would take my own life.” He paused, then added in a low voice, “That I would dishonor them in this way.”

“What will you do?”

He turned back to face her. “Return home.”

A spark of hope flared inside her. “What if we go together? What if you tell your father this was all a misunderstanding?” She strained to see into his eyes in the gloom. “That we…love…each other.”

He didn’t deny it, but his reply held no warmth. “What I feel for you changes nothing.”

“We completed the Ritual of Pairing, and I never said ‘no’ to your bid. Doesn’t that stand for anything?”

He looked down at her a long while, his silence reflecting confusion and sorrow and regret and defeat. “Not among the people of the Shell. Not in my father’s eyes.”

“I’m not of the Shell. My words weren’t meant as a rejection, only a request for more time to sort out our future. I didn’t know your ways. I risked everything to come back so I could accept your bid for my hand. My future belongs to you, and only you.”

In the deep shadows of the place, she saw his fists clench. Saw his head drop in anguish. Finally, he uttered three words--“Don’t do this.”--before striding away into the twilight.

Too heart-heavy to argue, too bone-weary to follow, Jinn closed her eyes. Perhaps when sleep had swept the sun’s muddle from her head she’d find the words to convince him their future was worth fighting for.

______________________________________________

Can Jinn find a way to convince Trey that their future isn't already set in stone? Or is Trey done with her forever?

Check back next Monday to find out if love really can overcome any obstacle.

(There are only eight more parts to this story!)

And have a great week!