The Witch's Hunger (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 3) by Katherine Sparrow

 
     
     
     
     
    1
    Do Anything
    I lay on my back and took in the cloudless sky and unblinking sun. The deep-green water of Belize held me as I drifted out into the ocean. I sucked in breath, curled into a ball, and let myself sink down into the watery depths, so clear I could see silvery fish swimming through orange coral fifty feet away.
    I sank to the bottom, twelve feet down, and let my toes sink into the clay-like sand. I grabbed a lovely conch shell, and then pushed my feet hard against the ground and arrowed up, like flying in slow motion.
    His unsuspecting body lay above me. The man who had once been my greatest enemy treaded water, unsuspecting of what lay beneath. I erupted into the air beside him and splashed his face.
    Merlin wiped water off his cheek as I moved closer to him and kissed his fine lips. His arms circled around my waist.
    "Do you think we can hear the ocean while we are inside of the ocean?" I asked, holding up the conch shell.
    I pressed it to my ear. All I could hear was my own breathing. Merlin took the large shell from me, and a stray barnacle cut his palm open. Blood dripped from the wound. He cursed as the salt water sank into his cut.
    "Gwella," I said, and kissed the ruby stone on my pinkie ring before touching it to Merlin's hand. My healing spell mended the wound, but there was still blood in the water. I looked around and saw that the gray fins that had been safely swimming in the distance were getting closer.
    Merlin noticed them, too. I wore a bikini and he swim trunks. Neither of us had any defensive spells on us.
    "Come, sharks, and do your best," Merlin murmured with a half-smile on his face.
    The sharks circled closer and the water began to churn. Being immortal didn't mean one couldn't die, but merely that we did not age. I waited for Merlin to do something clever.
    He did nothing but make a half-assed punching motion toward one of them and then began laughing. "Oh. That tickles."
    Before I could begin to conjure up some sort of makeshift killing spell, I began laughing, too. One of the sharks gently butted my side and nuzzled against me. "What is this sorcery?" I asked as the sharks continued to playfully move against us.
    "Nurse sharks, a gentle species within a ferocious family. I was hoping to meet them on this journey. They remind me of you."
    I kissed him again, right there among the sharks.
    We swam back to the land. I felt bone-deep relaxed in that way of being truly warmed through. I had made reservations at the open-aired restaurant perched on the end of the beach, and we walked there holding hands and easily matching our strides. Because we belonged together. Always. So what if the world looked more and more gray as the hours passed? So what if I was hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food? I was having a harder time focusing on anything as that hunger grew with every passing moment. Who cared? I had Merlin. Life was wonderful.
    It grew harder to feel that as day turned toward night.
    We drank tall glasses of beer with lime and ate tacos with shrimp so fresh I could taste the ocean on my tongue. Merlin told me about places we should go to next on our extended vacation. He wanted to take me on the quest for the perfect cup of gelato in Florence, and then on to Paris on the quest for amazing street art. We ordered a dessert made of layers of different chocolate, and they brought it to us with two spoons. We fed each other and Merlin laughed as though we were teenagers. As though the world wasn't made of ash.
    He let me eat the last bite of creamy chocolate. I tasted none of it but smiled as he watched me with his clever eyes.
    "Do you ever feel it?" he asked after a long silence. "Even on the best days of our days, I feel it coming closer—that moment when you will remember why you banished me from your mind. Every day, a little closer."
    "Hush." I slipped my hand into Merlin's.
    "I would do anything to keep you with me this time around."
    "Anything? I can think