The Wind and the Horizon (Book 2 in the Starborn Series)

Chapter Fifty-One

[ CW: Strong language, alcoholism and sexual abuse mentions ]

May's original plan had been to head to the bar and spitefully drink herself into oblivion.

Fuck Kai. Fuck him and his humiliating assumptions. She was an adult - she could handle her grief however she damn well wanted.

She made it to the bar just fine, but it wasn't until she was seated at a small table on the oceanfront patio that she realized she had stormed off without any money.

Her stomach grumbled as if to punctuate her poorly considered temper tantrum.

"Great," she grumbled, dropping her forehead into the cradle of her hands.

After a minute or two she heard the chair across from her scrape back.

"Hey, sister," said Lenaia's voice in the soft, pitying tone May was growing tired of hearing from everyone. "How're you holding up?"

Lenaia usually didn't cross the bar, but when she spotted May blow in like a typhoon, rage etched across her features, she waved off the regular waitress and went to investigate for herself.

"Kai and I had a fight," May answered without lifting her head. "I'm here to cool off."

"Ah," Lenaia acknowledged. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

"He thinks I have a drinking problem."

"Well, that answers my next question. How does a glass of water sound?"

"That would be nice."

The chair scraped again and Lenaia gave May's shoulder a squeeze as she walked away.

May nursed that glass of water for a long time. The ice cubes melted as she took her time, thinking long and hard about the messy state of her life between sips. The longer she sat, drawing patterns on the table with the condensation skimmed off the glass, the more foolish she felt.

She was rubbing her eyes and considering her options when she heard the chair across from her pull out a second time.

"Sorry for hogging the table," she mumbled, dropping her hand from her eyes. "I appre-"

The words froze on May's tongue.

It was not Lenaia who had sat down across from her.

It was Kane.

Leaning back leisurely in his seat, May saw the only things about him that had changed were his hair, which he now wore shaved close to his skull, and a scar above his eyebrow. He looked at her the same way he always had: a mix of predatory pleasure and disgust, somehow playing out at the same time. May's stomach rolled, her extremities tingling with the basic urge to flee.

Countless restless nightmares filled with this man and the things he had done to her had haunted her since leaving this place. Beads of sweat formed on her brow and, as the weight of her aloneness started to drag her down, she mentally reached for some kind of lifeline. What she found was a memory of Connor in the dark, draping a blanket over her shoulders. His soft voice coaching her through the waking terror and confessing they two were very alike in an innately personal way. They were survivors.

May pretended she could feel that blanket now and Connor at her side - as invisible to her now as he had been that night. It made her feel less alone; it made her feel brave.

"Looks like the rumors are true after all," Kane said with a lazy smile. "Mainland May came crawling back to the island, just like we knew she would."

Something inside May flashed. She remembered this about him; the way he'd talk about her like she wasn't sitting right in front of him. In her memories she could remember exactly how it used to make her feel; small and insignificant. Except this time - many months and what felt like a lifetime of experiences later - all it did was irritate her. This sensation, at first surprising, gifted her a sense of clarity. Now she saw it for exactly what it was: a power move designed to dominate, and she wasn't interested. In much the same way that she didn't care about winning back Omea's favor, she also didn't feel she owed this man anything.