Chapter 34
“We’ve added to your name,” Selena told me a few days later as we finished our breakfast of buttered crab, sunny eggs, and cherry tomatoes. My attention snapped up to her.
So, this was the part of the conversation with Thaan I’d missed. “Am I no longer Maren?” I asked, not shielding Selena from the small bite in my words. Nothing in my contract stated I had to endure a name change.
Selena raised her eyebrows at my sharp tone. “We will present you to court as Nikolaos’s future bride a week from now at the palace’s summer solstice soirée. We can’t simply announce you as ‘Maren.’ A backstory has been crafted for you. A delicate challenge, as you must have noble blood to be introduced. All the nobles in Calder know each other, and they know you’re not one of them. We could make up some false heritage for you from a foreign land. Illuskia or Krava. But it’d be difficult to convince anyone you were from those countries, since you don’t speak their language.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, quietly annoyed. Why should I have to hide my background from anyone?
“We’ll use Leihani to our advantage,” she continued. “It’s unique, as it is a territory of Calder rather than its own country. Because of this, it provides a census each decade to Calder. So, we’ve gathered the archived files and traced your ancestry on your father’s side all the way back to your great grandfather several times over.” She flipped the page of her book, leaning back and squinting to read her own handwriting. “Hee-apo Inno-ha.”
“Hiapo Inoa,” I corrected. I was familiar with my forefather, who had leveled the land down along a section of beach no one had claimed. Leihaniians wove long chants for our ancestors with the threads of their life stories, and I’d memorized Hiapo Inoa’s memoir when I was still very young.
“You recognize it?” Selena asked.
“Yes.”
“We’re interested in his name. We noticed most Leihaniians don’tuse a surname.” Letting the unasked question settle, Selena crossed her hands over the table.
“It’s not a surname. Inoa means ‘namesake.’ It’s an extra name children are given when they’re named after someone, the way Calderians use a name like junior, but it falls off later in years. Hiapo was probably named after his father.”
“How would you feel about using Inoa as your surname? For social purposes.”
I considered it, hooking my thumbnail between my teeth. “I wasn’t named after anyone, though.”
Selena considered me quietly. “You weren’t? How did you get your name? It’s not a Leihaniian name. Don”t chew your nails.”
I ejected my thumbnail from my mouth. “You’re right, it’s not a Leihaniian name. My mother named me, but I don’t know what it means or why she chose it.”
“I thought your mother couldn’t speak,” Selena said, raising a brow.
I lifted my shoulder, though to be honest, I’d often wondered about it as well. It’s not as though I remembered when she’d named me. And I”d always been cautious when discussing the topic of my mother with my father. The other islanders’ opinions of her had left him protective of her memory, even with me.
Perhaps she’d written it for him in the sand.
“Hmm. Well, unless you want something else?” Selena waited until I shrugged again. Nothing sprang to mind. “Inoa is an easy fit. It exists in your family. Thaan has already added it to the generations following Hiapo, which is quite a large task. Since your father is a landowner, he qualifies for a title, so Thaan has also added a lordship to his name, and that of his family tree, dating back to Hiapo. You are now Maren Inoa, Lady of Leihani.”
“Except I’ll never return to Leihani,” I said, smiling, though the humor was absent in my voice. My belly tightened.
“No.” Selena said unapologetically. “Sit up straight. As a lady of the court, you will need to convince the council, advisory, and the royal family that you’re a worthy choice. It’s useless to incant them. You may no longer slouch in your seat.” She gathered herself to her feet, opening her bag for her book and feather pen, swallowing the last of her tea.
“What do you mean, it’s useless to incant them?”
“If we sang to humans, gained control over them, and told them to remember something different from what they know, it would wear off after they fell asleep. Incantation lasts until you release the person under your power, by saying go home, or go away, or simply, I release you. If you don’t release them, they’ll wake up in the morning back to themselves.”
Selena reached for her emerald cloak, facing me to say goodbye. But I wasn’t satisfied. The thought of incantationunnerved me. I thought of Pike’s empty eyes. His hollow voice, the way he seemed to float on his feet. The scent of burning chemicals, as though incantation melted him from somewhere inside his mind.
“If I incant a human to build me a house, and I say don’t stop until it’s done, that person would only work until the end of the day, and then wake up the morning after and go on with their life? Do they remember being incanted?”
“No,” Selena stilled, her bag half-slung on her shoulder, her face serious in a way that made me almost regret asking. “They never remember being incanted, but if they notice gaps in their memory, they’ll grow suspicious and paranoid.”
She sighed. “When you sing to a human, he becomes a vacous—an empty shell for you to fill for your own needs. His body is an instrument, a tool for your manipulation. Humans lose time when they’re incanted. They don’t keep their memory. When you incant someone, you steal mind and body. You take their ability to think or reason. Incantation is something you will practice, because you will likely need it someday, but it is not a toy to be played with.”
Her shoulder slumped slightly, her bag slipping down an arm. She tugged it back, then faced me with those burning sky-blue eyes. “And yes. You could tell a human to build you a house and not stop until it was finished. That kind of request would overrule the necessity for sleep, so they would stay awake, working for weeks to complete it for you. But there are dangers, for them and for you, which come from claiming someone’s mind and body for an extreme amount of time, and I hope you never do. You may see it in the future—a vacous that has been a vacous too long.”
She paused to shake her head, the movement barely discernable, and some emotion I couldn’t read flashed across her face. “Their teeth fall out, their skin shrivels. Their hair thins and they lose the color of their skin. They become a breathing corpse, and when you finally release them, they are lost.”
Selena’s lashes suddenly fluttered, as though she’d snapped out of whatever thoughts claimed her head. Hand on the door, she glanced at me from over her shoulder. “We are Naiad. But never forget you were human-born. It is through your humanity that you separate yourself from those controlled by their own lust for power.”