Chapter 55
“You didn’t corda-cruor.”
My eyes met Selena’s, bright and inquiring as she watched me close the door to her apartment. My jaw ticked. “No.”
She nodded, a trace of sympathy in her voice. “I wondered whether you would.”
I crossed my arms, wary. “How did you know I haven’t?”
She sighed, leading me into the shared office where my glass box waited. “Newly cordaed Naiads have a powerful scent. Humans can’t detect it, unless it’s a human you’ve cordaed to, though they wouldn’t know what the scent was. It usually fades after a month for everyone else. It remains there between mates.”
I followed, my fingers already working the stays of my dress loose. “Naiads can smell it on themselves?”
Selena pulled the iron lid open, its hinges scratching, lightly encrusted with salt from evaporated water. “Yes and no. It smells like energy, life, spirit. It’s a pleasant scent for us. It activates the oxytocin in our brains, fills us with feelings of love and companionship. But it’s more than that. It’s corda-cruor. By cordaeing with another, you alter your blood to be with someone for the rest of your life.”
My dress folded over the back of her desk chair, I climbed in, letting the salt kiss my skin. It should have been a relief, the feeling of weightlessness in the water. But it wasn’t. My eyes flickered to Selena’s with mounting distrust at the conversation I’d heard between herself and Thaan the day before, and at what had occurred earlier that morning. Any hint of warmth from this morning had left me as I’d watched Kye ride away from the balcony, vulnerable without shield weed to protect him.
Selena watched me, taking in my guarded expression. “We are born in blood, and in blood we often pass, and it is only with the blood in our hearts that we can properly bind to another. We smell the vitality of a cordae the simple way we would smell a spice or a flower. But newly cordaed Naiads breathe the scent of the other, their bond’s specific smell, and they breathe it everywhere they go, across long distances, for the years of their lives, until they pass on to walk with Theia in Perpetuum.”
I was thoroughly finished with the subject of cordaeing. “You didn’t tell me Nikolaos was incanted when he’d agreed to marry me.”
She gazed at me coolly. “You figured it out. That’s why you didn’t cordae him.”
My hands clenched the top of the glass wall between us. “Among other reasons. Hard to cordae with someone who doesn’t like you.”
I didn’t attempt to hide my anger. I could even scent it, hot and metallic, leaking slowly into the space around us. A muscle twitched between her brows, and she tilted her head.
“You think he doesn’t like you?”
“I know he doesn’t.”
I couldn’t decipher the expression on her face. Humor, perhaps, though that wasn’t quite it. Irony?
“Did you not see him at your wedding yesterday?” she asked cautiously. “Do you not see the way he looks at you? The man is in love with you.”
Oh, Mihauna, the jolt her words sent to my heart. I tamped it down, baring my teeth at her. “He hates me.”
She sighed, shaking her head, a small smile shadowing her mouth.
Steeling myself, I listened hard for the presence of any hearts beating from the other side of Thaan’s door. Nothing. He’d left with Kye and sixteen other riders. I’d counted.
“Who is the man in Thaan’s room?” I asked, satisfied as the humor immediately vanished from her face.
Selena’s eyes darted to Thaan’s door and back as her mouth snapped open. The color vanished from her skin. She drew her head back as though I’d slapped her. “What man?”
I waited, unwilling to offer anything other than the question.
Eyebrows raised, lips parted, Selena’s body went rigid, her composure from the moment before evaporated in the cool morning air. “What man?” she asked again, the whites of her eyes stark under her long lashes.
I digested her reaction with slow consideration. Always so calm, I hadn’t expected Selena to respond with anything other than a demure voice and controlled features. Was it anger or fear?
Selena swallowed, eyelids closing softly and then squeezing shut. She angled her face away, a hand over her stomach. “Who did you see?”
“I didn’t see anyone.”
“Then why do you believe there is a man in Thaan’s rooms?” she asked, her voice sharp and low, an accusing whisper. Eyes closed, she sucked in a breath, steadying her palm against her middle. I watched her with growing revelation—my true question answered.
Whether Selena admitted any knowledge of the mystery voice became irrelevant. Whoever it was, Selena knew he was there. She knew there was a person locked in Thaan’s quarters.
I faced my mentor with the same calmness Selena often used for me, though without any of the patience Selena offered, and watched as the Naiad vibrated with the fervor of a caged animal. Unable to stand still, she walked to the office chair, gripping the backrest, knuckles white. She swallowed again, the muscles in her throat contracting.
“Don’t lie to me,” I said quietly, narrowing my eyes. “He called for you. He was in pain.”
“Stop,” Selena said, holding up a hand behind her back, warding me off. The Naiad leaned on the desk, steadying her weight, and pressed her trembling fist against her mouth as though holding back bile. I listened to her shuddering breaths, staring impatiently at Selena’s back.
After a few long minutes, she stood, her eyes a direct line to mine.
“Never speak of this to me again,” she said, voice tight. She straightened the front of her dress, then she left me alone in the water.
Dusk met me on my balcony. Outside my room, I turned my wedding ring in my fingers.
I’d thought it a strange sort of metal at first, but now I realized it was some kind of black stone, sanded into a smooth, hollow circle. Plain in design, and yet, holding it up to the light, it shone almost transparent, flecks of white and dusty gold frozen inside it. Like the wind had tossed sand into the night air just before time went still.
Kye’s ring had matched it.
Squeezed against the door, my feet thrust through the iron railing of the narrow balcony, I”d shoved woolen blankets and down pillows under my shoulders and around my body, propping me up as I stared past Selena’s miniature juniper to clouds in the sky.
I could have used Kye’s balcony. It was twice as large as mine, and he’d left me the key, to my shock. But everything in that room smelled like him. My wedding dress still sat in a pale puddle on the floor, my knife stuck hard in his bed post.
A rap of hesitant knuckles vibrated through the wood at my back.
“Maren?” Diara said, her voice muffled and distant. “What are you doing?”
I blinked, surprised she’d come looking for me. “Sitting.”
Her face appeared, eyes narrowed at me through the small crack. “Let me out.”
I leaned forward, lifting my pillow, and Diara forced herself through the narrow opening, the corner of the door jutting into my lower back. It closed with a vehement slam when she fully materialized through and studied me, afloat in pillows and blankets. She pushed me aside like a mother bird and began constructing her own nest of feathers and fluff, then burrowed snugly into her creation without a further word.
Light faded. I thought she might stand to light the single sconce off the side of the door, but she didn’t. The shapes of our arms and legs tangled in bedding became dim and unfocused, cast in gold under the setting sun. Diara huddled closer beside me. A ceiling of stars blew slowly into existence.
“He left?” she asked softly.
“He left.” I confirmed.
She exhaled, and I braced for her judgment. For her to laugh at me. To remind me how terrible the royal family was.
“I thought it’s what you wanted,” Diara finally said. Her brow settled into the crook of my neck. Sympathy drifted in her words like a quiet current. “You wanted him to stay?” She laced her fingers into mine, holding my hand as we listened to the distant waves crashing below.
I opened my mouth, and words failed. My eyes shifted over the distant horizon, where leagues away, Leihani floated over jewel-toned water. The ghost of Kye’s fingers brushed down my arm, and glowing embers lit under my skin. I could almost smell rainwater and mint.
I didn’t know what I wanted.
All I knew was he’d coaxed a fire within me, then left me to burn.
Diara swiveled her head to watch me, mossy green eyes bright even in the failing light, her red-blonde tresses in a braid so loose it had half-escaped, fine strands flying in the wind over her crown like lengths of golden thread.
“You’re coming with me tomorrow,” she said. “I’m going to teach you to ride a horse.”