4. Maren
4
Maren
H iking out of the rocky basin, Kye leaned against the wall of the cliffs, scrutinizing an untidy patch sewn into the knee of his pants as he waited for me. I climbed over a loose pile of rubble, eyes on the sea ahead.
“Let me check your shoulder,” I demanded. I’d kept a close eye on it the night before, calling within him to drain any infection. He turned, stretching the neck of his shirt away and bending his legs enough to drop to my height, his fingers tugging at the loose threads over his knee.
I’d stitched up what I could with his own blood, closing the wound faster than it would have if left to heal on its own. Running my fingers just under a darkening scab, I nodded my approval. “It looks alright so far. How does it feel? Is it too tight when you move?”
“My pants? They’re a little small, but I’ll manage.”
I dropped my hands away, unamused. Kye flashed his teeth.
As gray as the vaulted sky, the waves stretched for miles. Rough wind sang in my ears as it scraped my sides, forcing me to cross my arms. I’d pulled on a pair of pirate pants and the heaviest shirt we’d found in the pack, though both hung from my frame. Clouds rolled overhead, dark and moody, the thunderous water throbbing against the rock where my feet stood.
“Calder City sits on the same coast as this,” Kye said, angling a finger down the jagged line where the rock met the tide. “But the Sylus Mountains divide Calder from Rivea. We’ll either have to take a ship or the mountain pass—”
“Mountain.”
Watching the churning sea, Kye’s jaw rotated to the side as he considered my interruption. “It’ll take longer.”
“That’s fine.”
“It would be almost winter by the time we get back. Even on horseback, I don’t relish the idea of crossing a mountain pass in the snow. And the highway won’t be as safe as a ship.”
I exhaled, my stomach sinking at the sound reasoning laid out before me. I couldn’t argue with that. In most cases, a ship would be the safer option. Enclosed. Fortified. And yet…
Knots wound inside my belly. Twisting. Coiling. Wringing me out like a sheet plunged in ice water. Salty air caught in my lungs, suddenly thin, fluttering just past my lips. Iron bit into my wrists, mooring me against a wall in the dark, the wooden ceiling and floors shrinking, shriveling, squeezing me into something tiny and helpless. Oxygen choked me.
And beyond my reach, the sound of desperate feet scrambling for traction, someone strangling, the rattle of blood trapped inside lungs as they yanked a sparkling chain over his neck—
I watched the water stretch past the cliffs, weaving and rolling, the sun’s reflection so bright I had to squint my eyes. “No more ships. I’m done with pirates.”
Kye nodded slowly. He lifted a hand to graze the edge of his wrapped shoulder, eyes narrowing at his own feet. A flicker of worry prodded my chest.
I might have been done with pirates. But I didn’t think he was.
I forced myself to exhale into the wind. Veiled sunlight crept through my eyelids, the rock hard and damp under my feet. Rock, not wood. Sunlight, not darkness.
I let myself stand that way for several minutes, shutting out the feeling of hope hollowed into something empty. Of narrowing walls, of chains around my wrists. My eyes opened to find Kye studying me, golden eyes quiet.
“No ships,” I said, my voice an ounce firmer.
“Alright,” he murmured. “No ships.”
I wondered what he might be thinking. What he saw as he watched me, succumbing to the mad idea of traveling across an enemy kingdom on horseback while the sea—the more ideal option—sat at our feet.
“Do you know where we are?” I finally asked, brushing a lock of wind-ridden hair from my eyes.
He rubbed the back of his neck, lifting his gaze across the coastline. “I think we’re close to Vranna.”
“How do you know?”
“While I was rowing, I passed a sign with an arrow that pointed south, painted in red. A warning to turn back. It read Brána Do Podsvetia .”
“And that translates to?”
“It’s the name of a channel through Rivea. It’s famous—or infamous, I suppose. No ship travels through it. Any that try to sail through disappear. I don’t know how long it is, but I know Vranna sits at the base of it, where it’s safe again for ships to sail.”
My eyes cut through the cliff line, searching for the presence of another landmass across the waves, but there was none. From here, it looked like open sea. For a channel, it was certainly wide. “What’s in Vranna?”
“The largest trading port in Rivea. There would be Calderian merchant ships there.” My mouth opened, and he continued before I could speak. “We’d also find supplies. Food, horses. Whether we take back roads or the main highway, we need to visit a market first. And probably two or three times more as we’re traveling.”
At my back sat the sprawling landscape. The barren, weedy terrain, devoid of trees, knit tight with shaky boulders and loose rock. The feral sea sat ahead. A sudden realization took up residence in my head—there were no birds here.
I’d seen birds the last day on the ship, but where they’d flown, I had no idea. My eyes scoured the land for signs of life, but nothing presented itself. I didn’t trust land that life refused to nest in. Birds only lived in habitable places—that there were none to be found spoke more than enough about our surroundings.
“What does Brána Do Podsvetia mean?”
He ran his teeth over the stubble below his mouth, biting his crescent scar. “The Gateway to Caecus.”
I hesitated. “The Gateway to Darkness.”
Kye met my eyes and held them. “Yes.”
Unlike Aalto and Theia, people rarely mentioned Darkness's existence.
In all the realms I knew, men lived and died under the guidance of the sun. Women did the same under the love of the moon.
But no one prayed to Darkness. No one presented it with gifts or swore fealty to it. Darkness didn’t offer warmth or light. It didn’t help plants grow. It didn’t shift the tide or change the seasons. Caecus gave nothing to the world.
It only consumed.
That we stood along a channel named for it sent a creeping chill up my back, and I shook it away. I was a Naiad—there was little in the water for me to fear. Naiads were the fastest creatures in the sea.
“If ships don’t travel here, we’re safe from the pirates?”
“Unless they follow us through the cliffs on land.”
I nodded to myself. “And all we need to do is follow this coastline to Vranna? It will lead us there?”
He grimaced, brows pinched as he darted a speculative glance ahead. “In theory.”
“And you’d rather take a ship?”
Kye sighed, softly enough I might not have heard it, though his chest took its time deflating under his shirt. “I would, yes.”
“You could take one without me, if you wanted.” The words stopped my heart, even as I said them. I didn’t want him stranded here because of me. And it wasn’t fair of me to ask him to choose the road when he’d prefer the sea. Left to my own devices, I could easily dive in and follow any ship—in fact, I could probably outstrip them. The water itself didn’t unnerve me, named for Caecus or not.
Just the thought of wood, surrounding me on all sides, blocking out the light.
Even so, I hardly dared to meet his eyes, afraid I’d find him willing to go.
Wind picked up, bringing angry clouds over the waves, the scent of rain percolating through the musty air, and I knew he was watching me again. His golden eyes sized me up, taking in the conviction written across me. My chin lifted. My back straightened.
We stared at each other. Calculating. Counting nerves.
Kye’s eyes sharpened as he weighed the idea. He glared into my face, softened, and then glared again.
“Why would I do that?” he finally asked, more demand than inquiry.
“Because you’re still healing,” I answered, gesturing to the shoulder I’d just stitched. “And you’re a royal prince. A commander. You’re important. And because I can find my way.”
“You’re a princess of Calder,” Kye argued calmly, a faint growl under the words. “A future queen, if Hadrian—” He bit back his own thought, jaw hardening into a square line.
My brows tightened. “A queen is little more than a body in a chair. A vessel for birthing heirs.”
Disgust unraveled the corners of his eyes and mouth. The scent of hot metal poured from him, hitting me in a wave of sharp surprise. “Who told you that?”
I frowned softly. “You did.”
He looked as though I’d punched him in the gut. “You mean Thaan did. Through me. Those aren’t my words, Leihani. That’s not what I believe.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, suddenly wanting to drop it. How had we stumbled into this conversation? I had no intentions of discussing my measure of self-worth with him. Stepping around his tall frame, my foot stretched for a rocky platform below, but he caught my hand, pulling me back up.
He tilted to the side until he was firmly in view, calling my gaze to his. “Do you really think I’d leave you, in a country that speaks a language you don’t know, in a land you’ve never been, with pirates searching for you? What kind of man do you think I am?”
Ah. So, it was his stupid pride that I’d wounded—not the idea of me endangering myself. I hadn’t realized until now that the thought might leave me disappointed. On the Darkness's Hourglass , for a few days at least, I’d imagined that he’d felt differently.
Mihauna, he’d pulled me in close. My blood warmed at his proximity, the brush of his chest against my arm, the stroke of his breath over my cheek. Swallowing my disappointment, I leaned away from him. “What if we found the Rivean emissary? What if we could find help through their office?”
Kye had the courtesy to consider it. Fixated on the sharp, red edges of the cliffs, he paused in thought. Then shook his head softly. “The emissary sits along the southeast border. It might take a month to get there on foot; we might as well just strike for the mountains themselves. But I'm not sure it matters. Communications between their office and Calder have gone dead. They’re rumored to be compromised, even if we aren’t officially at war.”
Staring numbly at the ground as well, I gave a stiff nod. I’d figured as much. “So, we’ll follow the channel on foot until we reach Vranna.”
He quirked his jaw. “I don’t know much about Brána Do Podsvetia. But I know it’s a no-sailing zone. Ships don’t use it. They go the long way instead, through open water. And because merchants can’t sail through, there aren’t any towns. We could, in theory , just follow the shoreline. If we stayed out of the water.”
Well, I couldn't completely promise to that. I needed salt on my skin, though I wasn't about to explain why to him. Tapping my bare toes on the stone, I mulled the idea over. “Ships won’t pass through, meaning there would be little chance of Kriska finding us?”
Kye scratched his neck. “They might come this way. It’s always possible they’re just as stupid as we are.”
“So we’ll walk to Vranna, purchase mounts, ride to the mountains, and cross into Calder. Get you back to your duties as commander.”
“And get you back to Thaan.”
I nodded. "And get me back to Thaan."
Metal heat tinged the air. Kye’s jaw hardened. His eyes flashed.
We’d avoided the subject of Thaan. I knew why I shied from the topic. Conversations about Thaan would only lead to notions of why he needed me. I didn’t need Kye probing so dangerously close to my identity as a Naiad—he was already too close for comfort.
I didn’t know why he avoided the subject. But I knew that, like me, Kye thought about it.
I knew Thaan lingered on Kye’s mind when I brought fish back to our camp and had to repeat his name to get his attention. When he stretched his shoulder, eyes crinkled with annoyance at the limited mobility of his arm—and something deeper. Something dark and twisting that ate at him. Flames lit in his eyes when he thought I wasn't watching, as familiar as the white-hot burn in my chest whenever I let my own thoughts drift to my vows.
I could only guess how Kye felt towards Thaan, a man who had stolen his memory.
But I knew the taste of poison.