48. Maren
48
Maren
A knock came at the door.
Winter chill sank in through the walls, even with my full dress still on my back. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. I’d intended to wait for Kye to return, but I imagined with war being newly announced, his meeting with the general might run late into the night. Still, I was surprised to find myself in bed, alone but for the sheathed dagger I’d drifted off next to. Dusk stretched through the windows. Snowflakes fell outside, fat and fluffy and entirely silent.
The knock came again.
I rolled off the edge of the bed, taking the blanket with me and leaving the dagger behind, naively assuming the inn’s servants were bringing a tray to eat. How wrong I was. I opened the door to find the tray on the floor, left there hours ago, and Thaan standing over it.
Tall, slender, cold. Cheeks hollow, skin even more gaunt than the last time I’d set eyes on him. The air snapped and fizzled around him, churning with an electricity I knew could strike me dead.
His gaze pierced mine, and even at a short distance, I knew something was wrong. His irises had fully inverted with his pupil, the ring of his eye near black, the center a cloudy, empty blue. The hairs at the back of my neck stood, spiculae sending shock waves down my spine, rebounding in the other direction. As my hand left the door handle, static exploded under my touch, sparks flying innocuously from under my fingertips, suddenly wet and slippery.
We stared at each other from opposite sides of the threshold.
“It’s considered an offense to leave a guest standing outside a door,” Thaan finally said.
“Where’s Nikolaos?”
My face must have worn the same clammy, cold fear that had crossed into the pit of my stomach at waking alone and finding Thaan outside my door. His nostrils flared, though his posture remained straight-backed and bored. “I imagine he’s preparing for his tour into the mountains in the morning.”
“The mountains?” I frowned. “We just came from there.”
With a soft grunt of impatience, Thaan pushed into my room. I stood back to let him, though my skin itched as Cain followed and closed the door behind him. I crossed my arms, ignoring the foreboding prickles that lined my scalp.
“Have you cordaed ?” Thaan asked. Cain sat in the only chair, adjusting his spectacles as he unrolled a scroll over the small table and studied it.
“We escaped pirates, you know.” My words shook slightly, anger wrapping around the edges of my fear. “Traveled by foot and horse the span of Rivea. Kye was arrested. I was captured. We’ve both been injured.”
Thaan clicked his tongue. “Have you?”
“He suffocated under ice. His heart stopped yesterday. He shouldn’t be traveling the mountains.”
“He’ll manage,” Thaan said, his voice lined with the threat of his impatience. “Have you cordaed ?”
I glared at him. “It’s considered an offense to demand intimate details that should be left between a husband and wife.”
He pressed his fingertips together. “My dear girl, we both know I care as little about your love life as I do the slave trade up north.”
“So, you deal in slaves, too?”
“I will force the answer from you if you refuse to give it willingly.”
“No,” I spat. “No, we have not.”
He took his time studying me, then reached a hand into his tunic, drawing out a letter with a broken seal. A seal identical to the one stored in my bags. The one I stole from Kriska’s pocket. I watched, suddenly breathless as he unfolded it and handed it to me.
I have your weapon.
Four words written on the parchment. No name, nothing else. But the seal was unmistakable, whereas the letter I’d stolen had been mashed, chipped, dented. A mass of tentacled legs streaming out from the center like spokes on a wheel.
Aegir.
I glanced back at Thaan to find him watching me carefully. “Did you orchestrate your own kidnapping?” he asked.
I fought the urge to laugh at the stupidity of the question.
Thaan tapped a finger on the page, and I caught the faint whiff of forged metal floating through the air. “Do you understand what Aegir is insinuating here?”
My nostrils flared. “That I am a weapon of some kind?”
“He is making the mistake of assuming you’re a vital instrument of mine. In a Naiad war he’s not supposed to know I’m planning.”
I gave a disbelieving laugh. “Are you accusing me of giving him that impression on purpose? I’ve only spoken to him once. For not even a full minute.”
Thaan stepped closer, and I suffocated the urge to recede into the wall. “Why have you not cordaed to the prince?”
“Because it is my choice,” I sneered at him.
He held the letter higher. “Not because you are saving your cordae for someone else?”
“Because you were too stupid to include a corda-cruor with Nikolaos in my contract. You only wrote I had to marry him. And because you didn’t, I get to chose when and to whom I will cordae myself with.”
His expression twisted, lips hinting at a smile as he scrutinized me, though watching him only sent a shudder down my spine. “I think you have cordaed . Your scent is all over the human, and he uses your name like a prized possession.”
“Force the answer from me, then,” I mocked. “Though I can tell you we have not, and I can tell you why.” Thaan’s brows raised slightly, unimpressed, and I pressed on. “I know you want to control Calder. I know the King is either mad or will be soon. I know he’s a liability to whatever you’re planning for your colony. And I know that, for whatever reason, Prince Hadrian cannot be incanted .”
I pointed a finger at him, throwing my hair from my face with a jerk of my chin so that I could see him fully. “I know you pit Nikolaos and I against each other last summer. Like two spiders in a jar, shaking us up to watch us fight so that I wouldn’t realize Kye never agreed to marry me. And I know what we would be to you if we mated. A means to manipulate each of us through the other. I’d thought you were mated with Selena once. But that’s how you use her, isn’t it? That’s why I heard a man in your rooms. Who is he?”
Thaan watched me with the smallest smile until I mentioned Selena’s name. His lips twitched as his smile fell, eyes hardening and flashing as though he suddenly fought to control his anger. I remembered the slap he’d sent into me in the captain’s cabin of the Aspire and ground my jaws together, waiting for it again. Cain stood, watching us both, his mouth a hard line. Thaan’s body fizzled with unsung fury, and he tamped it down, teeth gnashing as he seethed at me. "It seems you know it all, then."
"Not exactly," I taunted. "I don't know why you wrote my contract to end when I became queen, if you insist on Hadrian's death while your plans to keep me in line and tied to Calder hinge on Kye ascending to the throne. Seems like a sloppy mistake for someone who calculates every move."
"How unfortunate for you," he said slowly. "Are you cordaed ?"
"What are you planning to do with Kye between Hadrian's death and the king's?"
“Maren of Leihani,” Thaan said in a breathless whisper. “I call to your blood.”
I opened my mouth to sneer at him more, but my lips wouldn’t move. They fused shut, along with every muscle and bone in my body. As though my skin had hardened to stone, leaving me trapped inside. The blanket around my shoulders slipped to the floor as I pushed on my own walls, a bolt of panic striking through my marrow.
They didn’t budge. Nothing budged.
The harder you fight, the harder I grasp you, Thaan’s words stabbed into my thoughts, and I realized with horror they were in my mind. The more it will hurt when I let you go.
I couldn’t help it. My pushing became shoving, banging, fists pounding on the walls of my hide. Nothing. My body didn’t move. I didn’t even flinch. I screamed in desperate fury, but the sound never escaped my mouth.
“Have you coupled with the prince?” Thaan asked, watching as I shook and raged inside myself.
“No,” my mouth said.
At the word, Thaan's indifferent stature liquified into malice, and I knew as he stalked forward to gaze at me fully, the sharp edge of punishment loomed through his voice.
“I could order it,” he said. “In this state, I could demand anything from you.”
My inner mind slowed its attack on my own body. Good luck, I spat, unable to say the words out loud. You won’t convince Kye to mate with me. He won’t do it. He refuses.
Thaan smiled. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” my mouth said again.
“So, you’ve tried, and he’s rejected you?” Thaan laughed. “How interesting. Well, I have good news for you, Maren.”
The door swung open. Kye stood on the other side, the alarm in his eyes at finding us evaporating in an instant as he realized who occupied the room as I stood like the undead, backed into the wall. Heat blasted from him, a hand already stretched over his shoulder to grasp his hilt.
“The beauty of good timing,” Thaan said, clasping his hands together as Kye stepped into the room.
Kye ignored him. “Leihani, come here.”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even shift my eyes to fully look at him.
Inside, I viciously tore at my own walls.
Thaan turned his head toward Kye and sang.