49. Maren
49
Maren
I ’d never watched another Naiad sing to a human before. Thaan’s song sank into Kye faster than any of my songs to humans ever had. His haunting melody stopped Kye’s advance the very instant it began. Kye halted, a statue in the hallway, hand still seized over his shoulder.
I should have tried harder to find shield weed before we ventured over the mountains. I hadn’t seen any since the market in Vranna. Since Demyan had laid me flat with his hands around my neck and the guards carted Kye off with hands bound. A wiser Naiad would have bought a bundle of it. But I hadn’t been wise that day.
“Close the door,” Thaan ordered.
Kye swiveled, hand on the knob, and I watched as the only window anyone might have had to witness the situation unfolding before me snapped shut. The wind from it flapped the skirts of my dress, carrying the scent of him—chemical burn interlaced with rain and mint.
“Stand here,” Thaan said, moving away and indicating the vacant floor before my feet. Kye obeyed, landing before me. Thaan raised his brows, impatient. “Do you love her?”
“Yes,” Kye said. I stared at him, unable to turn my head. Pupils dilated; the black of his eyes set a queasy fire in the pit of my stomach.
“Do you love him?”
“Yes,” my mouth said.
“Well, now that that’s sorted…” Thaan massaged his jaw with an idle hand, observing the two of us with a look that turned my bones to water. He flicked a finger in my direction. “Remove her dress.”
A flash of horror ripped through one side of me and out the other.
Stop, I said to Thaan. You’ve made your point.
He didn’t answer me.
Kye leaned in, grasping my skirts, undoing buttons, shuffling them down my hips.
I remembered the way I’d loosened my hold on a vacous Diara to find she remained aware while incanted . No recognition flashed in Kye’s eyes, not a hint of coherency. But I knew he was in there now. Watching as his own body betrayed him.
Cold air puckered my skin, leaving a valley of raised pores along my arms and chest. I stood wearing simple linen undergarments, a phantom trapped inside a shell.
Thaan tapped his fingers together. “Kiss her.” Kye pressed a soft kiss into my mouth, stubble there and gone in an instant. Thaan laughed. “Not like that, you degenerate little insect.”
For a moment, no one moved. Then I realized a sliver of gold had returned to Kye’s eyes. The chemical scent thinned; the structure of his shoulders loosened. He inhaled as he sank forward, fingers soft as they delved into my hair, his mouth wrapping around mine. Warm and firm and suffocatingly perfect, his skin moved against me with soft precision, each stitch of muscle a slow saltare across my lips.
“Don’t be rude, Maren, kiss him back,” Thaan instructed. My body dropped into the familiar curve of Kye’s chest and neck. I rose to my toes, seeking to balance our difference in height, arms tugging his face to mine. “Keep going, we’ll see you cordaed yet,” Thaan’s voice said somewhere behind my back.
The walls around me shuddered under my fists. I kicked and punched. Backed away to throw myself at them, my shoulder and hip throbbing with the rattle of whiplash. Disgusted, enraged, I screamed into the void of my own mind.
My kiss deepened into Kye’s mouth. His hands wrapped around my waist and drifted to the backs of my thighs, guiding them apart, and I bounded slowly upward, aiding him as he lifted me into the air. My legs twined around his hips. He sighed, nose burrowing into the side of my neck, and my head dropped backward, throat wide and exposed as he gently nibbled along my skin.
Kye walked me to the bed, and Thaan stepped out of our way as though we couldn’t see him. As though he and Cain weren’t in the room, watching our every move. Our act was fluid and well-practiced, a spectacle we’d rehearsed a handful of times before, if not more in our heads. My hands didn’t need my mind’s direction to delve across Kye’s chest, shucking his shirt from his powerful body. And his didn’t either, hooking my bralette between his fingers and prying the linen free. Our motion was as natural as the breath that filled and emptied our lungs.
And I pummeled my walls, pain lanced across my knuckles.
I was no stranger to shame. It had been a constant visitor throughout my life. An easy dweller inside my head, sitting across the fire on my veranda or beside me in the garden whenever an islander whispered witch’s daughter or demon behind my back. Shame had trespassed my borders long ago, infringing my mind with claws and thistles and roots that ran the length of my bones. A parasitic worm in my heart. I’d played host to it many times, though I’d pretended I was too strong to notice. I was as familiar with it inside my body as I was the glare that I’d cast out.
But this was a level of debasement I’d never known.
Thaan played us like dolls on a string, inanimate objects to toss and thrash against each other, and the thought of his watching as I shed my clothes with Kye made me want to shed my skin as well. It suddenly felt too tight, too constrictive, too hard. But I was trapped inside. I was the parasite, raking my walls with sharp nails while the shame I'd always pretended to ignore wielded my body under Thaan's command.
Kye set me down, grasping the button of his own pants. My hands reached to help yank them down, working them over his thick thighs until he stood back to kick them off his ankles.
A giggle escaped my mouth.
I reeled inside my mind, horrified. Stop , I raged. You’ve made yourself clear.
Kye climbed on top of me, mouth deviously curved at the sound of my laughter. His eyes flickered, pupils growing and shrinking, and I knew he was fighting Thaan as hard as I was.
What have I made clear? Thaan asked inside my head.
I realized I was panting, either from the weight of Kye’s excited body over mine or from the desperation to not cry in the heat of my fury. My fists had slowed, dragging down the walls as I watched my real, solid hands loop into the band of my delicate underthings, sliding them down.
Kye moved in to help me, pupils as wide and black as I’d ever seen them. A tear flashed down his cheek, cutting a wet line to his jaw.
You expect me to cordae with him.
And will you?
Yes.
Kye pulled the thin fabric off me, the last thing covering my body, his hands stroking the backs of my knees as he cascaded down my legs. He let the linen drop to the floor.
When?
Pushing upright, Kye reached for his own briefs.
As soon as I can, I seethed, though my voice was shrill and high in my head. The first chance I have, as long as you’re not here to watch.
“Stop,” Thaan said.
We both froze. I realized my own cheeks were wet. Anger fractured inside me, wave after wave, pummeling the edges of my mind like the wrathful ocean against the cliffs. Anger and shame and Mihauna -damned fear, breaking over and over against unyielding stone, beating senselessly on rocks that would never give into submission.
And suddenly, I realized why the sea holds so much rage. Why the sky screams with white fire. Why the earth cracks wide to spew molten rock.
Why stars explode.
I knew why the world broke into storms, suffering under a fight that seemed hopeless. Because sometimes, the only way to seek refuge was to destroy yourself. Staring at Kye, bound and chained by his human blood, a storm of fire caught within me, winds chasing the flames high.
And I became a torch, dripping and raw. No longer afraid to set the world aflame just to listen to the sound it made as it burned.
Hands behind his back, Thaan approached the bed.
He studied us like he might a carving in the palace gallery. Two figures etched in marble, locked forever in a sensual embrace. Then he cocked his head toward Kye.
“Slit your throat.”
Shock—cold, pulsing, slicing—cleaved through me in an instant.
Kye reached for the dagger I’d fallen asleep next to, forgotten on the mattress. No , I shouted, grabbing hold of my walls and shaking them. The world around me trembled with my own fear, the scent of it thick enough to wade through, an insidious fog poisoning the air.
Kye brought the blade to his opposite hand, unsheathing it with a quick click.
I swear it, I cried. I swear it on my blood.
“Oh, Maren. You know better than to make irrational promises on your blood,” Thaan said.
The edge of the knife flat, Kye angled it at his throat. I screamed. My body didn’t make a sound, but my heart thrashed inside my chest.
“I suppose that’s enough,” Thaan said, striking a lazy hand out and grasping the dagger from Kye’s hand. From a corner of the room I couldn’t see, Cain chuckled. Thaan didn’t laugh. He watched the dagger with bored interest as he flipped it over to examine the back.
“Do not toy with me, Maren,” he drawled. “Do not think you will outsmart me. Do not think that because you’re a princess, you outrank me. Do not make the same mistake as Aegir, believing you are anything other than a clever but expendable means to an end. You think you need to corda-cruor with Nikolaos in order for me to get what I need from you? Look at yourself. Tell me if I can control you without a cordae .”
I’m certain he’d meant the question to be rhetorical, but my lips betrayed me, my blood intent on obeying his orders. “You can.”
He puffed a laugh through his nose, tossing the dagger to the floor. “Next time you arm yourself for battle,” he said, pausing and waiting for Cain at the door, “join the fray with more than a wooden stick. In a game of wit, you lost before you stepped onto the board.”
Thaan snapped his fingers as he turned on his heel. "Sleep." Kye drooped and fell, unconscious and heavy, He crashed into my naked body, his muscles melting against mine in an instant.
“We leave for Calder City at dawn,” Thaan said. “You can stay like this for now; I will release you when we arrive at the palace. I’m sure he will be close behind us. Once he arrives, I’ll give you three days. Three days, Maren. Cordae with the human. Or I’ll kill him.”