67. Maren
67
Maren
T he door to Selena’s apartment burst in a spray of wood. The tip of a sword broke through, halting after only cutting through a few inches, but then it withdrew and struck again, sending more wooden chips flying behind Kye’s head as he stared at me.
I stared back at him, oxygen flooding my veins with relief after I’d finally let myself transition and open my reserve of air. I’d held out as long as I could. Longer than any human.
My hair floated around my face, dancing in time with the lithe vines of shield weed. And the long, lustrous fins of my tail did the same, weightless in the water. Kye watched me, wide-eyed, palms pressed into the glass so hard his fingerprints flattened against the early sunshine.
And I was all out of whatever energy I’d restored under the moon the hour before, fighting to stay afloat. I couldn’t even lift my head to gaze eye-level at Kye. Beyond the water, his shoulders sagged. He slowly lowered into a crouch, knees falling to the floor.
I closed my eyes, unable to look at him.
A final crack, and the wooden door exploded. It hung from its hinges on one side, the other springing free of its lock and falling flat inside the room. Selena marched over the top of it, and Kye’s blade looked too big in her hands, but she cut through the barrage of broken furniture straight to me, sword raised over her head.
The piercing glass was a stroke of lightning in my ears. Lines printed across the surface in an instant, fractured and thin, a spiderweb that span from the floor to the iron lid. Selena hit it again.
And then a sudden current yanked me through. I tumbled out with the escaping water and a river of broken glass and weed. Arms caught me before I made it very far, pulling me into warmth, turning my shoulders so my face pointed up and swiping hair from my mouth. Molten gold eyes stared in shock, but fingers curled tight around my arms, and Kye’s throat bobbed.
I hardly noticed Selena as she made a noise very close to a growl, stalking to the opposite side of the room and slamming the blade into Thaan’s door. Seated on the floor, legs askew and back sloped against the wall, Thaan shook his head. “Don’t.”
“I want to be sure he’s gone, the traitorous bastard,” Selena spat. She lifted the blade again, bringing it down hard enough it stuck, and hoisted her foot to the door to yank it out when suddenly it blew open. And threw her to the other side of the room.
Cain stood in the doorway.
Water covered every inch of the floor, and it began to rise in tiny, sparkling drops. Everywhere. Like strings of glass beads lifted toward the ceiling, as clear as crystal and as thick as mist.
Thaan shoved to his feet, eyes mutinous, and then froze. His hands went to his throat, clawing and raking at his neck, scoring his own skin, eyes suddenly bulging as his face flushed violet.
“Stop,” Selena cried, rolling onto her hip. A gash in her temple from the thrown door streamed down her cheek and into the hair behind her jaw.
Cain plucked his glasses from his nose and tossed them away. He paced into the room, and the water beads around him followed his step. Kye pushed me off his lap, rotating toward the small man, but the beads pressed against him, slowing his attack until he stood unmoving, trapped like a mouse under a mountain of stone pebbles. Cain stole another foot inside, hands carelessly held out in front of him, and the beads pushed against us all. They bit into my skin, a thousand of them, forcing me upright and then carrying me over soggy seaweed and shards of glass.
I pushed back, fighting for control of the water—but my reserves had long since depleted. Locked tight, I couldn’t even open my mouth to speak. I might’ve been a queen. But even a queen can be useless.
Cain continued to the center of the room, all of us locked in the watery grasp around him. He stopped. Bent at the waist. And reached a hand to the floor, flicking aside a sprig of weed.
Unburied, the Breath of Safiro gleamed.
Electricity sparkled in Cain’s gaze.
He stretched a single finger to the stone. And reeled back as though it had burned him.
Then his eyes found mine. My spiculae hardened under cold claws at the base of my neck, so strong I choked.
And before he lit toward me, I knew he planned to leave the palace. And take me with him.
His first step pressed Kye over the jagged lip of the empty glass box. His second separated Kye’s body from mine. His third laid me flat against the sodden floor, but his fourth drew him close enough that the beads lifted. He kneeled down, tilting his head as he studied me, pronate and motionless. Trapped under hard beads of glassy water.
“In the volcano?”
I bared my teeth at him. “Yes.”
“Under ice?”
“If you know, why do you ask?”
The corners of his mouth lifted in what I suppose was a smile. And then his fingers wove through the roots of my hair, grabbing a fistful at my scalp. He stood. And I went with him.
My hands found his, my fingertips tracing the edges of his grip, rooting for enough purchase to free myself from the pain of his grasp. He began to walk, dragging me behind him, and my tail beat the floor as I thrashed in his grip, angry I didn’t even have the power or composure to transition back to my legs.
Thaan’s arms had dropped. The blood vessels in his eyes had popped, his pupils eerily white and surrounded by red. Somewhere across the room, Selena screamed. Cain stopped.
Stopped and looked back at Kye, who had forced himself through the beads of water, and was holding Cain by the foot. Lips peeled in a soundless snarl, his arm shook as he pulled Cain’s leg toward himself, or perhaps pulled himself toward Cain’s leg.
The water beads surrounding him began to pop like tiny bubbles, steam rising around the outline of Kye’s face, until he pushed through the pocket of air and climbed out of the beads like a corpse uprooting itself from a grave. The promise of violence wrought his edges in a warm glow, his golden eyes liquid with fury.
Cain watched in mute surprise as Kye pulled himself free of the last droplets of water, ascending Cain’s clothes like rungs on a ladder until he found both feet and straightened to his full height, looming over us both.
He shot for Cain’s wrist, the one holding my hair. “Keep your hands off my fucking wife.”
Air sizzled as their skin met, and Cain dropped me to the floor, receding as he gazed shrewdly at Kye as though he’d never seen him before.
Fists balled, Kye advanced another step. But the motion seemed to break Cain from a trance. He flicked his wrist at Kye, and all the water beads in the room left their posts to drill into his chest, throwing him against the edge of the desk. His head snapped backward, arms and legs flung behind him, until the force of it became enough to drag him fully under the desk legs, planting him deep into the corner of the wall.
Without the support of the water to hold him up, Thaan crumpled to the floor. Selena crawled for him. Cain swiveled and stalked slowly toward his door. His limbs lengthened, chest broadening. His chin sharpened to an angular point, the muscles in his neck and arms firming. A tall Naiad I’d never seen before stepped out of the office, too quickly for me to claim a true look at him, and just as profoundly as he had entered, he was gone. The door slammed shut, and the beads dissolved to water in an instant like hard rain, engulfing all of us.
My pulse throbbed in my ears, heart battering my chest, a frenzied butterfly caught in a net.
Selena’s sobs curdled the air. I pushed onto my elbows, ignoring the burn of glass shards lodged in my back. “Kye!”
He was already lifting himself out from under the desk. “Here, Leihani.”
“Help me,” Selena cried, turning a broken Thaan onto his back. “Help me! I don’t know what to do.”
Kye looked dubious, but I inched closer to the Naiad Selena pulled onto her thighs. Soaked to the bone in seawater, I shook wet hair from my eyes. “Lay him flat.”
She did, scooting backward so the Naiad fell from her knees. I glanced up at her. “Swear to me this is your cordae .”
Selena blinked back tears. “He is.”
“And Thaan’s been using him like he used me.”
She shot a panicked glance around the corners of the room. “Please, Maren.”
“Swear to me that Thaan can’t use him against you,” I snarled.
“I can’t,” she sobbed, laying beside the man and weaving her fingers into his. “I can’t.”
My throat suddenly ached, my chest shrinking until it squeezed against my lungs, too small for my heart. My eyes found Kye’s, solemn as he watched us both without a word, and I imagined him laying in a bed of ice on a mountain, skin blue, life wrung from his bones.
I laid my hand over the Naiad’s ribs, feeling for the silent organ that would wake at my call to his blood. And then gave the water in his body a hard squeeze.