Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Rydian
The hall opened like a bowl cut into the cavern’s side, every rounded edge rimmed in light.
Floating orbs drifted in slow patterns above—glass bubbles with captured flame inside, swaying as if by some current.
Tables curved in crescents, tier by tier, all pointed toward the high dais where Patamoi sat on a massive throne carved from coral and shell.
He didn’t look at me, not directly. He didn’t have to. His guards did it for him.
I’d hoped our arrival would be met with more openness, but it appeared the years since my last visit hadn’t been enough to lessen his ire. And yet, Aurelia had stood with me.
I didn’t deserve that loyalty from her. Not after everything. But I would earn it starting now.
Our table stood alone on the first tier where everyone could watch us eat. Not an honor. A pen without bars.
Slade stopped beside me, his suit tailored perfectly, as was my own.
Naliadne’s note that had accompanied the gifts made it clear that to refuse them would have been an insult.
And we couldn’t afford any more of those.
Besides, it was a rare sight to see my second looking so formal.
I planned to never let him live it down.
Slade let out a low whistle. “The naiad know how to party. This place is huge. Why the lifted tiers?”
“It’s an arena,” I said. “They prefer their enemies where they can see them.”
“Not like we have anywhere to run.” He snorted. “Or swim.”
I didn’t let myself think too hard about that fact.
The floor was polished sea glass that gleamed in the lights.
Music drifted out from farther inside—strings, low drums, something like a flute but deeper.
The smell was salt and citrus and spiced fish.
But most of my attention remained fixed on the naiad in attendance.
Guests wore shimmery gowns and barely-there coverings made from seaweed silk.
Servants wore simple garments in greens and blues that carried just a hint of algae.
“This way, Your Highness,” a female naiad in a blue-gray jacket murmured, leading the way.
Slade and I followed, noting the eyes that tracked us as we walked.
Daegel and Thorne were already at the table, pretending to look bored. Daegel had chosen the seat that kept his back to a pillar and his view on the floor; Thorne had done the same on the opposite side.
“Front row,” Thorne said, not bothering to hide the edge in his tone. “We must be special.”
“We are,” Daegel said. He gestured with his drink to the dais. “Special enough to be the only ones the king can easily toss a trident at if he feels like it.”
Slade took a chair beside Daegel with a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll catch it for you, brother.”
“Appreciated,” Daegel said. “I’d rather not be a shish kebab before dessert.”
Around us, conversation dipped and shifted, and the hall turned its attention to the archway at my back. Aurelia stepped through with Amanti and Keres, and for a second, the room went soft around the edges.
Aurelia wore a green dress—deep, river-dark, cut to move like a second skin.
It bared her shoulders and cut gracefully across her breasts, the fabric catching light along seams that reminded me of scales.
Her hair was pulled back from her face, held fast by combs the color of sea pearls.
It was the only jewelry she wore. No crown.
No gems. She didn’t need it. Every inch of her commanded attention, and not just my own, if the hush in the room was any indication.
On her left, Keres wore deep ocean blue, laced up her sides like armor. Amanti’s suit was storm-gray, a cape rippling like schools of fish as she moved.
They looked like what they were: royalty fit for the naiads’ halls.
Aurelia’s gaze found mine. Something like fury flashed in her, and then her eyes lowered, and she strode into the room, shoulders back.
I stood as they reached us and pulled her chair out.
She sat, careful not to brush my arm. Up close, I could feel it—the dark, stubborn spark she carried. Fire banked, sitting in a river’s hall and refusing to be smothered.
She’d gone three days without so much as a tinge of smoke, and now her power felt close, burning beneath the surface of her skin. It made me wonder what had happened since we last spoke.
Keres and Amanti sat.
Drinks were served. Then food.
Still, with one eye on the king, we did not eat. Not when he’d yet to touch his own plate. Another reminder of who he was—and where we stood in the hierarchy of this place. Beneath the surface and beneath him. We’d eat when he told us to.
Slade muttered his opinions of that, and Keres shushed him.
“You look beautiful tonight,” he told her.
“You look like a jester,” she told him.
Daegel belly-laughed.
“I found out something about Lesha,” Aurelia said quietly.
Everyone turned to look at her.
She kept her expression neutral and her voice low. “Nali told me she’s being held at a camp just north of Nygard Peak.”
“Do you believe her?” Thorne asked warily.
“Yes,” Aurelia admitted. “Not that it does us any good without a way in.”
“There are reports of a war camp on the northern border,” Slade said. “It’s her base camp for the attacks she’s led on the Autumn villages.”
“What attacks?” Aurelia asked.
“Utter destruction,” Slade said grimly. “She’s locking folks inside their homes and burning whole villages to the ground. No prisoners. No survivors. And then winter spreads to freeze it all over. Like a memory of death—preserved.”
“Seven Hels,” Thorne muttered.
“Gods,” Aurelia breathed. “That’s awful.”
I wondered if she was thinking of what she’d done to Duron. My hand reached for hers before I thought better of it and tucked it away again.
Finally, up on the dais, Patamoi lifted a hand. The music dimmed. “Osphanis welcomes those who travel far to ask and farther still to swallow their pride,” he said. The words were smooth. The current under them was not. Bastard. “Eat. Drink. Tonight, we honor our guests.”
He lifted his own glass and drank.
The crowd did the same.
The king sat, at last taking a bite of his food. The crowd cheered as music resumed and the party officially began.
Servants came in quiet waves. Fish with skin crisped. Fruit jeweled with salt. Bread that cracked open and steamed. I didn’t touch the wine. None of us did.
I watched more than I ate. The guards. The guests. It was all an elaborate distraction for the real risk: we were trapped with nowhere to go and no weapons to defend. None save our magic.
Slade leaned back in his chair, nodding toward a female naiad across the room who hadn’t stopped watching him. “I’d like to state, for the record, that I am happy to do my part in furthering our goodwill with the river people.”
Daegel snorted. “And when she drowns you in your sleep?”
“Worth it,” Slade said, grinning.
Keres snorted her distaste and went back to watching the room. She hadn’t eaten a crumb.
“You should at least pretend to eat,” I told her quietly.
“Why?” she challenged.
“Manners.”
“Was it manners when they executed Brigham six years ago?” she shot back.
I sighed. “Brigham started it, remember?”
“We should have finished it,” she said.
“Who was Brigham?” Aurelia asked.
I glared at Keres. It was an old argument, but not one to have in this particular room.
“Ask me later.” I pushed my chair back, letting it scrape as I stood. Aurelia looked up sharply, and I met her gaze evenly.
“Will you dance with me?” I asked.
“Is that wise?” she asked, glancing toward Patamoi.
“He wants us where he can see us.” I shrugged. “I’d think us being in the center of the room offers him the best view of all.”
I took her hand. Warm. Sure.
We stepped onto the floor. I felt the naiad watching us, but I no longer cared; all my attention was for her now.
I kept my palm at the small of her back and felt the small, deliberate push of her spine into it. Not an accident. An answer. An invitation.
Or maybe I was losing my mind down here.
We moved slowly. A rhythm in a foreign tongue; a feeling that had been building since a summer rooftop party more than seven years ago.
When she looked at me, the lights swayed and threw a ripple across her cheekbone.
Fire under skin that had nothing to do with a gods-given power and everything to do with want. Need.
“Your hip seems to be better,” she said.
“It’s healed,” I agreed, wondering at how she’d picked up on the slight injury when none of the others had.
“Tell me about your shadows,” she said quietly. Casual on the surface, but underneath, not casual at all. “When you call them… what do they feel like to you?”
I considered the question.
“They’re not so much a call,” I said. “More like… opening a door that’s been there all along.”
“A part of you.”
“Yes.”
“Did they come from your mother’s side then?”
“They are a gift of Midnight.”
“And is she… like you?”
“Stronger,” I said, which was true, and left out everything that wasn’t mine to say. “Smarter. Meaner when she has to be.”
Her brow lifted at that, but she only said, “She’s behind the wall, isn’t she?” I hesitated. “That’s why you didn’t want to tell me about her. Before. Because you hadn’t told me about the gates.”
“Yes.”
“You must miss her.”
“Sometimes.” I let the memory in for a breath and then set it back where it belonged.
“Do you speak to her? Is that possible with the locked gate?”
“There are ways of sending messages through. Shadow-guards who pass messages. But… she keeps her own counsel lately.”
Aurelia held my gaze a second too long. The music shifted, and the floating lights swung low, their glow washing the floor in pale gold. She looked like something carved from that light.
A ray of sunshine that had somehow penetrated the depths.
We spun again, letting the music wash over us. The line of her throat was a temptation I chose not to think about. And then there was the tattoo. A wink from her father as if he, too, was watching this dance.
“Tell me something true,” she said softly.
“I have,” I said.
“Tell me something you haven’t yet.”
I looked at her mouth. “If I start with you, I won’t stop.”
Her breath hitched. She covered it by shifting closer, our bodies fitting in a way that was too easy. Her next words skimmed my jaw. “Maybe I’m not asking you to.”
The room faded to edges—the guards, the dais, the way Patamoi’s eyes tracked our every move. None of it mattered for two heartbeats when she tipped her chin and our mouths almost brushed. The space between her lips and mine was a coin’s width, maybe less.
I could feel the heat of her.
It should have been wrong, flaunting what I felt for her in front of a king who despised me, but I couldn’t bring myself to care what anyone thought but her.
The spell between us shattered as a distinctive tremor passed through the floor.
Aurelia’s steps faltered. The orbs overhead swayed, one bumping another and sending a scatter of gold across the crowd.
A few guests laughed, thinking it a party trick—until the second vibration hit harder. Plates rattled.
Somewhere, a servant screamed.
Dishes crashed.
The walls groaned as if something enormous had shoved at them.
Aurelia’s hand stiffened in mine. “Did you feel that?”
“Stay close.”
The third shockwave cracked through the hall, and every light snuffed out at once.
For half a breath, there was nothing but the dark and the sound of the sea pressing at the walls. Then a single shape drifted out of it.
A naiad. Or what had been one.
Her skin was marble white, veins blackened like cracks in ice. Eyes hollow, mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. When she moved, she jerked, as if dragged forward by a force that was not her own.
Gasps echoed around us.
Patamoi rose halfway from his throne, trident in hand. “Guards—”
The creature shrieked, the sound vibrating through the space until my skull rang.
The naiad struck first.
The nearest guard went down in a swirl of black water; his armor turned brittle and split apart like eggshell. The infection spread through him before he hit the floor.
Keres’s voice snapped through the din: “Daegel!”
His shadow shield expanded like a dome, pushing civilians back. Thorne waded into the chaos, hauling people behind pillars. But the naiad ignored the fleeing guests, its eyes fixed on Aurelia.
Her hand tore free of mine, furyfire flaring from her palms in a burst of magic. The flames rolled off her, lighting the entire hall in flickering darkness.
“Don’t—” I started.
Too late.
The creature dove at her.
I met it mid-lunge, shadows slamming it against the far wall. It screamed again, body convulsing, obsidian shards shredding free from its skin and spinning like shrapnel.
Aurelia lifted her palm. Fire and shadow collided. The impact blew the air from my lungs, boiling the moisture coating the walls to steam.
When the haze cleared, the naiad hung there—half ash, half bone—still moving.
Then it laughed.
Not a naiad’s laugh. This one was colder, silkier, threaded with malice that didn’t belong here.
“Still playing at diplomacy, little flame?”
The voice filled the hall—Heliconia’s, unmistakable. I felt Aurelia freeze beside me.
“Did you think the river would wash you clean? That you could make friends with the fish and forget what you left rotting on land?”
“You have no real power here,” Aurelia told her coldly.
“And you do? Tell me, what has the river king promised you? Friendship? An army? Or the remnants of a grudge that will keep him Beneath until it’s nothing more than his watery grave?”
Patamoi roared at that, lunging off his throne as sharpened ice spears shot toward the naiad. One of them buried itself deep in the naiad’s chest, drawing ochre blood.
“Demon,” Patamoi screamed. “You disrespect the very power you’ve stolen.”
The naiad choked, its chest rattling with the effort. But still, Heliconia’s voice rang out. “Lesha sings for me now.” Hate laced her words. “She dreams in ice and wakes whispering your name. You should hear the things she says when I peel back her skin.”
Aurelia’s skin heated, and I knew she was fighting to hold herself together.
“Burn it,” I told her.
Her eyes met mine, bright and furious. “Together.”
I opened my hand, letting the darkness flood outward. Her furyfire met it mid-current. For a heartbeat, everything froze—the entire hall suspended in fiery darkness—then the creature disintegrated.
Ash drifted like snowfall.
Only the hiss of cooling stone rang out in the silence.
When I looked up, Patamoi stood on his dais, trident lowered, the expression on his face unreadable. Around him, his court stared as if they’d witnessed a sacrilege instead of a thwarted attempt at assassination.
Aurelia’s fire winked out. My shadows coiled back to nothing. The smell of scorched salt lingered.
The king’s gaze settled on us—first her, then me. The weight of it pressed harder than the sea itself. “What abomination have you brought into my waters?”