A Sea of Fate and Starfire (The Naiads of Juile #4)

1. Maren

Maren

All I’ve ever heard, when the light shutters out, is silence.

I think that’s what every mortal soul hears.

Silence, and the hollow fear that follows.

The desperation left in the place of sound.

The questions we must answer alone, words tumbling like stones in our heads as we ask what we could have done.

What we should have done. And what we could possibly do now.

That’s when we search for answers in the dark.

I stood at the edge of the world and stared into darkness. And darkness stared back.

It reached for my toes, slipping around and between them, cold as I ushered a deep breath into my lungs. My last breath, as far as I knew.

And let the moon stream over my shoulders. My last moonlight.

And listened to creaking in the trees behind me. My last forest sounds.

I wouldn’t need them where I planned to go.

Kolibri’s soft nicker fractured the deadened wind. The Naiads of Juile waited at my back. Nori and Olinne held hands as they watched me gather myself for a long dive followed by eternal nothing. The rest of them clasped their palms and fingers together, heads bowed.

I’m not sure how I knew without turning around to gaze at them. I just did.

Selena stood alone. Separate and fierce.

I’d spent the last six hours interrogating her as we walked to the black lake in the center of snowy mountains. How had Cebrinne managed to finally escape Thaan, her blood bound to his? How had they managed to call to the moon under Thaan’s nose, to light a Morai candle and begin a Triad?

“Sanguis proditionis,” Selena answered, solemn and patient as she offered explanations to my questions more freely than she ever had before. “Blood betrayal drops. A Naiad’s vows can be fractured for one full day of freedom by swallowing the blood of their oath-master.”

Her calm tolerance for my ire only stoked my fires, both within my blood and over my skin.

Lungs raw from inhaling smoke and heat, the burns on my body already fading, I hadn’t even bothered to study the faint white lines that had surfaced along my flesh. The brand of a siren queen coming into her power would have mesmerized me days ago.

But Kye died.

And the only thing that mesmerized me now was the numbing sound of silence that echoed when I reached for him. That silence was a knife in my heart, a blade forged by fury on one side, pain on the other.

Mihauna, the moon shone bright here. Silver across the nape of my neck. I closed my eyes, barring the exit of any further tears, though that didn’t stop them from escaping. They fell whether or not I tried to banish them.

And underneath them, a quiet inferno I had not tasted in weeks. But one I recognized all too well. The smooth burn of poison.

I’ll come for you.

I sheathed Kye’s sword into the baldric strapped to my back, checking that his knife was also strapped to my waist.

And dove.

In the dead of winter, the mountain lake knew nothing but cold, and cold was all it offered me as I pushed into my pale-gold tail and struck for the bottom.

Cold that bit and stung, needling over my flesh.

Slashing to my bones. I beat it away as I stroked down, flying to the center of the world through a deep tunnel that had never met current or tide.

Light dropped away. The water lay still around me.

But I wasn’t alone.

Creatures lived here in the dark. Too small and shadowed for me to see, but I felt them there, witnessing my descent.

Claws, fins, fingers, spines. They stretched, reaching for me, warning me against traveling further.

And though the water cradled nothing but silence, I heard their screams as they begged me not to venture to the depths.

But that’s the thing about losing that which you value most. There is little you won’t trade to reclaim it. Even if the merchant you bargain with is Darkness himself.

I cut into the cold. The black. The silence.

Until the water wasn’t water. My balance shifted without the buoyancy of it to hold me straight, and I suddenly wasn’t stroking but dropping, scrabbling for anything nearby to cling to and slow my fall.

I transitioned back to my feet, though it did nothing to save me.

The Breath of Safiro glowed on its chain around my neck, illuminating the space around me. But that was all it was. Empty space. Miles and miles of it. I tumbled head over heels in a rotation I couldn’t stop. Into an abyss as endless as the stars, without any of their light.

Then I landed.

On my feet, at least. Knees crouched, my head spun with the sudden stillness of space and time. I straightened my legs, forcing a shudder away as I felt something move. The shadows. The empty. The darkness. It leered over me in a way that, even if I ran, couldn’t be escaped.

Hollow dark stretched in all directions, a crypt without light or sound, except for the dripping that came from nowhere and everywhere. Dripping far away. Dripping in my ears.

Drip… Drip... Drip... I looked around, but everything I found was nothing at all.

My mouth hardened as my eyes roamed the wall-less expanse, impatience nipping somewhere around my heels. Instinct flared, chilling my bare skin. I was being watched. Darkness was watching me. Wasting precious seconds, one at a time.

“I don’t have time for games,” I snapped.

“Oh, but I do,” a cold voice answered. A drip of liquid ice fell down my back, and I whipped around. Nothing was there. “Did you know, dear mortal, the offense of bringing light into a house of shadow?”

My hands immediately wrapped around my stone. Its glow escaped the cracks between my fingers, casting them an eerie blue. The voice laughed, the sound delving deep into my chest. I glared into the dark.

“Show yourself.”

A touch of cold slithered around my arm, traveling to my wrist and turning me slowly around. The shadow of a face peered into my eyes. “My darling,” Darkness said. “Have you come to strike a bargain?”

In the deepest cavern of the world, a tomb of my own creation, the poison within me burned. I pulled my arm away. “Yes.”

Frigid water dripped from its touch, vanishing before it hit the floorless space where I stood. “And did you see, sweet mortal, the wraithlings who live among the rocks above? The creatures who failed to keep their promises to me?”

I merely lifted my chin.

Darkness tilted its head. And vanished.

It reappeared behind my back, curling into my neck, its mouth in my ear. “Would you like to?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Darkness’s cold seeped into me, paralyzing my bones. I fought not to react to it. My muscles hardened into stone, and as I lifted my chin, the ice-laden tendons in my neck stretched in protest.

Impatience stabbed at me, heating my body and simmering under my skin. “Because I don’t care to.”

Darkness laughed again, sliding across my shoulders to my opposite ear. “Lies, lies. You are afraid to see them. Afraid you will change your mind and climb back to the light. Tell me only your truths, darling, for your night-sea eyes sparkle when you lie. You cannot keep secrets from the dark.”

My eyes narrowed. “Nothing will make me change my mind.”

“Nothing?” Darkness smiled. “Those who ask to see my wraithlings always change their mind. They are creatures devolved from their former bodies. Armless and legless. Eyeless, though they see. Mouthless, though they consume. Voiceless, though they scream. Scream for mercy. Scream for forgiveness. Scream for their souls to simply cease. Let us travel to them, dear pet. I shall not strike a deal with you uninformed.”

“I don’t care about your wraithlings,” I hissed.

But Darkness blew away, a ball of shadows, like smoke that somehow twisted and tangled within itself, curling a finger through the air until something small drew to its hand. “Come closer with your stone,” Darkness murmured, gazing down at its open palm.

Even under the burn of my irritation, a cold, clammy sweat prickled over my skin, my scalp tight as a voice inside my head pleaded with me not to. But my feet moved, one after another. I pried my fingers from the stone and lifted its chain, sending its glow over Darkness.

Shadows fled from the blue light, leaving Darkness’s skin uncovered.

I might have expected its body to be as black as tar.

Or perhaps pale as bone. But it was normal skin.

Human skin. Dark as ochre and taut over a muscular male forearm, etched with arcane symbols that traveled the length of his limb, disappearing into the dark.

In his hand, a creature writhed in pain from the light.

It stood only a few inches tall, though it fell over at once, thrashing and coiling in agony.

Its body a dull gray, it claimed a head on top of a wiry, wrinkled stump, eye sockets empty.

It opened its jaw in a silent wail, but skin covered its mouth, leaving only a cavity it couldn’t fill.

It made no sound, yet somehow, I heard its shriek.

And quickly snatched the light away.

“This one promised me a ladder that could reach the sky,” Darkness said, “so that he might harness the lost power of Aalto. A power he claimed lay dormant in his blood. A pity for him that he never achieved it. He belongs to me now, until I deign to release his soul to Perpetuum.”

“And that is what Thaan will become?” I asked.

Darkness didn’t move, but his shadowed eyes lifted to me.

“Thaan of Safiro upheld his end of our bargain. He traded straight across. Heart and soul and humanity for the blood of a monster. He will not become a wraithling. But he will be mine. One day, when the Fates are through with him, he will be a creature of Darkness.”

“The Fates,” I repeated. Selena’s patient explanation still fresh in my ears, I couldn’t help but connect what she’d said only hours ago in the wake of my fractured cordae.

The Fates marked Nikolaos for dead.