Maren
I’d expected Selena to try another appeal in the days following the failed meeting she’d organized.
She didn’t. Besides the rare sighting from across the courtyard or when we passed each other on our way to the kitchens, I hadn’t set eyes on my once mentor or Cebrinne.
I refused to let my thoughts wander over how they were spending their time, so naturally, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Their reunion had been so tearful, so touching, it set a roil in my belly.
I suppose I’d thought Cebrinne might want to return to Leihani.
To at least ask about my father, a man still hopelessly in love with her.
Had I been so childish to believe that, despite my own reluctance to forge a new relationship with Cebrinne, she’d want to see her cordae again?
Had the three years she’d spent with him been so meaningless?
In another lifetime, if Cebrinne had never searched for a family to use as a stepping-stone in her flee toward freedom…would she have chosen my father?
Would she have chosen me?
Was the sum of my existence merely the product of a human caught in a siren’s song, the crumbs left behind after fate had enjoyed its meal?
It did little good to send myself down that particular spiral.
All it did was make me feel small and forgotten and pathetically lost, yearning for a past that hadn’t even existed.
I’d already decided I couldn’t forgive her for abandoning us.
So why, in quiet moments when time stretched like shadows across the floor at dusk, did I find myself looking for hints that she would have stayed, had things been different?
It was a waste of my energy. I focused on Selena’s journal instead.
We devised a pipeline of information, Aitne shuffling updates from her mother in Juile while Olinne swam the northern coast in search of shield weed for our small human team.
Diara resettled into the admin offices, combing records and archives to trace Thaan’s last known steps.
Hadrian supplied translated excerpts from Selena’s journal one small stack at a time, portions of her coded writing he’d deciphered by candlelight.
Kye and I traded to comb through them, bartering rest in the hope we’d find the location of the second stone, a creeping doubt in my chest that had little to do with exhaustion.
I knew I could simply ask Selena.
But asking was like admitting I needed help. Like every lie, every half-truth, every manipulation would be wiped clean, swept under the rug and left to gather dust. Asking was a pill too bulky to swallow, one that offered only doubt and mistrust and the bitter aftertaste of betrayal.
So I didn’t ask.
It might have cost us days. I waited to see if Kye would be called back to Winterlight, knowing it would be soon.
Every courier that delivered Kye’s letters, every summons to the King’s audience, every nod from a noble or a council member.
I wrestled with uncertainty: was it truly wariness to ignore a truce with Selena, or was it my own pride?
Too worried at what I might find, I didn’t allow myself to dig far enough below my own surface to uncover the answer.
A week dripped by, then two. Kye and I discussed whether we might be faster at translating the journal, as Hadrian’s royal duties kept him occupied for most of the day. But by then, Hadrian had memorized Selena’s cypher, spilling ink into Cyprillic words as quickly as he could read them.
Almost a month after we’d returned, I watched from the eastern towers as a small brigade of soldiers rode to the iron palace gates.
I didn’t frequent that wing of the City of Towers—in fact, it had been the first time I’d ventured across that particular sky bridge since the morning after I’d married Kye.
It was as if I’d known he was coming as I gazed down the curtain wall to find the King’s flag high above the horses sweeping in, and recognized General Senan’s dappled red war horse.
The flagstones rapped under my feet as I raced to our tower. Kye.
Yes? Kye had spent most of the week pulled into conferences with the royal advisors, returning to our bed at night exhausted with a day’s worth of parochial and political discussion.
I sympathized with him—I knew he hated being caught in the net of a round table of conspiracy and heightened egos—but I couldn’t find it within me to complain when he closed the door to our rooms with a lazy foot, marched across the room to where I stood, and laced his mouth over mine, draining his mind of such affairs by shedding my clothes.
Senan just arrived.
A brief pause. You saw him in the palace?
Arriving outside the gates. Are you still with your father? I cringed, realizing I’d meant to say the King.
And Hadrian, Kye responded. Where are you headed now?
To collect our things and ready Kolibri.
A second pause, long enough I wondered whether he was in the middle of talking to someone or contemplating something in silence. Are you sure you don’t want to ask Selena?
My molars ground together. I didn’t want to admit that in the last fortnight, I’d grown more impatient, more uncertain, more doubtful that an answer to the location of the Scale of Safiro might even exist within Selena’s journal. Yes, I’m sure.
Kye didn’t say anything else, and I tried not to let my mind flounder as I pondered whether that silence was a message.
If he was already with Hadrian, then it would be easy to gather Diara in the offices.
We’d concocted a faux errand that King Emilius would send Kye and Hadrian to attend once he’d discovered the location of the Scale, though I’d hoped for the revelation to manifest before Senan did.
Our timeline away from the City of Towers had just shortened.
My breath echoed off the walls of the tight spiral staircase of our tower. Nori.
The siren surprised me with a swift answer. Yes, my Queen.
We are readying to leave the palace.
You’ve found the stone’s hiding place?
I turned the corner at the top of the tower stairs, and even with the chill of the winter wind still ringing in my ears, my skin glowed warm and dewy with exertion. Not quite. Come ashore and meet us in the stables—
A sound behind me, the quiet scuff of feet against stone.
I skipped thought. I skipped question. My fingers dipped into the slit of my skirt, unbuckling the knife sheathed around my thigh as I threw myself against the wall and spun.
I’d already called to water within blood, clenching the vents of a heart before I even laid eyes on the mortal it belonged to.
His knees hit the stone as he clutched his chest, the point of my knife under his chin. Aegir looked up at me, amusement dancing in the green of his eyes.
“I know you’re searching for the Scale,” he choked out. “Ask me where to find it.”
“Does Selena know what I’m looking for?”
Arms crossed, I leaned against an iron pillar between the mullioned glass, my knife a warm weight in my hand. I hadn’t sheathed it since reluctantly withdrawing it from the bow of Aegir’s trachea.
“I’ve not said a word.” Seated in an armchair across from me, Aegir tilted his head. “That doesn’t mean she does not know.”
Irritation and apprehension wove through my blood. “How would she know?”
Aegir smiled faintly. “Her notebook seems to have been misplaced.”
I swore inwardly, though I didn’t move. “How did you know we were leaving today?”
His eyes widened. “You’re leaving today?”
I swore again, though I didn’t repeat myself.
Aegir sighed. “You passed me on the sky bridge, but you were so focused you didn’t notice me. I called after you, but you were already to the door. You’re faster than you look.”
“I thought you might have returned to Venusia.”
“I had. I waited a few days at first, to see if you’d come to me for the lessons I’d promised. But when you didn’t, I decided to give you some time.”
“And you just happened to come ashore today?” I didn’t ask how he’d managed to slip past the guards. That I knew.
“I’ve been checking in every now and then. With Thaan away, it’s…” He paused, considering his thoughts. “Nice to finally catch up.”
I blinked at that, but before I could ask any further, the door opened.
Kye blew in, shirt already halfway over his head, his bare stomach growing inch by inch as the hem climbed his abdomen.
He tossed it away, finding me as it left his body, dark gold curls bouncing.
“I thought you’d already be in the stables,” he began.
His words cut short as he noticed Aegir.
The friendly air around Aegir extinguished, a cloud of ash and smoke. He lifted his head, letting his gaze coast down Kye, and the cozy armchair in which the Venusian occupied suddenly seemed more like a throne made of marble.
“Aegir knows where to find the Scale,” I said, remembering the last time Kye had entered a room to find me alone with a Videre. The memory of Thaan forcing his way into my head sent a cold shudder through my bones.
We’d run out of the shield weed I’d kept on-hand, and though I imagined traces of it lingered in Kye’s blood, I didn’t enjoy the idea of needing to depend on it. With the look Aegir wore, the thought also crossed his mind.
“The humans are not accompanying you to find the stone, I’m sure?” the Naiad asked coolly.
Kye canted his head, more challenge than question. He seemed to have forgotten his chest was bare, the sunlight shifting across his shoulders, illuminating the molten flecks in his eyes.
“They are,” I answered, pointing to the black riding shirt I’d already laid out for Kye.
Aegir watched us in silence for half a breath. “You’d endanger them.”
Kye matched his cold tone. “I’m unsure why that bothers you, as you clearly find yourself to be above me.”
Aegir slowly rose from the chair, silver cloak rippling behind him.
The sun stole through the gleaming strands of silk, revealing the tattooed whorls and swirls of his bare skin below it.
“The rivers are still like ice this time of year. We’ll have to make frequent stops to warm ourselves,” he said to me, turning his back on Kye like a house guest ignoring a stain in the carpet.
“Carrying humans will slow us further. They’d need air every two minutes, and Naiad air in their lungs would render them low-conscious. Helpless. As vulnerable as a vacous.”
The longer he spoke, the harder Kye’s teeth ground.
“More than that, it would prove unwise to put them in a position where they might accidentally see us.”
My exhale tugged at the strands of my hair. “We’ll be careful. We’ll turn before we surface. They’ll never see our tails.”
“They?” Aegir’s voice hit a note of disbelief.
I straightened. I’m a queen, I reminded myself. I am a queen, and he will not make me doubt my choices. “They know we are sirens,” I said, injecting confidence into the words.
Aegir didn’t reply, though the flash of his eyes said plenty. You fool.
“I hope you know what you are doing,” he finally murmured.
“When humans began multiplying faster than Naiads, when their existence began to threaten ours, Theia bartered with Truth. She traded a shred of her light to the Fate as a feeble defense against those who walked the land. If they were to see a Naiad’s scales, their days would be numbered.
Theia was once full and round every night.
She lives in waxes and wanes now to protect us.
You’re playing with fate, entangling yourself so tightly with humans. ”
His words sent strands of worry into my chest, burrowing like roots in dark soil. I tucked them away, tapping my fingertips over my chin. “Theia chose Kye as part of the Triad. She would not have tied his fate with mine, were I not meant to keep him at my side.”
Finally, Aegir’s attention shifted to where my husband stood. The muscles in Kye’s shoulders flexed as his hands curled, his Leihaniian tattoo hardening like rock.
The Videre of Venusia crooked a brow. “If you insist.”