Maren
“She didn’t kill him,” Aegir said, watching as the soft rush of ocean lifted the dead crow away. Its feathers ruffled against the wind before it vanished under a cresting wave.
“What else would it have been?” Nori snapped.
He angled a brow at her, calmly daring her to take that tone with him again. She swallowed and schooled her features.
“A spy,” I guessed aloud. “A vessel. No different than the way he used Pheolix.”
I glanced up to find Aegir’s eyes on mine, though whether he studied me or my words, I wasn’t sure.
The crow’s visit had shaken our group. We sat around the fire, silent.
Every stroke of tide, every click of wind raised our skin.
The laughter and easy conversation from only minutes ago now buried under the reminder of why we’d come.
I waited to hear the flap of dark wings again, dreading it the way a farmer dreads an early frost.
Finally, Kye said, “I’ll watch the fire. Everyone should sleep.”
This earned a curt glance from Aegir, though he quickly stowed it away, wrapping his silk cloak tighter around his shoulders as he leaned onto the silt floor. He did not fall asleep as quickly as the others.
The humans always faded fast, snoring softly into the wind.
My Naiads took their time giving into their own dreams. Exhaustion from a day’s swim and the sudden jolt of anxiety tugged me down like an anchor, my eyelids heavy as I watched them drop off, one by one.
A question rippled in my mind, dragging sleep just beyond my reach.
Why had the crows stared at Kye?
My husband stroked a tangled lock of my hair away from my ear, planting a kiss on the crown of my head. “Sleep, star-wielder,” he murmured, his voice as smooth and dark as the distant sea.
It was the last thing I heard before I drifted off. The last thing I saw was Aegir’s eyes across the fire. Watching softly.
I was relieved when we woke and gathered our things, wading into the salt-soaked sand.
Aegir pulled my Naiads aside before we fully submerged, lowering his voice so the humans wouldn’t hear.
“Follow me once we set out, and stay close so you do not accidentally tread in Anatoly water. The sea here is not bright like Juile, and you may become lost if you let yourself stray from the group.”
We nodded, and I made to move away from him, but he grasped my arm.
“Also,” he said, even more quietly. “The domus of Paria is small, and that is how they stay safe and undetected. Only a handful remained the last time I was here.”
“You think they will feel the need to defend their colony against us?” I asked.
Aegir shook his head. “I hope not, but that’s not why I’m warning you.
A healthy Naiad colony is like a gardener tending their roses.
Planting seeds, watering roots, thinning and pruning and ridding their blooms of aphids.
This garden”—he waved a hand at the expansive water—“has not been tended to in decades. And the aphids here aren’t as monstrous as the one you fought to reach the sea of stars.
But they’re as large as I am, and still very deadly. ”
I gave him a small nod, a bloom of nervousness unfurling in my chest. Aegir turned, stroking Kolibri’s neck before he strode chest-deep in the tide.
Until then, he’d held the rear of our group, tugging Hadrian behind him.
The prince inhaled at seeing him approach, familiar enough by now to duck under the cresting water with a blindfold ready and receive his Naiad air below.
Something gnawed at me following his words. I hadn’t thought of the Abyssi since fighting it, though an uneasy curiosity snaked through my mind. I chased it away by splashing to Kye, fitting silk over his eyes, and finding his mouth as we plunged below, bubbles vibrating in my ears.
We didn’t find any monsters between the mainland and the black island of Paria.
We found Selena instead.
She waited inside a cavern not far from where we landed, the rocks jagged and gnarled like teeth.
Leaning against the stony wall, she watched us climb from the water with patient, narrowed eyes, Cebrinne at her side.
Pheolix sat near their feet, rotating a sausage over a fire.
A strange array of human goods lay around them, fur and books and chests, water-stained maps and scrolls, knives and maces and swords.
Thick dust covered everything, exploding in low plumes whenever anyone disturbed a surface.
I glared up at Aegir. “You deceived me.”
He opened his mouth, but Selena stomped forward, throwing her finger in his face. “Allies?” She hurled the word at him as though it were a cruel mockery. “Friends?”
“Ah,” he said, the corners of his mouth lifting like a smile he failed to hammer down. “I did find Maren, and she did agree to come.”
Her brows pinched. “You simply forgot to mention it to us before you left.”
“I suppose it slipped my mind.” His smile widened, a small flash of youth sparkling in his eyes. “When did you arrive?”
“Last night.” Her gaze crawled to me, and her heat cooled. “My notebook has been missing for weeks. I see you finally discovered an entry that informed you where to go next. Imagine the time you might have saved, had you only asked me.”
Air snapped between my fingers. I curled them into my palms. “Imagine the same, had you proven I could trust you.”
The cold lashed us both, whipping my silk dress across my skin.
I hadn’t called the water off, and it zapped the heat as it struck, icy rivulets down the curves and swoops of my body.
Her hand rose, waving the ocean away, leaving me dry.
“Warm yourselves before we head below,” she said to the group.
My limbs shook with cold, and I bit down on my teeth to keep them from rattling.
Gooseflesh spread across me, the beds of my nails a pale shade of blue, my toes and fingers numb.
I craved a seat in front of the campfire almost enough to step into the flames and roast my own legs and arms. But at Selena’s command, I suddenly preferred the sharp teeth of winter sea.
I didn’t move, and neither did anyone else.
Pheolix tested his sausage with a prodding finger, then plucked it off his skewer, propping against an arm to watch us, though I knew he couldn’t see. Humor traced the lines of his face, though Cebrinne’s expression was harder to identify, veiling her thoughts behind cloaked eyes.
Selena realized her mistake. I was a queen, and she had just given me, and my Naiads, an order. She pulled in a deep breath. “It was an invitation, not a directive.”
Kye flinched beside me. He knew it had been the wrong thing to say, a spark of flint aimed at a bed of tinder.
The blaze of fire roared inside my mind. “How ironic, since you have only ever treated me as something to control.”
“Maren,” she began, but I didn’t want to hear.
Everything that had ever come from her mouth had been uttered to twine me into a thread with which she could sew her plans together.
Every sweet memory had been soured, every lesson had been tainted, every word now a broken vow.
Looking at her was a knife between my ribs, and the thought of taking her counsel churned sickness into my belly like mud between the spokes of a wheel.
Who might I lose next under her guidance? Would it be Nori, Aitne, Diara?
Thaan wants me to kill Hadrian.
So kill him, she’d said, flippant and easy, like the choice to end a human’s life wasn’t even worth her time compared to her carefully laid tracks for me. Before she’d left the palace at my side, riding toward a fate that sealed Kye’s death.
“Maren,” Selena said, softer. “I have never thought of you as an assignment.”
My lungs narrowed; it hurt to breathe. I swallowed that constricting pain down. “I asked you for no more lies. I asked you to see me as your equal.”
Loose strands of hair drifted from my face as Selena exhaled slowly. “There was nothing any of us could have done to change the tides of fate.”
I shook my head. “Then it seems there would be little harm in telling me what was to come.”
Anguish reflected at me in the ocean-blue of her eyes.
“That isn’t true. There is harm in approaching a fate you can’t escape.
There is worry, and dread, and agony. There is grief in counting days and hours and moments, knowing they are coming to an end, and I wanted to protect you from it.
I didn’t know what would happen once the choice to cross the sea of stars found you.
I looked at you, and I saw that you were free and happy, more than I’d ever been, and that was precious to me.
I didn’t want to destroy that happiness for you.
What you see as a betrayal, I viewed as a shield. ”
Her words nipped at my throat, tightening my windpipe even further. I stole a moment of quiet, delaying the sound of my voice for fear it might crack. “Your shield,” I breathed, “is a cage. I don’t need to be managed. I don’t need to be mothered. I’ve lived my entire life without one.”
Hurt crackled behind her eyes, but I looked away and did not glance at her again, nor the siren that stood behind her with hair like a cool waterfall. I walked from them, and continued to walk, slipping into the throat of the cavern.