30. Maren
Maren
Only hours into our return trip, I had to pull from the group, leading Kolibri over slimy winter rocks and mud to the refuge of land. The surface level of water, frigid even before lending my sun-warmth to Darkness, now felt like swimming through a current of death.
Kolibri rode to shore, her long tail separating into hind legs, hooves clacking over hardened river clay. I’d already transitioned back to my own legs, not bothering to swing one across my saddle, leaning sideways into her broad neck. Kye’s draw of air behind me rattled in my ears.
“Where is everyone?” he asked, pulling his blindfold from his eyes.
“I’m sure they’re turning around now,” I managed through clattering teeth.
I felt him shift as he glanced at me, his hand cupping the nape of my neck. “Sun’s fucking balls,” he cursed under his breath, rolling his weight off Kolibri, boots squelching as he hit the muddy ground.
I let him pull me off, the tremor in my muscles so pronounced I vibrated against him. But I hadn’t lost the ability to shiver yet, the blood in my veins still warm enough to give me that at least. Wind snapped at us like a jealous lover. Kye held me close as he stepped higher up the embankment.
“But Kolibri—” I murmured.
“She’ll be fine,” Kye said. “She survived the ancient plagues. She probably started them.”
“Is she cold?” called Aitne’s voice from the water. More splashing followed her.
I glanced over Kye’s shoulder, scales glittering from the water’s edge. “Don’t look behind you.”
Kye sat me in cold, dry grass. “Truth won’t kill me twice for the same offense.”
“You don’t know that,” I hissed through chattering teeth, but the Naiads changed quickly, hauling their human escorts ashore.
Aitne tromped up the loam, Diara close behind her, arms crossed against the cold. “I’ll search for some wood,” she said, tucking her red, dripping braid over her shoulder.
They trekked up the side of the ravine, one at a time, and I tried to ignore the jab of wounded pride at the thought I was the reason our travel would be stalled. My hand found the Scale of Safiro, a hard weight inside my pocket.
Aegir dropped to his knee at my hip, a hand raised as he lifted water from my crown.
His call was like a comb running through my hair and clothes, a slight tug and pull as he worked.
Selena handed him a heavy fur, already dry, with one hand as she turned to work on drying off the moving bodies around her.
Nori swept grass away from my feet, Olinne laying stones in a small circle.
Cebrinne and Diara had already returned with weather-beaten driftwood.
“You can’t feel it at all?” Aitne asked.
I glanced at the sun, currently losing in a contest of strength against the clouds.
It cut through the sky in thin streaks, one of which Kye had planted me directly in the center.
I should have felt it, that comforting hum of warmth where it touched.
The top of my forehead, my arms, my collarbones.
Even in direct sun, I felt as though I stood in a shadow.
“No,” I answered, determined not to shiver.
Pheolix lifted his nose to the air. “Might rain soon.”
Selena nodded. “If it does, it does. I’ll take care of this,” she said, taking the flint and knife from Kye. “Go warm her up.”
He left the flint with her, stripping his shirt off with a lazy hand and crawling under the fur behind me. I shuddered when my skin touched him, his chest still cold from the water, but he drew me in, hiking my dress up my back so that his body heat would become mine.
“Hollow fucking sun,” he swore softly, glancing across the fire. “Is there another pelt under Kolibri’s saddle?”
Hadrian turned to go look.
“Careful to not look it in the eyes,” Kye warned him.
“Hush,” I warned, my mouth threatening to curve. He sat his chin over the top of my head.
“How long will we stay?” Diara asked, hiking the strap of her bow over her shoulder.
I squinted at the sun’s dull shape behind the clouds. “Not long. I just need to warm up. I don’t want to lose daylight.”
But even as I said it, I felt foolish. The sun straddled the clouds like a low-hanging hammock over the horizon, and it didn’t take a Leihaniian, who read the sun and stars like a bedtime story, to understand eventide was quickly approaching.
Worry inched from the backwaters of my mind like a quiet whirlpool.
Would I have to halt our progress back to Calder every day?
Hadrian reached across me, Kolibri’s thick fur pad hanging from his hand, already dried from Cebrinne’s call.
Kye took it from him, pulling me into his lap to lay it flat on the grass.
I flinched as my entire side connected to his stomach, every bit as cold as I felt, and nurtured a pang of guilt that I’d brought him along just to freeze underwater as we traveled.
“Long enough that I might catch something?” Diara asked.
Nose rosy from the bite of wind, Aren rubbed his hands together over the crackling fire. “Tired of dried meat, Verrata?” Diara’s narrowed eyes slithered over our shrinking satchel of supplies, her rosebud mouth pursed at Aren’s use of her family name.
“Yes,” Diara said, twisting her long braid behind her. “Are you coming?”
Aren straightened in surprise, along with the rest of us. But she wasn’t looking at him. Hands on her hips, she waited for an answer from Hadrian. He’d found our community cooking pot and, filling it with river water, had just set it into the fire.
“Y—yes,” the crown prince said. Holding a pouch of dried tea leaves, he shot Kye a rigid glance, like he’d suddenly forgotten why his hands were attached to his body.
Kye waved him on, holding out his hand for the leaves. “Hot tea?” he offered me, though he’d already begun wriggling out from behind me to finish what Hadrian had started.
Pheolix sat close to me, Selena’s porcelain cup in his hands.
I’d caught myself staring at his eyes, often flinging my gaze elsewhere before remembering he couldn’t possibly catch me watching him.
Even so, he seemed to know. Some intuitive notion within me nudged that he was more aware of his surroundings than the rest of us.
He leaned toward me, dropping his voice conspiratorially. “He might be prettier than the horse. But I’ll bet the horse is warmer.”
I didn’t attempt to hide my smile with him. “Probably true.”
“My Queen,” Aitne said, squatting low beside me. “I’d like to try warming your blood.”
I blinked, curious that I hadn’t considered doing so myself. “All right.”
Cebrinne and Selena glanced over their shoulders at the young Naiad. “Go slowly,” Selena warned. “Blood warming can force cold blood back to her heart and cool her more.”
“Aitne knows circulation,” Olinne said smoothly.
She brushed her pale curls out of her face, twisting her hair behind her, and crawled under my furs, taking Kye’s place.
I almost melted into her when she pulled me in close, her heat as luxurious as the waters of Leihani, and my eyes closed in sudden exhaustion.
Aitne pressed her palm above my chest, and on my next inhale, warmth bloomed out from under her hand. It spread like a calm, soothing fire through my veins. I flexed my hands and feet against the small needling sting as heat returned to my fingers and toes.
Steam percolated near my nose, a warm cup held out.
I took it from Kye, breathing in the earthy notes of Hadrian’s tea leaves, tilting the rim into my mouth.
Kye poured bubbling water into a second cup.
Aren had pulled a whetstone from his pocket to sharpen a boot knife.
Nori withdrew our map from a beeswax cloth, laying it dry at her feet.
Aegir fed Kolibri a bundle of the dry grass, to which she nibbled half-heartedly, the frost having stolen most of its flavor.
But she enjoyed the sound of his voice, her tail swaying softly as she listened to him.
Cebrinne sat at his feet, coasting her fingers through the fluffy spikes of inflorescence, plucking the soft grass heads from their stalks.
Every few minutes, our eyes crossed, both of us glancing away.
I couldn’t help but hear the echo of her words in the house of night.
I know you think you were a consolation to a bid for freedom.
It hadn’t escaped my notice that she’d neglected to mention my father.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” Pheolix said softly.
Motion around me faltered. Then froze.
Halfway through handing Aitne her tea, Kye paused, arm outstretched. I could almost taste their attention, focused on Pheolix and me like worried old women watching their grandchildren toddle too close to the water’s edge. My brows kissed. “When? You haven’t hit me.”
But Pheolix opened and closed his right hand as though the memory was still there, an afterburn in his muscles. “I sent you backwards. Broke the chair underneath you.”
My mouth parted as I remembered what he was referring to. In the captain’s quarters of the Aspire, and the minutes leading up to my signed contract, I’d challenged Thaan through clenched teeth. And found myself lying on the floor the next moment, stars dancing in front of my eyes.
A cold heat brushed across my forehead. I curled my fingers around my cup, aiming my eyes away from him. “You remember that.”
Pheolix swallowed. “Some things, I’ll always remember, even if I sometimes forget the rest,” he murmured. I wonder if he could sense that they had all halted, that our conversation had moved to a well-lit stage, the Naiads around us like stone statues in the wings.
I cleared my throat. “That wasn’t you.”
“No, not me. But I wanted to say sorry anyway. Have wanted to for a couple months, now.” He slanted his face in my direction, mouth crooked.
“I’ve never seen someone manage to get under his skin so quickly.
Not since—” He waved an idle hand in what he must have assumed was Selena and Cebrinne’s direction.
I followed it, and as my eyes met those across from me, they quickly glanced away, returning to their tasks.
“Seen?” I tilted my head. “Can you see when he’s…”
“In me?” Pheolix finished. I cringed. Something about the question felt rude. Invasive. Thaan had taken control of my mind before, and I remembered everything.
But I wasn’t blind.
“It’s…funny,” he said, scratching at the dark stubble under his jaw.
“I can, but only when he’s with me. Like he’s borrowed my body, but I’ve borrowed his sight.
It’s torture, as you know, when he claims our blood that way.
But sometimes I almost miss it. Seeing more than shapes and shadows and light.
I miss reading. I miss watching the rain. I miss Selena’s face.”
The fire spit softly, one of the branches cracking. No one spoke, and I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I snaked my arm out from under my furs to take his hand. He angled a brow at me mischievously, as if he hadn’t just chiseled a knot into the base of my throat, and waited for me to speak.
I wondered what Pheolix would have become, had Thaan not stolen his body so much that he’d destroyed Pheolix’s sight. Where he and Selena might be now, if they’d both lived as free Naiads.
“Well,” I whispered so that no one could hear. “She hasn’t changed. She’s beautiful.”
He laughed gently, just once, and gave me a squeeze. “I know.”