33. Maren
Maren
The river beckoned. Breathlessly. Like a whisper in my ear.
But each molecule kissed my skin, charged and stirring. A summoning deep and familiar, like night to the moon. The fire in my blood died, and I watched, listening to the world as every hair on my body stood erect.
The fray was where I’d left it, horse-battered Naiads already recovering, whipping around to search for me. But they moved slowly, their arms and tails protracting as they spun, their hair unfurling like lazy shadows over their heads.
I lifted a hand. One quiet, deliberate hand, my fingertips barely curled over my palm. At the look in my eyes, Aegir grabbed Pheolix and Cebrinne, turning them into the rocks with his body. Selena was already dashing away, her hand tight over Nori’s arm.
Water crackled around my palm. It didn’t spark and spit the way it did on land. It blurred with light that shuttered and flashed, a bolt peeking through a storm cloud.
The drones began to dart away. But they were wind. And I was starfire.
Power left my fingers like a broken thread, scorchingly bright. It zipped through the current, twisting, turning, erratic. Jumping from one ion to the next like steppingstones over a pond. Straight into the heart of the drone holding Olinne.
The boom rocked the entire river.
It rattled inside my breastbone, static roaring in my ears.
Ice above us fractured like shattered glass. Rocks shot free from the mud. Water exploded across the surface, igniting the river in a flurry of rime and silt, sunlight striking, blades through a broken crust.
Strange patterns spiderwebbed across the Naiad’s chest, his skin raised and red with anger. But his arms fell away from Olinne, his jaw unhinging like a slack door, his eyes rolling behind his head. She pushed him with a shaking hand, and he fell listlessly away.
I hardly noticed.
The drones had regrouped once again, staring at me now with uncertainty. Their hearts clamored, echoing in the water. When I advanced with a single stroke of my tail, they turned and fled, leaving the river a broken mess behind them.
Pheolix helped me haul Kye over the destroyed embankment.
He ripped his blindfold off like he’d known he’d been absent during a fight, his throat tight and jaw clenched. “What happened?”
“Drones,” I answered, teeth clattering. Now that my adrenaline had ebbed, the cold world clutched my skin and hair with its icy hands. I turned, dropping to my knee in front of Olinne, and wiped a heavy trail of blood from my nose. “What can I do to help?”
A deep gash alongside her navel ran with crimson, a river more deadly than the one we’d climbed from. Color had drained from her face, and her breaths came and went in short, gasping pulls.
Aitne kneeled beside her, hands bright and shining with blood. “Help me staunch the flow.”
“Moon-damned gnats,” Olinne heaved, lifting a hand blindly.
Nori circled her fingers around it, a sneer distorting her face.
“They won’t be back.” Olinne’s head rested in the center of Nori’s lap, and Nori smoothed the wounded Naiad’s pale curls from her face.
Small cuts peppered the entire right side of Olinne’s body, souvenirs of the rocks and pebbles that had pummeled her when I’d electrocuted the drone.
I bit down on my own cheek, laying my fingertips alongside the gash, calling to Olinne’s blood to slow its escape. “Is this from me?”
“It’s too clean to be your star-wielding,” Aitne answered. “This is the result of a blade.”
Fear crept up my throat, the weight of hard steel not yet far enough removed from my hands to forget it. “Is this from me?” I asked again, rougher.
Silence met my ears. Nori swallowed loudly, her frown deepening. Aitne acted as though she hadn’t heard me, her thoughts trained on closing the wound.
“No. You were…” Aegir hesitated. He stood near enough to watch, his mouth set in a line that was hard enough to chisel stone. “Vigorous…with that blade. This was a smaller knife. A dagger, maybe.”
My dagger.
My belly lurched as Olinne sucked a sharp breath in and cursed again in pain.
“It’s closing,” Aitne said soothingly.
My heart doubled in weight at the relief. Sweat beaded along Olinne’s brow, but she patted my arm, a flimsy smile on her lips. “All well, little creature.”
No one spoke as the wound stitched itself shut, leaving a pink slash embedded in Olinne’s stomach. She sat up slowly, wincing. Nori nuzzled into her, brows furrowed, planting a kiss against the side of her head.
Aitne sat back on her heels, eyeing the rest of us for injuries. Selena’s wrist was sprained, Pheolix’s eye was beginning to darken with a purple shine, and Kolibri’s legs were littered with small, shallow cuts, but no one else seemed worse for wear.
Pheolix stood listening to the burble of the river like a father waiting for an unruly child to explain itself. “Thaan’s drones are trained assassins. This wasn’t a lethal attack.”
“What was it, then?” Kye slung a bear fur hard against the wind with impatience, the scent of molten steel burning from his direction. He folded the corners over my shoulders, and I lifted a brow, wondering what exactly had made him angry.
Pheolix slanted his jaw right and left, chewing his words into different shapes as if tasting each possibility.
“Knowing Thaan, could have been anything. Taunting us, testing us. Analyzing how large our party of Naiads is, seeing how organized we are during an attack. Experimenting with strategies to split us up.”
Pheolix’s voice was soft, and it wasn’t an accusation, but it hung in the air like one anyway.
A weighty silence drifted like a dark fog through our circle, the Naiads unwilling to meet my eyes.
The humans did the opposite, their eyes darting gravely from face to face, searching for clues as to what had happened without having to ask.
I straightened, lifting my chin in the air, refusing to apologize for reclaiming Kye from the drone.
“Let’s not cast stones,” Selena said smoothly. “None of us could have predicted a drone attack.”
Aegir tilted his head as if he’d predicted just that, but he didn’t speak.
“We have plenty of time to discuss it.” Nori stood, gathering her wet wine-red hair in a rope and aiming her gaze at the sky. She nudged the air with her chin at a flock of crows flying west like dark ashes against the morning sky. “We’re visible here.”
“There are vineyards on the hills,” Hadrian said, tracing his finger along the distant mounds of gray-green where vines grew in fragile rows.
I’d seen the orchards above The City of Towers, but I’d never seen a grape vineyard.
This one was sprawling and efficient and somehow calming in its organized shape, well-groomed and polite.
“We’re near Ascento—Locklier Castle. Dimas’s mother’s estate, if I’m right. ”
“And is he home?” Aren asked, twisting water from the hem of his shirt, the hard muscles of his stomach visible.
It occurred to me that the humans had been waiting for us to call water away from them, but the tense tones of our conversation had left them hesitant to ask.
We hadn’t even banished the river from ourselves yet.
Kye ran a hand roughly through his hair, shaking out the water. “I believe he is.”
I flexed my jaw, calling water from Diara. Moisture left her in delineated streams. Hadrian crossed his arms, patient, almost satisfied as he watched Diara’s hair dry and soften.
The crown prince cleared his throat again. “His family would host us, should we find ourselves at their door.” He neglected to press further, ending his sentence with a lilt that extended the question for him.
The tightness in the air stretched even more, ropes around my arms pulling me in separate directions. My hand slithered into my pocket, rolling the stones in my palm.
“I’d prefer to not turn to unfamiliar humans for hospitality,” Aegir finally said.
Aren snorted. Diara laced her arms, aiming a scowl his way. “You’d rather be attacked again? In a river?”
“I’d rather not have to worry about low-conscious humans while we travel,” Olinne said, wincing again.
Aren nodded ironically. “So you agree. Taking the road is a wiser choice.”
“You were attacked,” Diara sighed. “Why are you avoiding it? They attacked, and your skills rely on water—except you can’t use that against a drone.
We”—she waved haphazardly between herself and the other humans—“can fight on land. I don’t understand what the problem is.
Maybe it’s us that should be defending you. ”
Nori gave a careless chuckle, meeting eyes with Olinne in a way that promised a later discussion full of indulgent mocking.
“How did you call to water?”
The voice cut through the thick tension like a fisherman’s knife, deft and smooth and so precise you don’t even see the skin separating from the flesh. Across from me, Cebrinne waited with stone-like curiosity, unbothered by the disagreement unfolding around her.
I shifted the crystals within my palm, letting them tumble over each other again. “I just put one of them into my pocket and touched the other. As soon as they both connected with my skin, I could feel the water again—”
Selena gasped, the sound deep and full of terror. She scrambled a step back, then came clawing forward, angrily ramming into Pheolix. Closest to her, Kye grabbed her arm, steering her away, pale-faced and heaving. We stared, but not at her.
Pheolix smiled at us with a worn-dry sort of patience, his eyes crinkling cruelly in the corners. He brought his hands together, letting his fingertips kiss.
“So,” he said softly. “You’ve found both my stones.”