34. Kye
Kye
No one moved. No one spoke. Not a fucking word.
We watched Pheolix’s face reanimate like a ghostly caricature, the fine details of the drone’s eyes and smile and cheeks stretching like leather over a chair too tall and wide, small cracks threatening to form between the seams.
Selena raised her finger toward him. “Get out.”
Pheolix chuckled, and every hair raised at the back of my neck. He ignored Selena as if she were an offensive smell he was too polite to acknowledge, locking eyes with Maren instead. She stared back, long ringlets of hair still sharp with water, volcano eyes brimming with cold fire.
“Thank you for retrieving both stones for me, my dear,” Pheolix mused. “You’ll keep them safe for me, won’t you?”
“If you want them, stop playing with dolls.” She tossed her hand, indicating Pheolix’s body. “Stop sending drones and birds. Come and claim them yourself.”
Pheolix nodded. “In time.” He paused for a leisurely stroll with his gaze, taking account of each of our faces. “These must be Juilean sirens.”
“Sidra’s sirens,” Nori corrected, eyes darkening like a viper ready to strike.
“And Aegir.” Pheolix’s leathery smile expanded more, faint white lines appearing as his lips reached their limit. “I’ve missed our beachside rendezvous. Have you spoken to your sister recently? I haven’t seen her in the administrative office for so long, I’m beginning to worry.”
Aegir didn’t respond. He watched stoically like a gardener finding their crops overrun by rodents, lowering his brow as though considering which type of poison to rid his field of them.
“Well, you’ll send her my regards.” Pheolix licked his lip, leaving it bright red.
He continued looking across us, raising his brows.
“You brought humans. I suppose if you were raised among filth, filth is what you’ll return to.
I’m surprised to see you alive, Prince Nikolaos.
I thought I sent you to Perpetuum the day I let Maren live in that glass box. ”
Kye’s mouth curved into the barest shadow of a smile. “I guess you didn’t bury me shallow enough.”
“No?” Pheolix’s brows raised.
“It was lonely without you, Thaan. Decided to come back and drag you to the fucking afterlife with me.”
Pheolix chuckled, but something like restlessness or uncertainty sparked behind his pale eyes.
His roving gaze landed on Selena. For a moment he looked like a cat who had cornered a bird, a grinning smear lost between wicked and playful that sent the heel of my hand over the handle of my knife.
But then he noticed the Naiad beside her. Cebrinne.
He stared, his thoughts shrouded behind Pheolix’s white eyes, his smile turning waxy with petrification like a knot in a log forgotten under mud and sulfuric ash and the heavy burden of time.
His gaze flicked back to me. Then to Cebrinne again.
The corner of my mouth lifted. “Keep thinking, Thaan. You’re almost there. You’ve almost fucking got it.”
Pheolix scoffed, ignoring me. “And are you sleeping well out here, Hadrian, among the sticks and reeds and dead leaves, now that I’m no longer in the castle?”
The soft sound of yawning wood interrupted him, accompanied by the stretch of sinew. An arrow lay nocked in Diara’s bow, her fingers tight over the fletching aimed at Pheolix’s head.
“Leave,” she said. “Or lose your spy.”
Selena’s breath guttered. “Wait.”
The mirth dropped from Pheolix’s mouth. He tilted his head back toward Maren. “I’ll go. But first, tell me this, my dear. What did you trade to Darkness in order to reach the stone?”
Maren lifted her chin, proud and haughty, but she didn’t answer.
Pheolix clicked his tongue. “I often consider the way you fought me just before signing your life away in blood. The way you refused to give me ten years, twenty years, fifty. Darkness does not make meager deals.” He strode forward.
Diara’s bowstring drew fully taut. Selena’s hands raised, a shaking plea to lower the arrow.
Pheolix smiled once again, his voice a clear whisper.
“What piece of your mind or flesh or blood did you bargain away, just to be rid of me? To be a little wraithling on his wall? Perhaps we will spend eternity together, you and I. You were always mine, after all.”
I don’t remember my feet moving, my body clearing the mud and stone and ice, my fist drawing back.
I vaguely recalled the snap and whir of Diara’s bowstring.
The exploding bite of iron and cedarwood through my arm, however, rang as clear in my memory as a bell.
“Mother fucking sun and stars and eternal blighting dust,” I seethed, twisting away from Pheolix, who had stumbled back and blinked like he was clearing cobwebs from his eyes.
Aren laughed, often his choice reaction whenever we’d reached a topic in conversation unruly enough to be deemed awkward. “You weren’t even in front of her that time.”
I scowled at him. Hadrian shook his head. “Can’t go catching arrows for everyone, Kye. That’s your right arm.”
It hardly mattered. I used both to fight, better than he fucking could.
Gritting my teeth, I raised the arm in question, rotating it to assess where Diara’s arrow had landed.
It hurt like they all had, a blast of fire straight through my sun-damned muscle, but I couldn’t blame her for loosing it when she had.
Not when I’d planned to knock Thaan out of Pheolix using the flat edge of my fist in the same moment.
“You going to need this back,” I asked dryly, holding my arm out to her, “or can I keep it?”
Diara tracked the thin dribble of blood as it dripped to the rocks. She lowered her bow with a mumbled, idiot. But the rest of them commended my quick response between heavy sighs of relief that Thaan had left, as if I’d intentionally stepped between an arrow and Pheolix’s body.
Aegir sighed, and though the sound was soft, something about it grated like sandpaper in my fucking ears. “You all right, gnat?”
Pheolix sniffed roughly, wiping a trickle of red from his upper lip with his thumb. He frowned in surprise, folding the hem of his shirt up to wipe it away more skillfully. “Never better.”
“How many times?” Nori said. “How many times has he used you to spy on us?”
The drone coughed quietly, as though remnants of Thaan had stayed behind like dust in his lungs. He pressed his fingers against his chest, rubbing absently in a slow circle. “That’s the first time since he left.”
Olinne snorted with heavy suspicion. Selena reached for Pheolix’s hand, fingers sliding over his. His rubbing stopped as he caught it, anchoring it in place.
Nori shook her head. “It’s not safe to travel with him.”
“What do you propose we do?” Cebrinne asked firmly. “Send him back alone? He’s blind.”
Pheolix laughed softly. “I can manage.”
Nori’s mouth twisted. “I’m sure you can.”
Selena threw her an iron glare. Aegir’s mouth thinned.
“No one is returning alone,” Maren said.
“We’re heading to Calder City. It’s not as if he’s discovered some secret plan of ours.
” She waited for a reply, eyeing the Naiads like a mother haranguing her brood, but the snap of her voice squashed the conversation against the rocks at our feet.
She shifted her attention to Pheolix. “Is it likely that Thaan might send his drones after us again?”
Pheolix weighed the question, tilting his head right and left in a motion so small it was almost indistinct.
“Fairly likely. If nothing else, to intimidate us.” He sighed, pulling Selena’s hand away to take a step forward.
He knotted his fist into his hip like he had something further to say but decided against it.
Maren nodded, glancing up at me. “Which way to Locklier Castle?”
Nori and Olinne adopted Diara as their favorite human.
They walked alongside her through the vineyard, asking if she hated all men or drones or just Thaan, each answer seemingly acceptable in their opinion.
Aitne had taken my arm, a softness in the touch of her hand as she eased the shaft from its bed.
She sealed my open skin, leaving it stinging and itching and tingling painfully when I turned my wrist. Her honeycomb brows raised at the sight of a nearly identical white scar on my opposite arm.
I smiled guiltily. “I guess I like to collect them. There’s a third behind my shoulder as well. ”
The evening sun hung high and gray when we finally reached the castle door.
Kolibri had snorted and pawed at the open trail ahead of us, braying under the agony of keeping pace with human legs.
At the sight of men working along the vines, she lay her ears flat and ducked her head low, only a breath away from charging them like a fucking bull.
The groundskeeper recognized me and Hadrian, an impressive feat as our clothes were salt-stained and wrinkled with sleep and wind.
Dimas’s mother took one look at us and hissed and squawked like a mad goose at her servants to start baths and launder clothes.
I was supplied a fresh shirt and pants from Dimas, who, unlike his mother, never squawked.
An hour later, I sat on the bed of one of the guestrooms Maren and I had been directed to.
We hadn’t enjoyed a bed to ourselves, let alone walls and a fucking bolted door, in nine days—though it felt like weeks.
Sediment scrubbed from our hair, our skin scoured with soap, I lay my hand on the bedspread beside me and made a lazy circle.