36. Maren
Maren
We arrived back at the City of Towers on the first day of Piscaa.
It wasn’t yet spring, but the sun beat over our shoulders and necks in an exceptionally heavy blanket of warmth, the clouds nowhere to be found. The members of our company shed their coats and cloaks, drinking in the early-season heat.
I, of course, stayed under my furs, warding the chill from my fingers to my toes.
I should have been grateful that it wasn’t the same bone-deep cold that I’d suffered from in the Brána Do Podsvetia, so bitter and frozen it seemed to cluster in my blood, coating my skin like hoarfrost. The absence of the sun’s rays was more an annoyance than a threat, like itchy fabric against my skin or an article of clothing that refused to fit right.
Still, when the palace towers climbed from behind the trees and the black-lace iron gates rose into view, I felt myself sag with relief, even as Kye began to fidget in his saddle.
I probably should have been more comforted that we hadn’t seen any drones since we’d left the river.
That the only sightings of birds had been from afar, and Pheolix had been solely and undisputably Pheolix.
That the knots at the base of our skulls from craning to look over our shoulders could now recede.
But I was a girl from the islands. If I couldn’t have sun, then I wanted fire. A warm stone hearth and flames free from the abuse of wind, which I could watch from the edge of my bed as they twisted and twirled like lovers across a ballroom floor.
We’d only just climbed the floors of our tower, our calves aching at the stairs we hadn’t scaled in two weeks, when a knock rapped against the door.
Kye was already halfway through discarding his shirt, but he tugged it back down over his bare stomach, aiming a questioning look my way.
The heavy oak door swung open to Hadrian, who stepped briskly inside.
The crown prince scrubbed a hand over his mouth and chin, anxious. He cleared his throat, the scratch of lungs and air loud and rattling. “He wants to see you.”
We didn’t ask who. Kye and I glanced at each other, wondering what the King would want from us so soon after our arrival. We’d been in the castle no longer than ten minutes. Kye reached for the coat he’d just discarded over the neck of an iron hook. “All right.”
“Not you,” Hadrian said.
His warm brown eyes swerved to me.
Kye hunted my steps, muttering and swearing to himself, his dislike for my summons to a private dinner with the King in his quarters a metallic burn inside my nose, searing hot.
I’d never ventured to the King’s tower. I’d never thought I’d have a reason to.
It rose above the ballroom, the highest tower in the castle.
Unlike Kye’s, where views of the north and east were obstructed by the towers surrounding his, the King’s stairway windows conceded nothing but miles and miles of open air and distant fields.
I grew almost dizzy climbing, the panes of glass so wide it felt as though I was rising in the air.
Kye had stopped speaking by the time we reached the Queen’s quarters, which was almost worse than his grumbling. A guard stationed outside her wooden door watched us pass. I’d asked Kye, once, why the King and Queen slept on different floors.
He’d grunted, condemnation in his golden eyes. Whatever the answer was, he’d ground his teeth together, his jaw flexed so hard it sharpened the corners of his face, then promptly changed the subject.
You didn’t have to come with me, I said, gazing up the final flight of stairs ahead.
Why would he ask for you? Just you, alone? Kye asked inside my head.
My hand traced over the heavily engraved oak railing as I ascended. If we are alone and he does anything I don’t like, I can just sing to him.
And if Thaan’s given him shield weed?
I turned to glance at Kye over my shoulder. Thaan wouldn’t give a human any advantage over a Naiad.
I couldn’t forget the smile Thaan had aimed at me when he’d locked me in my glass box, as though I’d erred in a way that only fools err. The way he’d sneered, You gave your human husband shield weed? Thaan took risks with the humans he puppeted, but that was one risk I knew he wouldn’t take.
This did nothing to quench Kye’s distaste.
What if he just wants to get to know me? I paused to sweep my sea silk skirt out from under my foot. It shimmered down my hips and behind me, catching the bright light as it rippled away.
Kye’s footsteps creaked behind me. He doesn’t.
How do you know?
He didn’t answer. Like he had when I’d asked why the Queen sleeps elsewhere, he grated his teeth like an angry mill crushing grain to dust. The hot iron scent of anger stained the air.
Take a breath, Kye. You’re choking me.
Once that door closes, I can’t get to you.
Kye, I said, glancing admonishingly at him again.
He stepped up behind me. A full foot taller than I was, two stairs below, he leveled me, eye to eye. Are you so sure that you could strike him with your lightning, or freeze his blood before he could attack you?
My smile faltered. My instinct was to answer yes.
Of course I could. I was a queen, a siren queen, and I wasn’t sure when or how it had happened, but there was very little about humans that worried me now.
But something in the way he asked bound my tongue.
His voice, even inside my thoughts, had smoothed and sharpened like the fine edge of a flat blade, reflecting back into my gaze. More mirror than sword.
He swallowed, fingers turning his premonition ring over his middle finger.
My hand twitched over the carved railing, worn smooth with the traffic of palms before mine. Caution hooked around my edges like the damp corners of paper, curling them over themselves, over me, cold and rigid. “Is there something about him I need to know?”
Kye’s forehead creased tight. “He’s mad, Leihani.”
I studied him, which might have been a mistake. My cool composure folded under the weight of his stare, a slowly billowing cloud of disquiet descending over me instead. “I’m not afraid of madness,” I said, lowering my voice. “What else are you not telling me?”
A flicker of something crossed behind his gaze.
A look I hadn’t seen in months. He frowned, pulling his lower lip in to scrape against his teeth, letting his eyes drop to stare at the hollow of my throat. The scent of his anger shifted. Soured. A trickle of cloying fear tainted my next inhale, more complex than I’d once realized.
“He hates women,” Kye said.
There was more. He opened his mouth, let it hover for a few long moments, unwilling to meet my eye.
“I’m not afraid of that either,” I said carefully, though a hundred thoughts tumbled uneasily through my head as he struggled.
“I can’t—you haven’t seen—” He ran a hand through his roots.
Wind slithered in gusts against the glass panels.
I counted them as the moments slid by, as Kye rallied his thoughts.
“He hates women,” he said again, “finds them beneath him, and he wants to speak with you alone. Why would he want you alone? What does he need to tell you that I can’t be present for? ”
“I don’t know, Kye. Does he blame me for your avoiding the war?”
He was already shaking his head, throwing his glare at the violently orange sun outside, a heavy roll in his jaw. “He’d use you to threaten me if that was his worry. That’s how he uses people.”
I pressed my lips together. Thaan did the same, and I was no stranger to that style of manipulation. I reached for his hand, summoning his eyes back to mine. “I have my song. I have my water-call. I have the stones. And I’ll be in your head the entire time.”
Kye sighed, long and silent through his nose. He wrought his premonition ring from his finger, slipping it over my thumb, the metal cool and smooth over my knuckle. “Remember the night you married me?”
The question was so unexpected I couldn’t help but smile. “Yes.”
“The way you walked into my rooms without an ounce of trust?” He twisted to reach for his sheathed knife, gliding it from the leather strap of his belt.
“Yes.”
Kye pulled the slit of my skirt over my thigh, leaning in close to snake his hands up and over my waist. My body rocked slightly against his tugs and pulls as he wrapped his belt around my hips.
“The way you were ready to kill me if you needed to?” He grasped my hand, guiding it over the silk to let it rest against the hilt of his knife.
“I’m not your mother, Kye,” I murmured. “There is very little he could do to hurt me.”
He looked at me almost pleadingly, willing me to understand something, as though I couldn’t grasp some hidden message.
Like I’d looked at a fire but couldn’t see the flames.
I shifted my weight, chasing the unease that nipped over my skin, the cold feeling of unexpected restlessness.
The wooden stairs and stone walls pulsed quietly, somehow closer, tighter than they’d been a moment ago.
“Do you want me to kill him?” I asked, trying to understand. My mouth gaped in shock.
Something like surprise flickered in his eyes, there and gone. He shook his head. “No. No, that’s not what I’m saying.” He curled his fingers around mine, around the handle of his knife. “But if you need to,” he whispered, “if it comes down to you or him, don’t hesitate.”