39. Maren
Maren
Nori.
Half a breath passed before she answered. Yes, my Queen?
The dull banging in my head had sharpened into a knife-point against my skull now that the King was no longer distracting me, the sunlight streaming through the wide panes of glass so bright and unfiltered it felt like a voice screaming directly in my ears.
I stumbled to the wooden railing, leaned across, and before I could stop it, the spare contents of my stomach heaved up my throat.
Kye gathered my hair behind me as I brushed the side of my arm roughly against my mouth. Are you in Leihani?
I’m close, she answered. I could almost hear the familiar calm of deep ocean through her thoughts, a silence as full and still as nothing else, and knew she was somewhere near my colony.
Swim to my island. If there are any royal ships there. I paused, swallowing the taste of bile. Sink them.
Surprise traipsed from her mind to mine. And any humans aboard?
I exhaled as I pushed fully upright, shutting the bright, glaring world out. Drown them.
Nori has always harbored a mistrust for humans—especially men.
More than mistrust. She hated men the way an archivist hates mold or a farmer hates floods.
Men were a blight on the seas, somehow both predator and prey, but mostly a pest that had infested all the corners of her life.
I knew she wouldn’t shy from thinning their numbers.
Still, she seemed to hesitate, the connection between us soaked with dead air.
Did something happen? Nori finally asked.
Sink the fleet. Then send someone to find my father. Make sure he’s safe.
Yes, my Queen, she said, and the link between us snapped out.
I sighed, squinting up at Kye, who had developed an expression of worn patience whenever he knew I was conversing with Nori in my head. His stupid ring hung heavily over my thumb, and I pulled it off, returning it to his finger.
“You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Funny. Come with me,” he said, taking my arm and helping me down the stairs. “What did he want?”
“Leihani,” I murmured. “Are you hurt?”
“My throat stings. It feels like I drank fire. But I’m fine.”
“Really?” I pressed an eye open at him from the side.
Kye paused, frowning as he studied me. Then cleared his throat as he took hold of my waist, lifting me from my feet. “What does he want with Leihani?”
I hooked an arm around his neck. “You never told me his ring was magic.” I tried not to make it sound like an accusation.
But it came out as one anyway, thin and simmering with disbelief.
Kye’s mouth parted, but he kept his gaze diverted ahead, watching the line of stairs shorten before he turned the corner and descended again.
My cheek thumped softly against his shoulder with every step. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“My mother’s rings were infused with alchemies tied to Truth.
In order for anyone to learn the properties of her jewelry, they’d have to witness its magic firsthand.
” He flexed his fingers, the sapphire of his premonition ring glinting brightly.
“It was never complicated to tell you about my ring. You’d seen me use it before.
A lot of people have. But its power is more subtle.
Harder for someone to witness and recognize it as magic. ”
I turned my head into his cool chest. “You explained our soul rings easily enough before we used them.”
Kye’s brow lifted, his eyes darkening between humor and a brand of provocation he reserved for only me.
“Not right now,” I snapped. “Your mother willingly gave Emilius that thing?”
His smile had widened, but it dropped at that as he landed on the last step, turning to push the swinging door open with the back of his shoulder.
“No. Her father gave it to the King as part of her dowry.” We landed at the top of the ballroom stairs, the sweep of it wide and deep.
Even with the open windows, shadows lay across the polished floor, drinking in the echoing silence without the torch fire that usually graced the walls.
“Most of her jewelry was steeped in Truth’s blessings to protect the wearer from becoming a target should someone attack them to steal it.
It’s the same reason I can’t talk about Hadrian or Jonet’s rings with you.
The ring I gave you on our wedding night belongs to a mate. Truth didn’t bless our set of rings.”
“All right.” The mention of Hadrian and Jonet stroked my curiosity, but I resisted the urge to let my thoughts wander. “Who did?”
Kye glanced sideways at me. “Love.”
I scoffed softly, closing my eyes, listening to the pounding in my head, which I couldn’t decide was growing or diminishing with the passing minutes. Somehow, my fingers found the ring in question, worn smooth and warm with my own body heat. I turned it slowly. “Will I be arrested?”
“He’d have to explain how he’d allowed a woman to overpower him enough to maim him.”
“Is that a no?”
Kye didn’t answer. I glanced up at him to find him staring ahead, contemplative with something like worry, his lower lip caught under his teeth.
“What exactly does his ring do?”
He exhaled through his nose. For a moment, the muted click of his steps and pattern of hard pulsing in my temple joined in tempo, the rest of the palace as still as the night. “I haven’t seen him use it since I was very young, and I didn’t realize at the time that it came from him.”
I raised my head to ask who he’d seen the King attack with that power. But the answer lay in the hard set of his eyes, the dark shadow between his brows. My stomach convulsed, a tight squeeze at the basin of my body.
The doctors said she died of pneumonia. Of fluid in her chest, leaving her weak with cough.
Kye grunted softly, as if his own memories had lodged in his throat. “Hade thinks it’s toxic air. That the King converts his victims’ breaths into poison that they must cough out, and if they can’t expel it fast enough, it will eventually invade their blood. It only takes minutes.”
“So,” I said, my fingers trailing just under the hem of his shirt, “he’d already stopped attacking you by the time I helped him.”
What a predictable little pawn I’d been, fighting so hard to heal a man I’d love to rid the world of. How like the dog Emilius considered me: unintelligent yet obedient, trite yet trained, loyal to a fault and expendable all the same.
I realized where we were then, only steps from the base of our own tower. “Not this way,” I said, pulling myself out of his hold.
He set me down, stepping back to look at me. Something in the way he leaned onto his hip, a fist balled into his side, made me wonder if he wanted to argue. But he inhaled, mouth quirked to the side. “Where to, then?”
Selena might have been surprised to find me at the opposite side of her door, but if she was, her cool, crystal eyes betrayed nothing.
She glanced me over in an instant, cataloging my disheveled hair, rumpled silk dress, and what I imagined to be the gradually burgeoning veil of purple from the corner of my temple.
Without a word, she stepped back, offering us an invitation inside.
Pheolix sat at her table with Cebrinne and Aegir. Their conversation floated to us before we reached them, light-hearted and humorous. The air went still as we stepped into the room.
Cebrinne’s sharp gaze narrowed in immediately, flicking between Kye and me. Aegir’s jaw clicked. “What happened?” the Videre said.
I ignored them both, aiming my attention at Pheolix. “Did the King tell you to send nine naval ships to Leihani?”
Every head swiveled to look at the drone. He blinked into the silence, sitting up as though realizing my question was directed at him and offered a baffled, “No?”
I’d known his answer before he gave it, but a weight in my chest sank anyway, plunging me into cold that had nothing to do with the lack of the sun. “Thaan is in the palace.”
Selena fixed her hands over her hips. “Is that surprising? He can shift to take any body, any identity he pleases. He could be a guard, a lord, a priest. He could take Emilius’s shape if he wanted to…
” Her voice dropped as I paced to the edge of the room and turned, arms winding around myself.
“Maren,” she said calmly. Firmly. “What happened?”
“I just told you. Emilius is in contact, somehow, with Thaan.”
My feet crossed the floor. They watched me in silence. Halfway through my stride in the opposite direction, and still no one uttered a word. Even Pheolix listened, his head cocked to hear my feet as I scoured Selena’s apartment, his eyes overcast with clouds.
Leihani, sit, Kye said.
I frowned. I was spiraling, and I could feel myself fall, a grain of sand caught in a whirling eddy, around and around and around.
Thaan was in the palace. He was here, walking around wearing someone else’s face.
I don’t think I’d fully realized it until then, until Emilius had said Thaan’s name as if they’d spoken only yesterday—how close Thaan was to all of us without ever having to reveal himself.
No wonder Kye had been so nervous to let me walk into a room he couldn’t enter and lock the door.
Aegir stood, impatience warring with concern, the cleft between his brows deep enough to cast a shadow. “What happened?”
“I just cut off his hand.”
“You didn’t,” Selena breathed.
“Did you bring it with you?” Pheolix chortled.
“Why didn’t you sing to him?” Aegir asked.
They all spoke at the same time, and I pulled a tired hand down over my eyes.
“I did sing to him. It didn’t work. He must be eating shield weed.
” It made sense, I suppose. Thaan wouldn’t want the King to be targeted by his enemies—us—while we all lived in the same palace.
But even then, it didn’t fit what I knew of Thaan.
He controlled the King; Hadrian had even told me as much.
Selena murmured oh in a way that had me lift my hand away, scrutinizing the Naiad.
“Thaan addled Emilius’s mind years ago,” she said softly.
Aegir made a sound of disgust low in his throat. “Pitiful.”
Kye glanced up at her. “What does that mean?”