49. Maren
Maren
“What is this?” Aegir voiced the question in my head, watching the crows fly toward Calder. “The nearest landmass is a hundred miles away. Another continent. Where did they come from?”
“Spies,” I murmured.
“Why would he send them to watch us?” Aitne asked, sliding from the rock she’d been nestled over. “Why not just use Pheolix?”
As if we expected to find his eyes sharp and mean, our collective attention turned to the drone. But he hadn’t changed, his gaze just as clouded as it had been the moment before.
Still, he lifted his hands in surrender, as if even he didn’t trust himself. “I’ll leave if it makes you feel better,” he said softly.
“Thaan’s not spying,” Selena cut in, watching the crows overtake the sky. “He’s sending a message.”
Sharp screams just south of the island—Naiads scrambling onto shore. The Venusians who had been watching us from the water.
“Don’t look,” Selena warned the humans, an anxious frown shading her eyes.
They turned away, shoulders rigid with tension. Aegir stalked toward the sound, but Sindri was already there. He turned toward Aegir, calling across the barren rock. “Drones. Headed east.”
Toward Calder.
In an instant, we clambered to leave, throwing canteens and provisions into pouches and packs. “You couldn’t feel them in your water?” I asked Aegir, more grit in the words than I’d meant.
He ran a hand roughly through his beard. “No. Not drones. They could have easily come from Juile. Have you ever felt them?”
Kolibri let out a broken bray, ears flat as she watched the crows blacken the sun.
“Follow the drones,” Sindri ordered the Venusians, who leapt back into the sea.
“Wait,” Pheolix warned.
Cebrinne spun on her heel to face him. “For what?”
He scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “This is what he does. Uses his drones to lure his target.”
“We’re a target on this island already,” Aegir retorted, fixing a dark scowl towards the hidden sun. “We need to get into the water.”
Selena glanced between the Videre and the drone. “Could we not wait in Venusia for them to leave?”
“The Naiads can,” Aegir answered. “I can’t let humans into my colony. I won’t betray our safety—and I can’t promise humans would be safe, either. One glimpse in the wrong direction while any of the sirens are transitioned—”
“If he’s rallying forces, he’s planning to take Laurier Palace. He knows we’re on Evenstar.” Kye watched as the sun slipped back into view, the thick blanket of crows crossing toward the distant horizon. “Everyone who would fight him to protect the palace is standing here.”
“Or the King has returned,” Hadrian said quietly. Kye’s gaze flicked to mine and then away. A flicker of frustration carved my nails into my palms.
“Why would Thaan choose to fight under a new moon?” Selena asked, glancing from Aegir to Pheolix. “He’d be at the height of power under a full moon.”
“So would we,” I said, lifting a hand to watch light pop and snap around my fingertips.
“Whatever you all decide, decide it fast,” Cebrinne murmured.
“I am heading back to the palace. Ano is there with no protection.” She strode to the edge of the rock.
Then stopped to look back at me. “Maybe you should go to Venusia. Just for a day. One of us could come back for you when we know it’s safe. ”
She dropped into the waves without another word.
My jaw clicked with frustration. “I won’t hide.”
“She’s right. And you wouldn’t be hiding,” Aegir sighed, watching the waves crest and flatten where my mother had disappeared. “You’re our best weapon against Thaan. You and those stones. It would be foolish to fall into his trap now.”
Our best weapon. My teeth ground together. It must have shown on my face, because no one said anything else. They shifted their weight, crossing and uncrossing their arms, gauging the remaining light in the sky.
“Well,” Hadrian finally said, “those of us who aren’t Naiad should probably leave Evenstar for now. Though I think we’ll need a little help.”
Pheolix nodded, then paused. “You must leave Evenstar now?”
A second moment of fractured silence came and went as everyone seemed to avoid eye contact again.
“Come on, Pheolix.” Selena took his hand with a small sigh. “Humans, follow us. We’ll catch up with Cebrinne and the three of us will take you to the palace.”
Aren, Leal, and Dimas made for the water’s edge. Hadrian waited for Diara, whose gaze cut to me. “You’ll be all right?”
“I’m fine.” Out of habit, or perhaps a need for security, I felt along my hip, ensuring the stones were there. “You should go.”
“I’ll stay with your father. I’m sure everything is fine.” Diara tried to smile, but it was too forced, too tight, like someone had molded clay over her face and reshaped it all wrong. Beside her, Hadrian pulled two blindfolds from his pocket, waiting for her to spin around.
A large, callused hand slipped into mine. Kye fixed his attention on the fading line of crows, but he lifted my hand, bringing my knuckles to his lips. I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out what’s going on.
Be safe, I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I couldn’t speak out loud, now with my heart in my throat, my fingers unable to still, a knot of dread tangled across the length of my spine. If there’s a fourth one, then dodge.
His mouth twitched. He winked at me before fitting his strip of silk over his eyes, turning so I could tie it. I’ll dodge.
Of course he would smirk and wink and pretend everything was fine while heading toward danger.
Separating from him now felt like blowing out a candle and trying to walk through the dark.
All the light in the room belonged to Kye, and without him, everything was shut away, veiled and obscure, leaving me stumbling without direction.
Kye straightened, aiming his attention straight ahead while I looped and tightened the linen, and though I couldn’t see his eyes, I had the small impression he was glaring. “Done,” I murmured.
He kissed me blindfolded, a peck on my forehead, giving me a final squeeze. “Keep your wits,” he rumbled in my ear, as if I was the one swimming toward our enemies.
I held my own hands over my navel, forcing them to motionless submission as he lowered himself into the water, boots and all. Nori shouldered up to me, Olinne and Aitne directly behind her.
“Shall we go with them, my Queen?” my Oculos asked, her straight, shining hair like a waterfall of blood over her shoulders.
Shame crooked its fingers along my ribcage, tugging me down like an anchor into deep seas.
My shoulders sagged with weight, and even my exhale felt heavy in my chest. I had not yet asked my Naiads to do something I wasn’t willing to do.
Sending them without me, even to protect Kye and the others, twisted like a pain in my side that already felt too sharp.
“Yes,” I answered, and tried not to let the word sound like an apology.
A minute later, they were all gone, Kolibri with them. Waves broke over Evenstar, an island of ocean spray and windy breaths and nothing else.
“Let’s not waste time up here,” Aegir said, stepping into my periphery. “Follow me.”
If there existed a better caricature of a wasp’s nest than Venusia, I’d hardly dare to believe it.
The entrance hid along the bottom of the ocean, a man-sized hole entrenched in rock and rising streams of sulfur that sputtered, warming the water nearby.
Dozens of identical little caves hung in the seabed, and I was unsure I could find it again without him with me.
He entered backwards, reaching for my hand as if worried I might get lost.
It wasn’t long before the walls smoothed from rock to something like porcelain, lustrous and blue under a bioluminescent glow that hugged the ceiling.
The tunnel was so long, so narrow and winding, I wondered if he’d brought me in the wrong way.
If, like the Juile colony, there was a second opening hidden inside.
The water leveled with air, and we stepped into the humid warmth of the nest.
“How old is Venusia?” I asked. The tunnel coiled like a corkscrew, but even with my limited ocean-born Naiad experience, I knew we were inside some kind of shell.
Seawater splashed around our toes. “A few million years,” Aegir answered.
“Just a few?”
He shrugged. “Sixty-five, give or take.”
His heart was beating harder than normal, and I wondered if, like me, he was more worried about Thaan than he’d let on. I coiled a strand of black sea silk around the end of my finger, wondering if the group had already reached the palace. I couldn’t speak to Kye until they did.
Alcoves sectioned off from the main tunnel, first only a few, and then many of them, corridors that twisted out and away.
A few Venusians passed us, pausing to press their palms together and bow their heads at Aegir, sending me curious glances as they continued on.
It was obvious who I was. My markings were always there, even when the light of them remained subtle.
But after churning a rainstorm into the skies less than an hour ago, they were lit and glowing, metallic over my golden brown.
“This way.” Aegir cut under an arched, doorless threshold.
A city bloomed before my eyes. The winding floor continued along the walls, opening to a space wide and tall enough to house the entirety of Laurier Palace, though a grand pool of water claimed the center instead.
The tunnels stacked on top of each other like a wax honeycomb, too deep to see what might lie at their ends.
Aegir ticked his head toward one such tunnel, larger than the others.
He led me into what I could only assume was his throne room.
The room where Naiads dine.
Sidra’s voice drifted through my head, the metallic taste of her wine-blood heavy over the tip of my tongue. Two long pools of water directed us to his dais, spiky succulents lined at the edges.