51. Maren
Maren
“Stay,” Aegir whispered. “This pool you’re standing over, the side you’re standing on—"
“This is your throne.”
“It’s the side of the pool where the Queen of Venusia sits.”
I stopped him with a blunt hand raised in the air. Nausea churned in my belly as I glanced around, realizing what I’d done simply by sitting beside him. Here. On his dais.
“If I’ve given you the impression—”
“Oh, don’t do that.” His words were soft as silk sheets, but his voice held a rough grit, like sand in my bed. “You haven’t given me any impression. You’re still loyal to your human.”
“My husband.”
“Husband.” He scrunched his mouth and nose, lifting his shoulder in an offhand shrug. “A human word accompanied by a human paper signed by human priests?” He leaned forward. “A cordae between Naiads alters the soul. It changes our blood, binding us as mates forever.”
“I’m flattered,” I said, though it was hard to make the words sound anything but flat and dull when a wave of dizzying sick swept over my stomach.
“It’s not about flattery,” Aegir laughed. “Look at us. Look at what we could be together. Videres of Venus and Juile, side by side.”
“We can be side by side as allies.” I stood, and Aegir did too.
“I’ve waited for you. For years, I’ve waited for you.
As soon as Cebrinne told me she would leave for Leihani, I understood what no one else did.
Theia was matching Naiad blood with the people of the moon—people who hated sirens.
She was creating something only a goddess can create.
Sidra let Juile dwindle and die, but think of what I’m offering you, what you’d gain if we joined colonies. Males for your females—”
“My females don’t want males.” I almost laughed.
“Ah, so they’ll go on cordaeing each other and killing precious humans to reproduce. That must sit easily with you.”
I spun on my heel, sea silk sticking to my calves as I descended the stairs. He caught my arm halfway across the throne room.
“Think about it,” he started, letting me pull from his grasp.
“There’s little to think about.”
His chuckle was almost cruel. “Am I so disgusting to consider as a mate?”
I glanced up at him then. He’d always held a certain sharpness, an edge that toyed with danger in a way that had captivated me. There was a gentleness to him as well, a willingness to admit fault I’d rarely met in other people. The last thing I wanted was to offend him.
“No,” I murmured. “But I am not whatever you’ve made up in your head. I’ll never choose anyone but Kye.”
His eyes closed. “You say that now—”
“And I’ll say it later.”
His shoulders slipped. “You’d sentence yourself to a thousand years without a cordae before you’d take me.”
“It—it really isn’t about you,” I cringed.
Aegir shook his head. “I saved you in Rivea. Gave you my Naiads so you could escape. Brought you to Paria so you could find the second stone.”
“And? What are you saying, Aegir? You wouldn’t have done that if you’d known I’d reject you?” I frowned, a bite to my words now. “I thought you wanted to free the land and sea from Thaan.”
“Of course that’s what I want. I’d do anything to kill Thaan. Give anything.” His eyes darkened as he drank air deep into his lungs. “And I have. I’ve given everything.”
The bulb of distress between my ribs unfurled slowly, rooting into dark and bitter anger. I stepped away, hands clenched at my sides. “I’m not a consolation for defeating your enemy and ruling half the oceans.”
“That’s not what I think of you.”
“It must be,” I hissed through my teeth. “If that’s the only reason you offered me your help.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said, as though I was a hysterical child. I backed away another step, my veins crackling with fire. “This. This isn’t how I expected things to go.”
“No? Did you lay in your little pool and dream of something else for the last twenty-five years?”
My venom must have startled him. He swung in the opposite direction to pace two steps before pivoting back. “Tell me you haven’t considered it.”
“I haven’t.”
“You will change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
“A hundred years from now, when he has long since breathed his last breath, and everyone you once knew has left this world—” He moved in slowly, stepping so close his body heat surrounded me like a cage, but I stretched my neck, unwilling to retreat for him.
Only when our faces might have collided did I withdraw, careful to avoid falling into one of the long pools below.
But a cool, glassy shell wall met my back instead, and Aegir pressed me flat against it.
His nose skimmed the side of mine, the swell of his chest firm over my shoulders as he breathed in my air. “I’m a patient Naiad. The idea of waiting doesn’t intimidate me.”
“I’ve lived most of my life alone, Aegir.” I lifted my chin, forcing his invading mouth away. “It doesn’t intimidate me either.”
Leihani.
At the sound of Kye’s voice in my head, I jolted forward, shoving past Aegir’s shoulder and out the door. The colossal colony opened before me, Naiads buzzing along the winding ramp and in and out of tunnels like happy honeybees.
Are you there?
Yes, I said, searching for the way Aegir had led me in. Everything looked the same in here. A maze of a thousand hallways drilled throughout the shell.
Are you safe?
I wasn’t sure if Aegir had followed me into the colony or not, but I turned into the nearest corridor, massaging a sudden pounding between my brows. Yes. Did you make it to the palace?
He didn’t answer. Seconds dragged by. My shoulders and back tensed as I straightened, waiting.
Striations tracked through the natural shell wall across from me, soft pinks and yellows and whites.
My eyes roved the wavy lines in abstract panic, as if that might call his voice back to me, though in truth, I didn’t even see them.
Kye.
Stay— he said, the word cutting sharply as if he’d meant to add something else.
Kye!
Stay where you are.
My heartbeat surged into my throat. The oxygen produced by Aegir’s little aero plants was too thin here, too shallow. Like breathing through a straw.
What’s happening? I demanded, a wave of ice freezing every vein.
Kye didn’t answer. I paced for a moment, my hands shaking too hard to even try to still them, before I remembered I had never been one to pace or hide or wait in safety while those I cared about might be threatened.
This wasn’t the right corridor anyway. The right one had more turns, more dips and hikes, more puddles along the floor.
I shifted to the entrance and a figure stepped inside, blocking me in.
Aegir blinked in surprise at the look on my face. “What is it?”
“I have to go.” Something was wrong. Something was happening. And I was here, at the bottom of the ocean in Venusia, while everyone I loved was there, dealing with the wrong thing without me.
Aegir stepped into the corridor with me. “It’s better to wait here. It might be nothing.”
“If you truly thought it was nothing you wouldn’t ask me to wait.” I grabbed hold of his wrist, ready to yank him out of my way. “Show me the way out, Aegir. Or I will blast a hole through your colony wall.”