55. Kye
Kye
“Ican’t see what it says,” Pheolix whispered, his voice both dragging and tight like he’d bitten down on a wooden stick to distract himself from the pain of a wound.
Maren took the parchment gently from him, flipping it around to read it. She shook her head helplessly. “It’s an old missive. It bears a scorpion wax seal.”
“The Rivean emissary,” Hadrian clarified, leaning over my shoulder for a view.
Pheolix nodded, swallowing dryly. “What does it say?”
Maren smoothed a pleat near her thumb. “It says, Oberon is dead.” Her obsidian eyes flicked to his, searching for clues in his reaction, nervous to ask what the words meant.
Pheolix didn’t move. I had the impression he was repeating the words inside his own head, turning them over like a locked box, wondering at the meaning hidden inside.
“Who is Oberon?” Maren asked carefully.
Hadrian cleared his throat. “He was the Rivean emissary years ago. He was killed when we were young. I was…ten?” He glanced at Kye for confirmation, but Kye only offered a helpless shrug, as if the name called nothing to mind.
“Oberon was Thaan’s Oculos. His link to Rivea. Thaan had him killed when he thought Oberon was feeding secrets to the Rivean King. Nineteen years ago.” Pheolix tossed the prybar numbly to the floor. “Whatever she meant by leaving this, I don’t understand.”
I tried to reach for his arm, but my hand fell flat through the air.
“Maybe it will come to you,” I offered, though I could almost hear the false hope in my own voice.
What did such optimism mean to a man slowly losing his memory?
“What were you hoping to find, Pheolix? Why did Selena leave this for you? Why didn’t she tell you where to find it? ”
“Thaan could enter my mind. Demand my secrets.” The drone smiled sadly.
Ironically. The answer lay trapped between the seams of history, sewn together years ago.
A time when he might have recognized the words for what they were then rather than what they meant now.
“We were protecting someone from Thaan. Selena wouldn’t have been able to leave a detailed note in case he found it.
This—" He balled the parchment slowly, reverently, then made a motion as if he’d planned to throw it and thought better.
“The name of a dead man, a man I already knew was gone… Who is returning to Evenstar to train today?”
We awkwardly glanced at each other.
“Pheolix,” Diara said patiently, “are you sure you wouldn’t rather get some sleep?”
He blinked slowly. “No,” he said, standing back and waiting.
The room filled with half-hearted attempts at volunteering to go. Maren pursed her lips together, making that face she made when speaking to Nori in her head. Or me, I supposed.
Bruises littered my arms and chest, each stretch like a wooden stake between my ribs. My eyes closed, knowing I couldn’t refuse training, not when Pheolix had worked through the night to destroy Selena’s office for a useless note from the past. At least I’d sleep in my fucking bed tonight.
“Be ready in five minutes,” Pheolix said, ignoring our low level of enthusiasm for training. He turned and strode from the office, the door snicking shut behind him.
Diara glanced at Hadrian. “I’m not sure he should be alone.”
He raised a brow. “Want me to go in there and help him change his pants?”
“No,” she fired back. “I want you to stay with him.”
“You want me to babysit the assassin?”
She growled a short burst of aggravated air. “I’ll meet you at the cliffs,” she said to Maren, reaching for the door.
“I’ll send the Naiads,” Maren said. “There’s something else I need to do.”
That snagged my fucking attention. It seemed to snag everyone else’s as well. Bracing a hand to the wall, I lifted to my feet. “Not to barter again with Darkness, I hope.”
“No, no,” Maren said. “Nothing exciting.”
“Here in the palace?” I asked. Then immediately called to her in my mind. What do you plan to do?
“Yes,” she answered. And I don’t want to tell you.
Why not?
Because you’ll tell me not to.
My eyes narrowed.
Maren clicked her tongue. Nothing dangerous, I promise. But I don’t think it will work if you’re with me.
“You both creep me out when you do that,” Diara said, rolling her eyes as she pulled the door open.
Hadrian raised his brows in agreement, following her out behind Leal and Dimas.
I bit back a smile, fingers rotating my wedding ring.
We still hadn’t told anyone we shared thoughts—except Hadrian, who had given me the set of rings to begin with.
“Damn it to Perpetuum. I want to train,” Aren’s voice muttered through the wall.
The last to rise from the floor, Aegir was the only one who didn’t stretch the numbness out of his shoulders as he faced Maren. “Want me to come with you?”
“No,” Maren answered politely. Her fingers flicked at her hip.
“Besides, I think Pheolix could use the help.” She turned and left through the door, leaving me alone with the Venusian.
I motioned to the door, waiting for him to leave as well.
But he stayed, his gaze tapered through the doorway, watching her leave in a way that made the dusty air taste like steel in my fucking mouth.
“If you’re waiting to trade friendship bracelets, I’m fresh fucking out,” I said.
Aegir’s mouth curved. He didn’t look back at me. “I was just wondering how it feels,” he drawled, “being the only mortal alive to lose a living cordae.” He tilted his head then, angling a look at me sideways, quite possibly the first time he’d ever bothered to meet my eyes.
My chest filled with a breath hot enough to scorch.
I hardened into stone, every muscle and bone calcifying like a marble slab, my focus narrowed into Aegir’s sharp little fucking green eyes.
I’d been keeping watch, tallying every glance, every word, every small gesture of his for months, half-convincing myself that I was looking for things that weren’t there, creating scenarios that didn’t exist—but now everything snapped into a bright, clear, cutting clarity, like sunlight blinding off the flat edge of a knife.
Up until now, I’d been tolerant of the fucker for Maren’s benefit.
The way he, so subtly, so shrewdly slighted humans, speaking to the other Naiads as though we weren’t in the room with him, scoffing at our blindfolds in the water.
I didn’t correct him, though he was wrong.
Thaan had also lost a cordae. Had abandoned Sidra.
But the challenging glint in his eye told me Aegir hadn’t chosen the words for their accuracy.
“Did you have a fucking question?” I asked calmly, trying to look at him without imagining the Videre with a deep split over the bridge of his nose. My hand itched, and I tightened my fingers into a strict ball.
“Just that.” Droplets of water slid down Aegir’s hands the same way Maren’s did when she sized an enemy. He sent them casually away with the tick of his fingers. “Wondering how it feels.”
“Hmm.” I cocked my head. “Use your imagination.”
“Is answering so difficult?” The Videre laughed softly under his breath. “Is that why you’re staring at me so hard?”
“I’m waiting for you to use the fucking door. Unless you’ve forgotten how.”
His smile twitched. He worked his tongue inside his mouth, eyes shadowed with something like satisfaction as his gaze ghosted over my closed fists.
“Calm down, human,” he said, leaning in to smack my shoulder with loosely feigned affection.
The attempt was only half-hearted, so slow and contrived that a single step out of his reach was all I needed to avoid it.
Aegir scoffed. “I thought humans had a sense of humor.”
“Use the door,” I said. Or I’ll throw you through it.
His eyes glinted like a sated cat. “I’ll see you on Evenstar.
” He turned and slipped under the doorway, blithe to the point he was almost fucking cheery.
I waited for the heat to subside, the toil of unspent nerves, my fist gradually relaxing into my side.
My eyes scanned the floor where droplets of water had fallen from his hands, dark spots over the ruined gray stone, stark against the fine layer of dust still settling from Pheolix’s abuse across the floor.
More of them in the center of the room.
I frowned, crouching to peer down at them.
Not many, but just enough, the pattern similar to Aegir’s. Water flicked from fingertips a few feet from the floor. But Aegir hadn’t entered this far into the room. He hadn’t stood here in the center.
Maren had.