57. Kye #3
“Out of my depth?” Part of me could hardly believe him.
The fucking delusion he’d somehow climbed into.
I’d thought that my jealousy had settled into eternal rest when I’d laid Maren in my bed and she’d explained that we were cordaed, an undying tether that linked us together.
Ceaseless, timeless. How near-sighted of me to believe that jealous vein wouldn’t come crashing back, knives drawn.
I was no fool. I knew Aegir could kill me by simply looking at me.
By crawling through my skin like a scarab hunting water to stop my heart or drown me alive.
My lips peeled from my teeth with silent fury.
Even if I was foolish enough to challenge him, I couldn’t win.
A smug crinkle lined the corners of his eyes, and that alone threatened every last morsel of composure I’d so fucking carefully arranged. “She’s my wife,” I said, the words rumbling from my very bones.
“There’s that word again. Wife. As though it actually has meaning.
” Aegir stepped toward me, and though I’d never given my height a great deal of thought, a rare arrogance crackled in the back of my mind.
Thank Aalto I stood a sword hilt taller than he did.
Aegir must have noticed as well, halting a few feet away.
“Humans created marriage thousands of years ago because their bodies couldn’t do what Naiad bodies can, altering each other for life.
They ask permission from priests and temples and monarchs, exchanging vows with mere words, writing names on a paper and calling it everlasting.
All right, human. She’s your wife. But is she your cordae? ”
He didn’t smile with his mouth, but it was there, a superior gleam in his green fucking eyes.
The bitter taste of envy stung the back of my mouth, that even if I took Maren to my bed a hundred times, I could not cordae her again—but it would only take once for him.
“She’s mine,” I said again, low and rough, the growl of a mongrel when an unwanted visitor knocks on the door.
“Her name is mine. Her ring is mine. Her future is mine. My thoughts roam in her mind. And she closes her eyes every night tucked into my bed. I’m sure it chafes that you waited all this time for her.
That fate chose a human over you. But make no mistake—Maren belongs to me. ”
The patronizing calm in his stare snapped. He flicked his brooch open with a thumb, silver cloak floating to the ground.
Something had snapped in me as well. I yanked my jacket off like it was a noose, my shirt after it.
“We all know she’s your wife, Kye,” Hadrian said from somewhere to my right.
I refused to take my eyes off Aegir. “I think she’d find this vein of thought a bit redundant.
” Always levelheaded, my brother, a map of steady lines and borders, warning me whenever I wandered too close to the edge.
Hadrian was never swayed by petty thought or courtside gossip.
Of course he would be the one to mention what Maren would approve of. And what she wouldn’t.
Though a reckless voice in my head argued she might be as possessive as I was.
“No water-calling,” I said, blocking out everyone but Aegir.
He raised a brow in pleased surprise. “Pheolix?”
The drone sucked his teeth. “As long as no one kills each other.”
“You can’t be serious,” Hadrian interjected, a frustrated hand in the air as he cleared his throat.
“Why not?” Diara challenged, her dark stare pinned on Aegir. “This has been running under the current long enough.”
A chill that had nothing to do with wind crept across the rocks like icy fingertips, white frost gathering in the shallow trenches the sun couldn’t reach. Breath fogged from my mouth, blood pounded in my head.
Aegir flicked water from his hands. “No weapons.”
“I don’t carry them here.”
“No rings.”
My teeth bit into my cheek, the taste of copper like a blade inside my mouth. One by one, my fingers worked them loose. Insignia ring, soul ring, premonition ring. I turned to Hadrian, holding them out for him to take.
“Be rational,” he muttered, eyeing my premonition ring with an anxious scowl. “Maren chose you. She chooses you every day.”
Something about his words rocked me slightly. Like a cart jolting off track, a coat barely missing its hook. He was right. Maren had crossed the stars for me. She’d threatened gods for me, sold pieces of her soul for me.
Treading around Aegir’s fragile fucking ego was one thing. What would happen when I won a fight? When I made an enemy of a siren who was, more or less in human terms, king of a neighboring colony? And perhaps worse, how much would his entitlement grow, should I lose?
I ground my teeth against my lip, studying my brother, my steady voice of reason.
Studied the rings hovering over his outstretched hand as I considered what exactly it was I felt I needed to fight Aegir to prove.
And who I needed to prove it to. I sighed, gathering the rings again, drawing from him, resigned to continue listening to the way the Videre’s voice drawled with insufferable rancor whenever he uttered the word human.
“Coward.”
The word was tossed at my back with the bang of a hammer, loud and blunt enough to silence the sea.
My gaze met Hadrian’s like a soft click.
“Kye—” he said quickly. But I’d already thrust my small pile of rings back into his palm. Had already turned around, shaking warmth into my arms.
It might have been irrational. But I’d never been a man of reason.