60. Maren
Maren
Iwas beginning to hate the little island Evenstar.
Perhaps I was exhausted by the constant cold, the invisible barrier Darkness had placed between the sun’s rays and my skin.
Waves abused the island from every angle, an endless lashing, cruel and hard and cold. Seaspray whipped across my nose and in my mouth, absorbing into the tangle of my hair as I lifted out from the water.
The mood of the island bobbed like shy ice in a bowl—giddy and awkward, hiding smiles behind shoulders and diverting their eyes. I rang out my hair in my hands, physically dispelling water before I used my energy to call it away and left myself even more cold.
I tried to speak to you, I murmured into Kye’s head. Then realized he wasn’t wearing his ring.
He stood beside Aitne, a stupid, guilty grin across his teeth, shirt peppered with red though his face looked clean. His eyes were bloodshot and watery. He sniffed hard, the motion quirking his mouth to one side. “We were sparring,” he said. “Aegir got me in the nose.”
“I see.” I raised a brow, holding up my left hand. Displaying my ring.
“Hadrian’s holding it.”
“Are you all right?” I asked, coming to stand beside Aitne as I looked him over.
“I need to meet with Sindri,” Aegir said, clasping his silver byssus cloak at his throat.
None of them seemed inclined to answer him, so I nodded. “We will see you in a day or two, then.”
His archer gaze shifted over the group quietly before meeting mine and giving me a slow nod. He dove between the waves.
“Thank the bloody sun,” Diara spat.
“Man’s as conceited as he is ugly,” Leal agreed.
“He’s not a man.” Aitne clicked her tongue. “And he isn’t ugly.”
“If his eyes were any further apart, he’d be an herbivore,” Leal countered with a sharp chomp on a rod of cured beef. My stomach curdled looking at the meat, and I turned away before my mind wandered to pirates and dark cabins and squeezing walls of wood.
“Why’d he leave?” I asked, raising a brow.
They all glanced at each other. “I thought Nori called you,” Hadrian prompted.
Cleanly avoiding my question.
“No.” I didn’t miss the faint glare Kye sent Nori, nor the way she raised her sights somewhere over his head with a cat-like smile, as though she’d stolen a mouse from another feline.
Whatever Aegir had said to offend them, I suddenly didn’t want to know.
Things were complicated enough where Aegir was concerned.
I needed his colony, far more powerful and numerous than Juile, to fight Thaan’s drones, should the time come.
But interactions with the Videre felt like walking a tight ledge. One with zealous winds and deep drops.
“Why are you here, then?” Olinne asked curiously. “Why did lightning follow you here?”
I tapped my fingertips over my thigh. Underwater, I hadn’t even noticed the lightning, though I felt it now, an electric song stirring quietly through the air. I waved it off with a slow breath, reining in my uncertainty, and turned to Hadrian.
“The man in the dungeon. I want him freed.”
Diara scoffed. “You must be joking.” Dimas shifted uneasily beside her.
“I’m not. He’s a siren. He knew Oberon.”
“You spoke to him?” Kye blinked, squinting hard under the sun. “Who led you down there?”
“Aren’s father.” My voice faltered, and I pushed on before my stupid face betrayed anything. His teeth pressed together.
“What will you do with him once you’ve freed him?” Hadrian asked. “What’s to stop him from killing us and escaping to Rivea to fill his king’s ears with everything he’s learned since we left the mountains?”
I opened my mouth, but Pheolix, watching me with unseeing steel eyes, answered before I could.
“His blood.”
“I do not like this.” Nori’s steps matched mine as I descended the stairs of the palace to the servant’s quarters, hard thumps behind me. Olinne, Diara, and Aitne followed, mouths pressed flat in agreement. “It’s not natural. It doesn’t follow Naiad laws.”
“What laws are those?” I prompted, a touch of impatience sharpening my tongue. Selena had once told me Naiad laws existed in our bodies. In our bones; in our blood. If we break our laws—our vows, our promises—our bodies answer. Your blood will always keep the score.
“When vowing loyalty, Naiads should always have a choice,” she hissed back.
I probably should have brought Kye down here with me instead.
He growled and sulked whenever I did something he didn’t like, but in the end, he always supported me without question.
But Hadrian had taken him and the other humans to the administrative offices to draw the terms of prisoner release.
“Were you given a choice whether or not to live under Sidra’s rule? ”
My second in command bit down on her tongue, her wine-red brows slung low.
We pressed against the wall as a scullery maid entered the stairs in the opposite direction, pretending not to stare curiously at the five of us.
Diara fit down here well enough, a laundry maid and assistant secretary.
But I’m sure the rest of us seemed oddly misplaced, a princess and three other women dressed in translucent black silk.
I waited until the maid turned the corner and disappeared before facing my attention back to Nori. “I will give him a choice. He’s free to remain where he is if he likes.”
“In the dungeon.”
“Yes.”
“In a cold cell with little food.”
I huffed. “If he so chooses, then yes.”
Nori didn’t respond, but I could almost hear her thoughts anyway, like an angry branch scratching against a window. A few steps from my father’s room, I halted. “What.”
She put her hands together, bowing her head. “I didn’t say a word, my Queen.”
“No, but you’re thinking them.”
The siren straightened. “You’ll be asking a Naiad who hates you, who is not loyal to you, to vow his body in blood in allegiance to your colony. Your throne.”
The smallest twinkle of doubt shone over her words like a glass shard lodged somewhere in my lungs. I knew where this was headed. Rotating from her, I paced to my father’s door, rapping my knuckles over the surface before whirling to face her. My arms folded over my chest. “Yes.”
Frustration burned in her eyes. “Does that not sound like someone else you know?”
A tick of blood thudded under my forehead. “Say what you need to say. Stop dancing around it.”
“All right, creature.” Nori didn’t bat an eye as Ano’s door opened behind me, Cebrinne and my father peering into the hall. “Imagine you take the blood of an enemy. Force him to serve you out of desperation instead of love. Tell yourself it’s the only way. But what’s next?”
“I don’t know.” My voice thinned to a sharp point. “What do you think might come next?”
“Oppression is a slope you don’t have to descend.
” Nori stared back, unflinching. “Will you crawl into his mind when you ask a question that he refuses to answer? Call to his blood and force him to play puppet? Steal the years from him, his strength and sight and memories, because he is too valuable for you to release?”
Glaring at her, I felt like I’d drunk a flagon of boiling water. I swallowed, my throat tight and burning. It had been a long time since I’d been angry enough to hold back tears. “I didn’t realize you think so low of me, Nori.”
“I don’t.” She swallowed thickly, a livid red rimming her eyes. “This idea is beneath you.”
“What’s beneath her?” Cebrinne finally said, pushing past Ano.
I tamped down on my frustration, considering her words. From her view, I understood. Perhaps even agreed. But I’d sworn my blood to a Naiad out of coercion once. I knew what boundaries I wouldn’t cross. “Thankfully I have you,” I said softly, “to keep me on track.”
Cebrinne stepped among our circle. “What’s beneath Maren?” she asked again.
I turned to her. “I found the Naiad who was with Oberon when he died.”
My mother’s eyes widened. “And?” she asked, after a weighty moment of silence. Hopefully. Cautiously.
“And.” I ground my teeth. “He’s the same Naiad who sent Kye to Perpetuum.”
“Back again?” Aras smiled at me as I stepped into the office of the Guard. It flattened as Cebrinne and Kye stepped in behind me.
“Yes.” I must have walked into some sort of shift change.
The office was full of guards, some of them half undressed, rubbing oils over swords and knives, shining their boots with grease.
A few of them tossed familiar words back and forth with Kye, who had regularly trained with the Guard until the King named him a commander, asking when he’d be back to spar or whether he’d spoken to Aren since his accident.
“I have a prisoner release signed by the King.” I let my eyes divert to the pair of dungeon keys hanging next to the Captain’s desk.
Aras’s gaze followed. Flitted back to me. “I’ll speak to you outside.”
Five minutes later, we followed him down the dark tunnels under the City of Towers.
Cebrinne fiddled with her thumb and forefinger, eyes pointed forward, her mind far from us.
Kye studied the walls and ceiling with interest, so casually I wondered whether he was avoiding speaking to Aras or if he’d never been down here before, a fact that I somehow doubted.
His cheekbone puffed, red and raw from training with Aegir.
In the lowest level of the dungeon, wailing greeted our ears. The guard on duty perked at the sound of our scuffling steps, and Aras held out the release, Emilius’s signature forged by Hadrian’s hand.
The man nocked his head toward the far wall. “He’s in the last one.”
Aras’s gaze shifted from Kye to me. He held the keys for my hand, then turned and left us in the near-dark.
The wailing grew louder as I crossed the hall. Steps thundered across the stone, a gate rattling on its hinges as a body threw itself across the iron. Fingers spread across my lower back, Kye pressing into my side, a barrier between the cells and myself.
We stopped outside Kazimir’s cell door.