64. Maren
Maren
Kazimir doubled over with a sharp gasp. The blade ripped from his body.
I’d already pushed him into the door jamb, water sliding down my fingers, charged and ready with all the electrons drifting in the air nearby.
Across the threshold stood a male Naiad I’d never seen before, eyes cast in shadow under the wide brim of their hood.
A drone.
He dropped a dagger, Kazimir’s blood splattering over the floorboards, and reached for a twin weapon at his hip. I shoved into him. We crashed on the floor, whiplash jolting through my spine as I raked his chest, calling the water in his blood.
It bubbled under his skin. The Naiad screamed, a curdling roar that raised every hair on my body. Red roses bloomed over his face and arms. He clawed my hand, locked onto his chest, but I’d already stolen his strength, his attack nothing more than finger-strokes against my arm.
A hand fisted in my hair, yanking me off, throwing me into the back of the couch I’d sat at for most of the day. Wood snapped, bowing against my back. I rolled to my feet.
At least twenty Naiads filled the room.
Water gushed from my hands. I threw it like a tide, unleashing an ocean into the dark room.
Waves crashed across the wall, cresting angrily to the ceiling, surging in the opposite direction.
The swell smashed into bodies and bookshelves and furniture, cracks of rippling from the corners of the ceiling.
Glass shrieked like a high-pitched scream, windows blowing out against the pressure.
The current dragged my feet dully toward open air as water spilled from a black hole in the wall.
The groan of real thunder rumbled overhead, electricity lancing through my shoulders to my hands, sparks flying like shooting stars from my fingers.
And teeth.
Teeth in front of me, clenched, bared. Wide teeth, short nails burrowing into my shoulder. I grabbed them by the neck, not caring who they were, forcing water down their throat until they let go, eyes bulging with flaming veins.
Someone grabbed me from behind, twisted my arm into the small of my back.
A corkscrew of tight fire erupted from my shoulder as I slammed sideways, rocking into the wall.
Into broken chair legs and overturned books and a flotsam of items so out of place along the floor, I almost thought I’d never seen them before.
Candles and silverware, shoes and corks, my feather pen and the broken stem of a crystal goblet.
Among them, a whip of a man, small and human, a red slash across his throat, eyes and mouth half open.
“Leal,” a gurgling version of my voice yelled as someone shoved my head into the inch-deep water sloshing over the floor. A fingernail drew a line from my elbow to my wrist.
Flames exploded down my arm.
I went limp, dead weight attached to my shoulder, my fingers curling, coiling, trembling.
“Marked her,” said whoever was holding me down.
Their bulk lifted off me, leaving me shaking in the shallow pool of the room.
I pushed up against my elbow, gasping for air under the white flame licking down my wounded arm, calling for water.
But it had snapped out of my grasp, flung out of my reach.
The cut down my arm was shallow, non-lethal. White-silver gleamed under my skin, lighting my tattoos like someone had poured metal, liquid and fiery, into my blood.
A Naiad loomed over me, cool and pressing eyes of icy blue.
“You,” I murmured, pulling my dead arm to my chest. Shock hit me like a furious river, tumbling and churning over my head, forcing me under the surface. In his hand sat the weapon he’d used. A little throwing knife, its shining blade dulled by powdered ash.
I’d thought they were drones.
But drones do not carry weapons.
“It isn’t personal.” He squatted before me, forearms resting over his knees. “You have to understand, Queen. They killed my cordae within these walls and hid her body. Probably threw her away like she was nothing more than a pile of human waste.”
“Who did?” I seethed, my teeth sharp over the words. Behind an overturned table, Kazimir’s legs and feet spasmed over the floor, the ash in his blood contorting his muscles. A fate that would descend upon me in minutes.
“Does it matter?” the Naiad said. “Thaan, Selena, Pheolix, your mother. We’ve waited months for someone to explain. No one has. In my mind”—he stood, tilting his head as he gazed down at me, his black hair sliding along his shoulder—“they’re all guilty. Now, stand up.”
“Why?” I spat, forcing my gaze to stay on him. They threatened to trickle down to Leal. His skin had already grayed and wilted, and the ugly gash across his neck wasn’t even bleeding anymore. It hung open, bright and red like a second mouth, hungry for my eyes. My stomach convulsed.
“Because,” he said, “you’re coming with me.”
“The Darkness I am.” I glanced around for something to defend myself. A candlestick, a broken bottle, a shard of glass. Leal’s shirt stretched over his hip, glazed with the sheen of water absorbed in the fabric, a long ridge over the side of his hip.
The Naiad saw it too. He nudged Leal’s hip with his bare foot, rolling the sheathed blade out of my reach. “Stand or I’ll make you stand. You won’t like the way we make you.”
Kye. I sent his name through the walls and across the waves, miles away from me. I need you.
“Where’s your Videre? I assume he’s with you.” My words caught on my breath, rapidly growing shallow, each syllable like a punch to the gut.
Where are you?
Your tower.
“Right here.” Sindri stepped back. And Aegir, watching from the open door, floated forward.
I’m coming. I’m on my way—stay where you are.
Ripples expanded from Aegir’s feet, the hem of his silver silk cloak dragging in the shallow water behind him, not even splashing as he crossed the floor.
He looked down at me without apology, even as my breath stuttered, my cradled arm aflame, my wrist beginning to twist and bend oddly.
Shield weed ash leeched through my blood, thick in my lungs, swelling my throat.
Acid gathered at the back of my mouth, bitter and frothy, a burn behind my tongue.
“Stand up,” Aegir said.
I glared up at him, my mouth curling with disgust. Strength had abandoned my limbs.
Left me a shaking wet ball of wet skin and bared teeth and oddly bent bones.
I didn’t think I could stand even if I wanted to.
From the other side of the table, Kazimir’s flailing legs had slowed, his breath a ragged lurch in and out.
I gulped air through the thinning tunnel to my lungs, my voice weakening into a dim rasp. “So much for allies.”
“I tried,” he said, as though I’d been the reason he’d failed.
“I didn’t realize”—I paused to stifle a cough—“it was an ultimatum.”
Aegir’s hand wrapped around his chin, sliding over his beard.
“It wasn’t, really. I just needed to know if there was a chance.
Between you and I. You drank Sidra’s blood only months ago, and look what you can do because of it.
A child of the moon…I haven’t seen such power since, well…
” He clicked his tongue, softly. “Since Thaan.”
“What are you going to do, then, Aegir? Force yourself on me?” I spat the words at him like poison darts, but horror climbed inside the cavern of my stomach at the thought. The walls of the apartment pulsed. Squeezed.
Aegir had the decency to look affronted by the suggestion, stretching his neck away from me like he might catch a disease by the idea alone.
“Of course not. I want you for your power, Maren. Your blood. Not your body. Not your love. Power is something I can take. Something that won’t deny me when I claim it. Now stand up.”
I scoffed, anger and disgust grinding anything soft from the edge of my voice. “You said we were friends.” Please hurry.
He didn’t answer.
Kye.
Silence.
“I also said I’d do anything to kill Thaan. Give anything. Take anything. Stand, if you want an honorable death. If not, you’ll be coming with me to Venusia.”
I laughed weakly. Mockingly. “Whatever your code of honor is, I don’t believe in it.”
Kye!
He shook his head, disappointment in his archer-green eyes, as though, even now, I was a disgrace, a mark against his pride.
“Maren of Leihani,” he said, fixing his cloak over the black whorls across his shoulders, “your first breath of Naiad air was taken in the Venus Sea. Taken without permission, sanction, or introduction. Your body owes a service to Venusia. Therefore, I call to your blood.”