67. Maren
Maren
Silence expanded like a billowing mist, distorting everything through smog. Aegir must have been as shocked as me. His compulsion over me slipped, and my mouth hung agape as I stared at Kye, standing at the foot of the dais.
“A Sola…” Aegir breathed. “A Sola born from Aalto.”
The word stroked some far, dusty corner of my memory. My first meeting with Selena, less than a day after I’d entered the City of Towers.
What other creatures descend from the stars? I’d asked.
She’d considered my question. Naiads and humans are the only ones I know of. There was a third, once. The Sola, born from Aalto. The sun. They bred themselves out of existence, mating with humans eons ago.
Kye looked at me, finally, regret burning in the center of his molten eyes.
“Theia showed it to me in Perpetuum. At the top of the Mountain of Truth when I reached my hands in the Temple of Fates. My entire lineage, all the way back to Aalto, when he was still a mortal man. When we returned, I asked Selena if she knew anything about the Sola. She helped me find the few archives left to see if there was a way…” He ran an uncertain hand over his mouth, doubt darkening his gaze.
“Sola blood runs in my veins, but I’m twenty-seven.
The door is long since closed to me, and I would have needed another Sola to turn me anyway.
From everything I can find, the Sola exist only within human veins.
There isn’t anyone alive who can wake it within me. ”
Disbelief stole the words from my head, scattering them out of reach.
I stared dumbly at him as details from the last few months began clicking into place.
The many times I’d look across the fire on our way home from Paria to find Kye next to Selena by the fire, talking to her.
Even after we’d returned, he’d borrowed her books and scrolls.
And his heat—he used to burn like a furnace next to my skin, waking me up with a single touch. It had been a long time since I’d melted under the flame of his skin. I’d thought we’d maybe grown apart, or that I was so focused on ending Thaan that I’d let Kye slip away a little.
But I’d traded the feeling of the sun’s rays to Darkness.
“Thaan knows,” Kye continued, drawing my attention back to him.
Aegir’s hands curled over the walls of his shallow pool. “He told you this?”
“No,” Kye said, looking back to me, “but I’m certain he discovered it on his own. When he tried to take you from Selena’s office, just after you became Queen.”
I might not have remembered, had been able to grasp what he meant, had he not stood before me now, glowing like a lantern lit from within. He’d always had that kind of light. Even on the beaches of Leihani, before his ship came to take him home, I’d thought he’d looked like a warrior of the sun.
But he’d burned with light that day, when he’d thought Thaan might take me with him.
And Thaan’s beads of water had evaporated from his skin, steaming to air and vapor, allowing him to crawl through while the rest of us had been trapped.
And something had lit in Thaan’s eyes—surprise, fear.
Understanding. But he’d already forced me to transition, to show Kye my Naiad form, already wove Kye’s death.
Thaan had left believing Kye was an obstacle that would resolve itself in a matter of weeks, only to realize he’d been thwarted. I’d brought Kye back from the dead.
“That’s why his drones took you. Why the crow on the riverbank turned toward you.” I said, the full measure of Kye’s words twisting like a fist thrown to my gut. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kye’s gaze fell then. It drifted slowly across the floor of the throne room before he quietly said, “Because you’re a Queen, and you were focused on achieving what you needed to.
I didn’t want to distract you. I was fine with researching alone, aided a little by Selena.
And because—” He blew the air slowly through his nose, his head tilting.
“A young Sola can live over a thousand years. I didn’t want you to get your hopes up that I might find a way to turn, when I only found dead ends.
I was happy to live out the rest of my days at your side as a human.
I didn’t want you to wonder, after I’d gone to Perpetuum, if there was something different you could have done. ”
Unwittingly, my gaze flashed to Nori, the only one who had voiced the complication of a Naiad Queen cordaeing with a human.
Kye and I had both been too nervous to discuss it again, leaving it to linger under the surface of our conversations instead, a rough undercurrent neither one of us had been brave enough to be swept into.
“If we strike a deal,” Aegir said, thrusting me back into the moment with shallow breath and dizzying clarity, “what guarantee have I that your untapped Sola blood will lend me more power than hers?”
“I’m not sure that my power would rival Maren’s,” Kye replied, slanting his head back to Aegir. “But Sola have unique power, found nowhere else on the three continents. And mine would transfer to you.”
“Even though you’re human?” Aegir raised a brow. I didn’t like the way he’d sat up in interest, the way he leaned forward when Kye spoke. His voice remained flat with reluctance, but his attention dripped from Kye’s words with a raw hunger I hadn’t seen from him in all our meetings.
Kye’s head lowered, a measured nod. “Everything I’ve read implies that inheriting full Sola power is like crossing a bridge.
I’m stuck on one side, waiting for passage, but you were born directly to your power.
You’re already on the other side. You just need one thing.
” He lifted his wrist, his rolled sleeve revealing the blue of his veins, which he studied for a moment before turning his arm enough that we could see.
“No.” I shot the word to the floor like a poisoned barb had somehow nettled its way into my mouth. Then it clamped shut under Aegir’s compulsion, refusing to open no matter what I tried. I twisted and turned, but my body had fossilized, hard and heavy as petrified wood.
Aegir’s back left his pool wall. He rested his forearms against the opposite side instead, gauging Kye in a way he hadn’t before. “And in what ways have you discovered these Sola powers would manifest?”
“There’s limited recordings of Sola abilities,” Kye said, letting his hand return to clasp the other behind his back. The details are ambiguous, but from what I’ve read, the Sola experienced a heightened awareness of others. A developed sense of who and what they could trust.”
He let that thought linger in the room, jaw gyrating in silence as he stared pointedly at the Videre.
“Sharper eyesight, able to observe a target from miles away. There’s evidence that the Sola fought with blasts of lumenum and solar flares.
One recording said, and then the victim became the dust of clouds, which Selena interpreted to mean they were burnt to ash. ”
I was no more than a farm animal to them, a mute sheep as they discussed the worth of my trade, Kye’s blood the currency. Aegir had all but forgotten me, but Kye’s gaze shifted to me, apology shining from the pools of his calm eyes.
“In the oldest scrolls,” he said softly, “we found text regarding the strongest of Sola. Translated to the words: a veil among wind. What that means, we couldn’t puzzle out, nor find it written anywhere else.”
The seconds dragged as the members of Aegir’s grand council leaned into each other and whispered.
Aegir’s eyes didn’t leave Kye. They locked onto him as the Naiad radiated deep thought, and I could almost hear the murmurs inside his head.
My power may have been stronger than Aegir’s, but Kye offered him abilities that would make him a Naiad like no other.
The Videre stretched a slow finger at Kye. “Why should I make a deal for your blood? You stand here outnumbered, a human among Naiads, an enemy without me even having to declare it. I could simply take it from your body.”
A snarl rose from the depths of my chest, suffocated in my throat by my latched mouth. I shook from the invisible binds around my body, from my fight against them.
“You could kill me now, yes,” Kye said, softly.
“But that’s part of how the Sola died out.
Sola rivals couldn’t steal each other’s power as Naiads do.
It was gifted instead. I could gift you a drop of my blood, transfer the lumenum within me to you.
Share it with you, without any need to die.
Though I expect you’ll want to kill me,” he added, as if it were an afterthought.
“And your demands?” Aegir prompted.
Kye nocked his head in my direction. “Swear Maren will never be hurt by your hand, or the hands of your colony. That you’ll release her today, as well as the Naiads who brought me.
That you’ll never touch her, speak to her, or seek her out again.
And that you’ll never set foot in Leihani or the city of Calder. ”
“I imagine you’re aware of how such a request would be impossible—”
“In your blood,” Kye cut through Aegir’s voice, his tone stripped of all propriety. Olinne and Aitne shifted their weight behind him, discomforted by the tone he took with a Videre. Nori watched without flinching. Cebrinne looked as if she were a moment away from tearing Aegir’s throat out.
Aegir rose from his pool, his silk dry as he stood.
“I’ll need a moment to discuss this with my council,” he said, though that hunger hadn’t left his eyes.
“Sindri will remain in the hall, and I’ll post more of my Naiads outside.
I’ll leave you to speak to him, Maren, as it may very well be your final chance.
But you’ll remain where you are. You’re not yet released from your debt. ”