72. Maren
Maren
We rose from the water as phantoms.
The sea sluiced off our bodies like robes of silk, fluttering away to meet the tide.
Sand pressed around our feet, swallowing the sound of our steps.
Wind undressed us of our scent, brushing down our backs and towards the water, but it carried the notes of a single drone sentry beyond my herb garden.
The moon was new, invisible against the starlit sky.
And so were we.
Sixty drones against fourteen. The humans pulled their blindfolds, stuffing them away.
Pheolix went first.
Darkness cloaked him like a dark lullaby, a song sung to children of a monster creeping in the dark. The drone hovering by my rows of kava roots didn’t see Pheolix until his breath had been robbed from his body.
The rest of us hung back, letting Pheolix turn the island into a graveyard. Our steps haunted his, and my blood hummed under my skin, warm and alive and thick with the promise of gifting death.
Pili grass rustled against my calves. Water dripped from my fingers. Static nestled in the palm of my hand, electricity living just beyond my touch. At the mouth of Nahli, I stopped.
Here was where we left the wind behind, the master of our scent.
The point of no return. I glanced behind me, at the small army of friends I’d gathered, offering them the chance to turn back.
I didn’t speak; I didn’t have to. I’d said it all before we’d left the cliffs, after sneaking through the secret tunnels of Laurier Palace under the cover of night and singing any guard who stood within eyeshot into temporary oblivion.
We’d climbed down to the lowest shelf of palace rocks, just above the water’s claws, and one at a time, lined up, waiting.
We’d spent the last three days drawing our plans in agonizing detail, letting the sliver of the moon shrink bit by bit until the sky swallowed it whole.
We’d laid out contingencies if that plan failed—and contingencies in case those plans failed as well.
I’d mapped out Neris Island with Nori and Olinne, marking the weak points, the strong holds, the possible escape routes.
We’d talked through the night, the hours gorging on wax and flame at Selena’s table, breaking only for sleep and letting Aitne serve us herbal tea to wake up our bones when we stumbled back a few hours after the sun climbed over the eastern horizon.
There was really only one thing left to say, now.
“A thousand years ago, a siren struck a bargain that turned his heart to ice and stone. One that Darkness himself regrets.” I looked at them all.
Dimas, who had just arrived back that morning.
Hadrian, the heir to the Calderian throne.
My mother and father, still shy with each other, yet inseparable since I’d brought him to Laurier Palace.
Nori, Olinne, and Aitne, the Naiads of my home, the determination to defend it shining from their faces.
Sindri, a Naiad who had stolen me from this spot just days ago and vowed his blood to my husband since.
Pheolix, the blind drone, who had woken with the clearest resolve in days.
Kazimir, who I still didn’t know very well, yet felt like I did.
Diara at my right side with her quiver like an unwavering, fire-breathing shadow.
And. As always. Kye.
“We have the stones now,” I’d said, holding up the frozen pieces of Thaan’s mortal heart. His humanity. “I could tell you this battlefield is a place for Naiads only. But the truth is, Thaan has taken something from everyone standing here. Some of you have suffered horrors far greater than mine.”
Across from me, Pheolix swallowed. Cebrinne took his hand and squeezed.
“I’d offer you all the chance to turn back to the palace in safety, but I know none of you are willing.
You’re here because you’ve been here, for weeks, through snow and wind and lightning.
You’re here because you’re family to me.
I never had brothers or sisters growing up, and I realize now, I never needed them.
” My gaze drifted from Hadrian to Kazimir, Aitne to Diara.
“You’re my brothers and sisters. With Thaan standing across from me, there is no one else I’d rather have at my side, behind my back, than you all.
“We’ve hashed this mission to threads over the last few days, but at its core, it’s simple.
Get in, kill Thaan, find Selena, and get out.
I want everyone to step safely back on this ledge only hours from now.
But if you do not make it back—” I paused, a thistle caught in my throat.
The wind died, and my voice with it as the soft wash of the tide crept over our feet.
“If you do not make it back, know what you’ve fought for.
For a future where humans are more than vessels and Naiads are more than weapons.
Where our bodies belong to us, and where no one can decide what we will do with them.
Where children aren’t trained to kill, where mothers are not forced from their young, and families aren’t ripped apart. ”
Kye’s thumb caressed mine. My mother’s eyes swam, though she’d tucked her chin low, her teal blue gaze glimmering against her midnight hair as my words stirred within her. Kazimir’s throat worked in silence.
I stepped forward, breaking our little circle to enter it instead.
“We are not confronting a tyrant’s power; we’re denying his authority over our lives.
This is not a war. It's a revolution. I will crawl to Thaan on my belly if I must, to ensure he dies. But I refuse to bow. I refuse to beg. I refuse to break. And I know that if I must crawl, you will crawl with me.”
Diara leaned forward, forehead to mine, and wrapped her arms around my back.
Then Aitne, and Olinne, and finally Nori.
“We’re here with you,” Hadrian said softly. “Every step. Even on our bellies.” At his side, Dimas nodded.
They dove in, burrowing themselves into the tide. Until only Kye remained, his hand open for mine.
“You won’t leave my side?” I said, just to hear the sound of his voice before the sea gulped us into the embrace of quiet war.
“Never,” he said. “I’m so entwined with you, our souls are woven together. Today, tomorrow, a thousand years from now. To the island, the mountains, the edge of the stars—and then beyond that. To eternity, wherever eternity goes. Even Death could not untangle me from you.”
At the mouth of Nahli’s cavern, I turned around to count shadows.
The air around us coalesced, seaside breeze shifting clouds over our heads, burning out the stars like candle flames snapped out of light.
Icy fingers dripped down my shoulder as I stared at the pitch-black sky. A blanket of invisibility.
Darkness was here with us.
I smiled. A good thing I’d wrapped my stones in an extra layer of silk, lest they give us away. “Let’s get Selena.”
We surrounded Kye like moons in orbit. Then stepped through a curtain of moss, into the volcano’s throat.
Like the lowest tunnel of Paria, the Nahli wept.
Water ran down its walls, slow drips and fast streams, their echoes rousing the soundless air like murmurs in the dark.
The air tasted thick with moisture and forgotten memory, sitting over my skin like I’d walked through a cloud.
A frigid hand slid across my back, a shadow gliding in front of me, and suddenly the cavern was even darker than it had been the moment before.
Footsteps were already padding toward us, recognizing the shift in the wind, the hearts and scents that had entered.
Now, I whispered into Kye’s head.
He lit like a lantern.
A glow at first, a beacon amongst the black ink of nothing. A target.
I slid my silk blindfold over my eyes, taming Kye’s brilliance into a warm, shapeless light.
Then called to the water between stars.
Electricity crackled from my hands—but it was the rupture of still air that I sought, the muffled tremor through rock that shook my blood like a brontide along a stormy coast. Stone vibrated under my feet, a titan waking after a deep slumber.
The first drone stepped in. A male, judging by the width of his shoulders, the way he moved with power in his limbs, though it might have been a female.
His silhouette draped over Kye’s radiance, a dark blur over a bright hymn.
He lunged for the light, but twelve ghosts surrounded Kye, twelve shadows swathed in dark, twelve planets revolving a dazzling sun.
Someone—Sindri, I think—threw the drone against the cavern wall loud enough to feel the crunch of a skull through rock and air.
Brighter.
Kye’s glow scorched my eyes behind my blindfold. A single star surrounded by the empty night. Darkness danced between the rest of us, spinning us into threads of shadow, though I thought I caught a smoky wisp as we neared the first bend in the cave.
Another drone came and fell, his neck snapped by Pheolix like a brittle limb of driftwood. Water lapped at my toes, so cold it almost burned. It swallowed my legs like a man dying of thirst, until waist-deep, I stood over the same passage I’d found when I discovered the Breath of Safiro, and dove.
I’d forgotten how narrow the tunnel was.
It pulled me like an underground river, tighter and tighter until I found the end, a hole so constricting I had to force myself through.
Dimas was next, and I turned to wait for him in case he became caught, my pulse an anxious drum in my ears.
A soft blue illuminated my byssus dress, flaring against the rock.
Hands curled around the edge of the narrow tunnel. I grasped on and guided him out like a cork through a glass neck. Together, we rose to the surface, peering out only enough that our noses breached the water.
A canopy of glowing worms had stretched across the ceiling before, a constellation of twinkling blue. Now the rock was bare. The walls were bare. Water echoed somewhere as it dripped, though I couldn’t see where.
Are you both on the other side? Nori asked.
I stroked silently across the chamber. Yes. I hadn’t explored Nahli when I’d been here before. I expected to find a rock ledge, maybe a deeper cavern above the water where Thaan and his sixty drones could remain dry. But the wide pool licked every edge of the chamber. There’s nothing here.
Something in Nori’s consciousness sent a shiver down my mind. They must be below.
I glanced down, past my treading feet. The well had nearly killed me when I’d swum down it the first time, before Naiad oxygen woke the siren in my veins. We’ll need to breathe for the humans.
That meant rendering them low-conscious. Nori swore into my thoughts. All right. Shall I send the next one?
One by one, we passed them through, careful to avoid making sound.
My skin tightened over my flesh with cold and anxiety.
The longer we took, the greater the risk—it wasn’t as if we could easily escape.
But there was no way to rush, either, and I didn’t dare ask Nori to send them two at a time only to risk one becoming trapped.
Kye’s light crawled down the tunnel before his face poked through.
Don’t try to come in head-first, I instructed. Your shoulders will get wedged. Give me your hands—and you might want to quiet your light.
My breath eased as Kazimir wiggled out after him, the last before Nori.
I waited for my red-wine Oculos, joining her at the surface.
“We’ll have to use our tails to reach the bottom,” I whispered through the dark.
Suspicion unraveled through my bones, made only more chilling by the frigid water.
A river was one thing, with escape routes in opposite directions.
A deep dive into a bottomless well was another.
Diara must have sensed the hesitancy in my voice. “We’ll wait here,” she offered.
I shook my head. “I’d rather you wait on solid ground. Any Naiad could swim beneath you here and drag you under.”
Hadrian shook water from his hair. “We’d have no way to know if you need our help.”
I ground my teeth, anxiety building. Stunning drones into blindness and alarm with Kye’s light and my thunder would only work for so long.
Eventually they would realize they were under attack before the moment we reached them, eclipsing our powers.
And as much as they’d trained, my Naiads weren’t the fighters the humans were.
“We’re coming,” my father said, in a tone that I’d rarely heard.
My belly roiled softly. The first hitch in our plan. “All right.”
I reached for Kye before remembering he didn’t need me to dive under. He kissed me anyway, brisk and cold. Lead the way. We’re all behind you.
Steeling myself, I dipped into the water, transitioning to fin and fluke and scale, and made for the belly of a volcano. The water thickened with shards of ice like slush. Each stroke felt like waking the dead, except the dead was me, my limbs churning just to keep heat active in my blood.
A steady beat waited just below—a heart.
Its owner must have heard mine in the same moment.
Hands grappled for mine, but I caught theirs first, slamming them into the wall.
The water stirred around us with vicious waves, Kye and the Naiads closing ranks behind me.
I pinned the drone to the rock with my weight, and Kye hummed enough light to make out the faint outline of their body, graceful shoulders and a long neck.
Pheolix reached through to snap it. And froze.
A pair of fiery ocean-blue eyes gazed back at us through a curtain of sable hair.