73. Maren
Maren
Recognition lanced through Pheolix’s body like the echo of a hammer against bone. His hands curled around Selena’s jaw, over her cheeks and through her hair, pulling her into him. She responded with an urgency that made me avert my eyes, melting against Pheolix like snow over hot stone.
I glanced up to the top of the well, the chamber above. We could’ve taken her then. Stole back through the cavern and to Laurier Palace, or even hidden her in Juile or Venusia, undersea escapes that Thaan could not reach.
And spent the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, diminishing Selena’s existence to three years.
She pulled from Pheolix to look at all of us.
A smile for Olinne, a squeeze against Kye’s shoulder, an entwined pinky with my mother.
Curiosity stole over her face as she glanced at Kazimir, who watched her from the back of the group, a resistance in his eyes.
Then she looked at me. Her palm laid against my cheek, cool and soft and familiar.
A stone tumbled down my throat, wedging itself painfully at the bottom. I laid my hand over hers.
Her gaze lifted toward the surface, then back to me. A question.
Resolve hardened through my chest, marbling in my blood. I shook my head.
She glanced down instead, meeting my eyes again, and I nodded.
For a moment, fear stole across her face, a flight of frightened birds behind her eyes. But she lifted her chin, pushing off the rocky wall, guiding us back. Then motioned for us to follow.
The well ran deep. Pressure pressed against my skull, prying into my ears, crushing my ribs.
We dropped and dropped, and when it seemed we might fall through the opposite end of the world, Selena ducked into a dark alcove, another channel rising away, beckoning us in.
Dry air drifted over my nose, musty with the scent of untouched stone and air that had laid still so long it had forgotten it was air.
My heart relaxed slightly as the sound of soft gasps trailed behind me, humans conscious again.
I clutched my blindfold in my fist, making sure I hadn’t dropped it in case Kye needed to blind the tunnel.
But all remained dark and damp and quiet.
“Where are the drones?” I dared to whisper.
Selena glanced over her shoulder. “Away, for now. There were a few above, and the rest will return by sunrise.”
I grasped her wrist, halting her. “Where’s Thaan?”
She let her gaze wander ahead, down the tunnel.
My hand shifted over the stones in my pocket, the knife at my hip.
My breath was fluid, slow. But a tremor rippled through my muscles, chilled from the water’s frigid kiss.
I couldn’t wield the stars down here without risking Nahli to collapse over all of us.
Hands and steel were my weapons, if any drones took away my water-call.
Selena drifted deeper, her steps slow and silent. She paused as the tunnel twisted and bent, crooking her eye around corners and motioning for us to follow. Her heart raced, and though no one mentioned it, I knew the other Naiads heard it as well. My own sped at the sound of her fear.
A glimmer waited ahead, flicking against the windless air. Selena pressed into the wall, letting me peer around her.
At first, only shining rock and piercing edges emerged, like sheets of jagged black glass laid one over the other. They parted to reveal a small room, a rushlight burning in the center, its dim flame flickering over the walls and sharp grooves as though dancing with the shadows.
But then I saw it, the only thing that didn’t reflect the light. A bird, asleep, its head tucked under its wing. It blended into the obsidian, feathers melting into glass.
I’d almost forgotten that Thaan slept. So long ago were the days I’d sneak to Selena’s rooms, listening for the long, rhythmic pulls of Thaan and Cain, the slow and steady timbre of their hearts.
He’d become something mythical in my mind, not human or Naiad but something made of wing and claw and viscous hate, eyes that saw everything and blood that bound the souls of thousands.
Something rooted in evil and decay and lies that tangled like snakes in a knot, so snarled and interwoven you couldn’t find where one ended and another began.
Might be, might be, Nori had once chanted. Might be a flower, might be a flame. Might borrow my skin, my face, my name. Might be the sunshine, might be the dark. Might walk on my feet, might stop my heart.
Would Thaan wake as easily as a bird? A shiver lanced down my spine as I stepped through the room, careful not to make a sound. My hand brushed against my pocket, even though I knew the stones were there. Slowly, inch by precious inch, I drew my knife.
It didn’t matter how quiet my feet were, my heart thundered in my chest, banging so hard and fast it nearly hurt.
Clean drops of water ghosted my fingertips, winding down the blade and falling at my feet.
The weight of fourteen stares bored into my back.
Witnesses to the end of Thaan. The end of the Videre without an ocean.
Torturer, murderer, enslaver. My hand tightened over the leather-bound grip, lips peeling from my mouth.
He slept so peacefully, tucked away like a little black dove, the firelight painting his feathers iridescent. Almost beautiful.
Almost.
Inches from him, I lowered into a crouch. From the corner of my eye, Diara drew her bowstring over an arrow, primed to shoot in case he woke.
My heart gave a flutter, like a stumble of feet. A last shred of uncertainty.
He was my grandfather. My mother’s father. His blood ran within my veins. He’d been born to the Safiro Sea, the same as my own. He’d walked the same shores, swam in the same ocean, ruled over the same colony, once.
My knees pressed into sharp rock, and the crow stirred.
The sight of it lifting its head sent an electric jolt through my chest, and before I could think, my knife cleaved through its breast, separating wing and ribs.
It started in panic. Cawed once, voicelessly, the sound shallow and raspy.
I left the knife there and backed away, readying for a fight.
But it stretched its opposite wing and fell on its side like it was trying to fly away, dark blood oozing from the blade.
Thaan looked at Selena, eyes beseeching. Begging to know why he had been betrayed. Then his feet curled, his wing drooped. A beady eye blinked at her. Once. Twice. And then went still.
She gazed at it, unflinching, as emotionless as the volcanic glass that surrounded her. But tears ran freely down her cheeks. No one spoke, and Pheolix nudged his way to her, finding her hips with his hands, then pulling her in tight. She burrowed her head into his neck.
“It’s done,” she whimpered against him. “It’s done. It’s done.”
I walked past them, allowing them a moment alone.
My breath was still caged in my chest, damned by an ache I didn’t understand.
Relief that Thaan was dead? Horror that I had killed him?
Or was it the sudden color of liberation, painting the walls in bright, burning hues?
That I’d never have to worry about Thaan trailing my steps, casting his plans as though he held my fate within a ball of crystal, warping the glass orb in the pattern he pleased.
At the water’s edge, I padded into the cold, but Cebrinne halted me with a hand, her teeth pressed together. She turned, stepping past Pheolix and Selena, who murmured softly into each other’s ears. My mother picked up the rushlight by its iron stand. Then set the flame against Thaan’s body.
Fire only stroked him at first, like the touch of a shy lover.
But gradually, it melted into his small body, growing vivid as it climbed to engulf him.
Feathers burned like tufts of fur, smoke and ash falling in a dusty cloud, and when the blaze finally sank its teeth into his flesh, it hissed and spit.
Until all that remained was bone, brittle and charred with black.
I watched as the flames brightened and died. What a quiet end, to someone who had so loudly destroyed lives for a millennia.
We left his bones, and the knife that had cleaved through them, in that small obsidian room.
Lowered ourselves back into the cold, swimming up the volcano’s well to its wide chamber, then out the narrow vein we’d climbed through.
Starlight melted into my hair and dress as I stepped out of Nahli’s cavern mouth, the taste of earth and leaf and roaming sea releasing the wind caught between my ribs like a welcome hammer to a cage.
I wondered if Mihauna was watching. If, even in the cavern, she’d seen what we’d done.
A hand massaged my shoulder, a tall body leaning in to kiss my temple. Kye gave me a slow grin, winding his hand around the back of my head to cup my opposite cheek, pulling me in to plant a second kiss in the same place.
Aitne and Dimas passed us, the healer’s mouth turned up for the first time in days, walking toward the water. I watched them drift through the ferns, Diara and Aren close behind. Hadrian slapped Kye’s arm, walking backwards toward the shore.
“We shouldn’t dally,” my mother said, though her voice was warm, almost thick as she stopped beside me. “His drones might arrive any minute.”
“I know.” I watched Kazimir stride to the sand alone, pausing before he left the moss and lichen-drenched rocks, turning to look back at us. Thaan was dead; his blood vow was fulfilled. He’d return to Rivea soon.
I wasn’t sure why, but the thought blew through me like a fistful of stones.
“Will you be returning to Leihani, little leaf?” my father asked.
I’d been waiting for the question. Had suspected he’d made himself wait to ask it until now.
The words probed a memory in my mind. “Makua,” I said, “before I found you in the caves, Palunu saw me in your house. She spoke strangely to me.” It wasn’t a question, but I let my words lilt as though it were one, knowing he’d understand even as my mother sent me a quizzical glance.
My father raised a brow. “That started sometime around the first few days of the wet season.”
Kye tilted his head, nudging himself to the side to make room for Olinne. “What started?”
“The islanders began to speak warmly of Maren,” my father answered, scratching low over his cheek.
“They knew I was building a boat to find her, even though I had tried to hide it at first. They started bringing me material. Rope, wood, sails. A few of the young men wanted to come with me. To find you and claim you back.”
“But—why?” I asked, cringing only a little. Or perhaps the better question, how?
“You killed Sidra,” Olinne said, the words like a melody in her sweet voice. “You lifted the curse. Sirens may befriend islanders again.”
“The islanders don’t…” I almost laughed at how childish the words were, though I forced them out anyway, even as warmth bloomed behind my cheeks. “They don’t hate me?”
My father smiled sadly at me. “No, little leaf. You are one of them. They want you to return home.” He glanced hopefully at me. “And your court is below our sea, isn’t it? Does that mean you’ll return to the islands?”
My gaze met Kye’s, a nervous churn in my stomach.
Maybe that was why my feet were reluctant to leave the emerald palms and ferns here.
Why it felt like we’d been tricked, somehow, into laughter that left our mouths too easily, deep breaths that flowed too readily.
There was still one last problem to resolve. “Actually, Makua—”
A scream shattered the night.
Aitne dropped to her knees like the sand had burned her feet, Dimas reaching to help her—
I was already moving, running, leaping over long blades of pili grass and ferns.
But not fast enough to reach them as a Naiad rose from the tide, grabbed either side of her head, and twisted.