Chapter Twelve
Kai
He was not sure he had processed it at first. Any of it. As the Merrow Chief led them from his home and back through the glowing blue pathways of Nua Laune, Kai’s mind turned over Daithí’s story like old soil, searching for some glimmering kernel of hope and finding only dead roots.
The fall of the Laune, the chaos and death that had trickled down from where Kai would remain frozen for lifetimes to come. The secret of the Mother’s Cavern. The Sealgair and their violent beginnings. The slow and painful evolution of the Merrow.
And the Elder Council’s decision.
“It’s not yet over,” Eda said to Kai as they treaded water, awaiting Alun’s return on the other side of the dimly glimmering chains that marked off Nua Laune, the graveyard.
“No,” Os agreed, unconvincingly. “They’ll listen.”
Kai said nothing at first. He had heard Eda’s pleading whisper on the waves as they left Daithí’s home, and heard his response, too. She’d stopped him just inside the door to his kitchen, Kai, Alun and Os already floating in silence on the other side.
“Reconsider.”
“It is not only my decision to make.”
“Then raise it with the Elders again. The boy was misled, and he has more than learned from his mistakes. He is strong; he’s sensible. He can hold his own against your Sealgair.”
“Eda.” A rush of water told them that Daithí had loosed an airless sigh.
“For you, and for my Uncle’s memory, I will suggest the Council reconsider.
But know that it is not only the Sealgair that concerns us.
You warned us of how this would all begin.
You know how it ends. He cannot stay. You should understand this better than anyone. ”
When they’d emerged, Kai had not asked. He had agreed to Daithí’s suggestion that they wait by the border while he brought Alun to speak with the Sealgair, but he had not spoken a word on the long swim back through Nua Laune. Now, he turned in the waters and met Eda’s crumpled, anxious gaze.
“What did Daithí mean,” he said finally, “when he said that you know how it ends?”
Eda just stared back at him, and in the slow stretch of the silence that followed, she was a mournful spectre; rheumy eyes wide and round, suspended in the dark with her white hair floating eerily about her.
“You will not like my answer, sweet.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Kai,” said Os, tone low with reprimand.
But Eda held his eye.
“I delivered a prophecy to the Elders when I told them of your journey to the depths. Time has somewhat smoothed the details for me, but it seems they recorded it, or at least some iteration of it. Daithí and his kin have interpreted the prophecy in their own way, and they’re reluctant to interfere with what they believe to be the natural outcome. ”
Another damned prophecy.
Kai fought for control of his face, but he could not help the fleeting sideways glance that told him Oswalt was struggling too.
His cousin’s lips were a tense line, his brow flat.
This was one thing that had always bonded them; their agreement that the Elder’s thousands of vague and lyrical prophecies were, and had always been, glorified fairytales.
“I did tell you you would not like it,” said Eda, to his silence.
Kai was spared from mustering a response when a flicker of movement in the dark caught their eyes. Two figures wove forth through the shadows, Alun kicking and pulsing, Daithí sinuous at his side.
Alun paused, unsmiling, between two lengths of chain and said without preamble, “No fishermen. They’ll allow marked trade vessels to pass undisturbed.” Then kicked past them all and began the upward swim toward the Arabidae.
Gills tight with unease, Kai turned in the water to follow him, but was drawn up short when a long set of spindly fingers shackled his wrist.
“Kai Cumhaill.” Daithí’s brittle voice skittered down his spine as he turned. “I know this was not the outcome you had hoped for.”
“It’s not over yet,” Eda piped up once more.
Daithí inclined his head gently in her direction; a placating nod. But then he drew something from the folds of his thin clothing; something that pulsed with a weak but all too familiar glow.
“I should not do this, but I admit, I feel badly. Eda speaks highly of you, so I feel I can trust you—and I will. I will trust you to return this when—if,” he amended, with a swift glance at Eda, “we eventually part ways. For now, I would offer you this small piece of home, so you might call upon the waters once more.”
Daithí raised his hand slowly, and the pendant’s glow beat like a dying heart in his palm, lighting up the dark pathways of veins and arteries beneath his thin skin.
It was made from a circular vial of rough-cut seaglass, soft green with a vein of white shot through like a lightning bolt.
It was not the blue glow of the pendant that had nearly drowned him, but Kai felt his gills catch and seal all the same, suffocating him just as those fathomless depths had so long ago.
His hand twitched at his side, thumb curling in to touch the smoothed gash across his palm.
And then, forcing a burst of water through his gills, Kai reached out that same hand and let Daithí lay the Adhlian pendant over his scar.
It was cold as a shard of ice.
He stared at it for a moment, then forced his gaze up, forced it outward and away from paralysing visions of the Laune’s darkest depths, the violent rush of its deepest waters.
Forced his eyes to focus on the present; on Eda’s worried gaze, and Oswalt’s frown; on the Merrow Chief’s inscrutable face.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Use it wisely,” said Daithí.
*
As the Arabidae soared for the shore, silence settled over their party once more. It was not the anxious, thrumming silence of their inbound journey. This silence had a weight; a texture.
There was too much to process for all of them, as they sat huddled on the floor of the forecastle, stiff in their damp, salt-caked clothes and sheltering beneath the rush of the warm sunset winds.
Eda dozed on Alun’s shoulder as he stared, unseeing, up at the shifting pink-and-orange sky above them.
Alun had not spoken a single word nor looked in Kai’s direction since they left Daithí’s home, and Kai could think of all too many reasons why not.
Oswalt, on the other hand, sat across from Kai and stared openly at the Adhlian pendant, brow knitted in thought.
He would be considering, Kai knew, all the ways they could leverage this small shard of magic to build their own Nua Laune if it came to that.
Which it would not.
Because just as the Elder Council had made a decision, so too had Kai.
If they would not allow him to settle in Nua Laune, he would respect their decision—and urge them to accept the rest of his people, without him.
The Sealgair had no quarrel with them, after all; they were innocents.
Bystanders and babes. He had sworn he would see them settled, and he would do so even if it meant he never felt the waters on his skin for the rest of his life.
A long, low bellow from a particularly irritating sailor—Pike, whom Kai was unfortunately well acquainted with—drew Oswalt to his feet before Kai even realised they were docking.
It was difficult to rise. His body was stiff with the cold that still radiated out from the pendant around his throat, and his muscles ached with that particular strain of moving through water, an effort they hadn’t exerted in several long lifetimes.
But Kai struggled to his feet, grabbing at the railing for support and wincing all the way up; and when he caught sight of the dock, all his discomfort melted away like frost beneath the midday sun.
Because there, staring up at the ship with round, brown eyes, was Adeline.
He was already halfway down the gangway before he noticed that there were others on the dock; important others.
His sister, waving merrily at him, he realised with a stab of guilt, and the Empress Vanjir, somehow both poised and notably vibrating with anticipation.
And even as he dimly decided that he should absolutely greet Ceri first, should brief his gracious host thereafter, Kai still found himself standing toe to toe with Adeline but a moment later, her head tilted back to peer up at him so that her curls rolled down her bare shoulders.
The flush of the setting sun caught gold in her eyes and pink in her cheeks, and she smiled a soft smile.
“Hello,” said Adeline.
“Hello,” he returned, a little hoarsely.
“Oh, very nice,” said Ceri, at her side. “Walked right past me, did you see that? I’m only his bloody sister.”
Kai tore his eyes away from Adeline, smiling now.
“Hello, Ceriwyn.”
She turned her nose up, sniffing primly. “Hello, former brother.”
Bur Kai could not bring himself to be too worried as she stalked off to greet Alun and Os. In truth, he was all worried-out after the day they’d had, and the sense of calm that settled over him as he let himself pore openly over Adeline’s face was irresistible.
“Your dress is very pretty,” he said, when it became necessary to say something if he was going to continue staring at her like this.
She lit up and swayed her hips to send the soft-blue skirts swishing side to side, their embroidered hem lapping at her feet like seafoam.
“Thank you! I like your—”
She paused, starting a little as she took in his attire for the first time.
“You’re all wet,” she said, reaching out to pluck at his clinging shirt. Kai could not help the twitch of his lips at the way her cheeks suddenly blazed, her hand dropping as though he’d burned her.
“From the water,” he said pleasantly.
“Right.”
A beat of warm, shimmering silence.
“And you’re staring,” said Adeline.
“Yes,” he agreed.
Her lips rolled in, that familiar expression that told him she was biting back a smile.
“I was looking for you,” she said.
“You were?”
She nodded, curls bouncing rather distractingly. He just about managed not to reach for one and pull it taut between his fingers.
“I thought we could talk.”
Kai’s heart gave an extremely juvenile flip.
“I’d like that.”
“Me too,” she said, very quickly indeed. “But—”
She glanced over her shoulder to where Eleni hovered, looking anywhere but directly at them, and plainly too close not to overhear every word.
“—when we’re next alone?”
Kai tried not to think too hard about being alone with Adeline lest his face erupt in flames, but he managed a slow nod. “Alright.”
She grinned, and his control slipped, neck immediately heating.
“Alright,” she echoed.
It was, admittedly, a small mercy when she took a step back.
“Your Majesty,” Eleni cut in as soon as she had him in full view. “A successful afternoon, I hope?”
Kai hesitated, fighting the urge to shake his head clear of the warm fog Adeline had left behind. He adjusted the pendant against his chest, and the cold glass shifted, its chill sinking into his skin anew.
“Successful,” Kai said, grasping at a single word to tether his response. “Yes. Our dealings are not quite concluded, but it’s promising.”
Only a half lie, and not one that would make any difference to the Empress.
She smiled through a gust of breath. “Oh, I am so relieved to hear it. Did you happen to broach …?”
She trailed off at his nod, eyes alight.
“And?”
“It warrants further discussion, but Alun tells me they’ve agreed to allow the safe passage of trading vessels, as long as they’re marked accordingly.”
If Eleni wondered why Alun was acting as his spokesperson even now, she did not stop to comment. Her entire face lit, years burned away by the sheer beam of her joy as she bounced on the spot like an excitable youth, hands flying up to clap over her mouth and muffle a shriek.
“You did it,” she breathed, then shrieked aloud. “A ball! Oh, we must hold a ball. At once. Aegus! Pike! Get down here! There is so much to do—so much to celebrate!”
She tore off in the direction of the gangway, skirts hiked in her hands. Adeline stared, blinking, after her. Then turned her bewildered expression to Kai—and erupted in the most breathtaking laughter.
And the answering swell in Kai’s chest made him forget, for a moment, what an utter mess he had left behind him beneath the waves.
In that moment, it simply ceased to matter.
The warmth that flooded him as he looked upon that open, sunshine smile made it easy to believe there was much to celebrate indeed.