Chapter 38 #3
The man’s body unfolded from the chair. He didn’t break eye contact, and she couldn’t look away. Snared like prey.
He didn’t look any different than the average man, perhaps more beautiful, but every instinct told her he was a predator of the deep waters. The kind that would snap someone like her up without a second thought. Every part of her recoiled from him.
“So,” the Ghost Hawk said, and the man’s eyes snapped to him, expression softening, “now that we’re all here, we should all get on the same page.”
They settled around a long table with a map of the Islands embedded in the wood. Nia kept as far away from the man—the Deep Water Demon, he must be—as possible, and sat with Logan, Henri, and Zanta between them.
Nia clutched Henri’s hand under the table, her other tracing the mother-of-pearl outline of the Sleeping Isles.
The Demon sat at the head of the table and folded his hands on its surface. But it was the Ghost Hawk who spoke.
“Now, I believe introductions are in order. I’m Rowan, captain of the Siren Song, and this is—”
“She knows who I am,” the Demon cut in.
Captain Rowan rolled his eye, but continued. “You seem to know Logan and Henri already. Tell me how that is…”
His sentence trailed off, prompting her to introduce herself.
“Nia. I, ah…” She looked from Zanta to Logan to Henri, pointedly avoiding the Demon. But when she looked back to Captain Rowan, he seemed to recognize her name.
“Nia,” he said slowly. “You’re the one who Logan—”
“Got information about Cyrus from last year,” Logan interrupted quickly. A look passed between the two men. So he was hiding the fact that she, Logan, and John had slept together. Maybe that was for the best.
“And Henri is your half brother?” Captain Rowan prompted.
“Yes…”
“And your father was Silver Stroud?”
Her gut curdled. “Yes.”
Silence met this statement for a few long moments.
Captain Rowan turned to Henri. “And you didn’t feel the need to share this all these years? Especially when we’re being hunted down because of him?”
Shame flickered briefly across Henri’s face. “It’s not exactly something I’m proud of,” he grumbled.
“You don’t have the same surname as Stroud,” Logan pointed out.
“My maman wanted to protect me from his reputation so they agreed to use his first name instead. Everyone called him Silver anyway. Not many people knew him as Wells Stroud.”
Zanta stared at Nia as if she’d seen a ghost. “So his daughter was real after all,” she said quietly. “You’re Nianthe.”
Nia nodded, not quite able to meet her eyes. She shouldn’t have hid it from Zanta, especially after they’d started sleeping together. But her father had hurt Zanta so badly, and Nia didn’t know if the blossoming feelings between them could survive that association.
Captain Rowan nodded solemnly, as if several threads were connecting in his mind. He touched tentative fingers to his eyepatch, then removed it. “And you say my eye belonged to him?”
The sight of that familiar green orb sitting in this stranger’s eye socket almost took Nia’s breath away.
“It belonged to my mother first. She kept it in a necklace, and when she died, he took it.” She managed to force the words past the lump forming in her throat.
There was more to it. The orb was one of the Eyes of the Sea, an artifact the people of the Sleeping Isles treasured.
But her mother had never been allowed to wear it as Captain Rowan did now, not after she’d betrayed her people by falling for an outsider.
But how much could she tell them? Both Captain Rowan and the Demon had reacted to her, but how much did they really suspect? Not even Henri knew what she really was.
“I remember Stroud losing that thing gambling,” Zanta said, her tone tightly controlled. “He was distraught about it. Said there was no way he’d find his daughter without it.”
Captain Rowan pinched the bridge of his nose. He muttered something that sounded like “Fucking Fox” which Nia could not even begin to interpret.
“So this is what David meant when he said Shaw suspected I had something of Stroud’s,” Rowan said after he’d recovered from his bout of annoyance.
“Who’s Shaw?” Zanta asked.
“Warrick Shaw, the man who’s been hunting us both.
” Rowan quickly explained the situation they collectively found themselves in.
The Marran Empire’s imminent invasion of the Sleeping Isles had sent this Kefryean mercenary, Shaw, after both Zanta and Rowan for their supposed possession of artifacts once belonging to Silver Stroud.
Stroud was famous for being one of the only outsiders to have explored those elusive islands and supposedly befriended the people there.
And when he was alive, he was rumored to hold the secrets to conquering them.
Nia knew the truth. Her father had shipwrecked on the outer Sleeping Isles, and her mother had found him.
He wooed her to the point that she willingly gave him her pelt.
At least that’s what her mother had told her.
But when he found out she was pregnant with his child, he left and took the pelt with him.
Only to return years later when Nia’s mother was already on the verge of death from the absence of her pelt.
When she’d died, he’d taken Nia, both pelts, and all the treasures he could get his hands on, and fled.
Nia didn’t know where the other treasures had ended up, but the iron chest, and the Eye of the Sea, those must be the treasures Shaw sought.
Aside from the people of the Sleeping Isles, no one but Nia knew the true nature of these treasures.
The chest contained her pelt. And the Eye, if used correctly, could see the truth beneath the truth.
She couldn’t say any of this, though surely Rowan knew the power contained in the stone resting in his eye socket. She kept quiet as the others discussed it. She didn’t like how the Demon still watched her.
What manner of creature was he? Surely no friend. When the others stopped talking, would he expose her secret?
She had to get her pelt and get out. She had to warn her people of what was coming. But the pelt was still locked away under Zanta’s bed. Nia had the key around her waist at this very moment, and if the pelt was whole, she could flee…
“Henri,” Zanta blurted, grabbing his arm so hard he flinched. “Did your father ever give you a key?”
Fuck. Zanta still hadn’t put it together. Even knowing Nia was Stroud’s daughter, she didn’t understand the depth of the secrets Nia kept from her.
“Y-yes,” Henri said, startled.
Zanta jumped to her feet, beautifully carved wooden chair scraping across the floor. “A brass key with square teeth?”
What? That wasn’t…
Henri just looked bewildered. “Yeah.” He pulled a cord from the front of his shirt, a tarnished brass key and a square of supple gray pelt swinging from it.
Nia jolted, barely keeping herself from snatching that piece of herself from his hands.
Zanta found she couldn’t breathe properly. The key was right there, right in front of her. Exactly how she remembered it. But what if it too wasn’t the key she sought? Stroud had been unstable toward the end, and it was entirely possible he gave the wrong key to his son.
And what if it was the right one? Was she ready to have the object of her misery and fascination revealed at last? Her mind wheeled through all the revelations that had just crossed this table.
Nia had a half brother, and they were both children of Zanta’s late captain, Silver Stroud.
Nia was the fabled Nianthe, the loss of whom had eventually driven Stroud to madness.
To killing Emilie. To Zanta killing him.
If Nia had stayed with her father, would any of that have happened? Would Emilie be alive even now?
No, Zanta couldn’t go down that path. If Nia had run from her own father, it would have been for a good reason. She was not to blame for the actions of a madman.
Oh gods, Zanta had killed Nia’s father. Her gaze sliced to the other woman, staring at the key in Henri’s hand like she’d seen a ghost. Her usual bubbly confidence was pushed to the background, replaced by a sort of fidgety energy.
She met Zanta’s eyes only briefly and quickly looked away.
Did she think Zanta was angry with her for keeping her parentage a secret?
Was she angry with Zanta for the long ago killing of her father? Or would she thank her?
“I’ll go get the chest.” Zanta couldn’t stay in this room anymore. She needed to be back on her own ship, her own turf. “I think it’s about time to find out why we’re being hunted.”
She made it all the way to the Monsoon before Nia caught up with her.
Nia didn’t say anything, so neither did Zanta.
They made their way in silence down to Zanta’s quarters, where they’d been naked in bed together only a few hours ago.
Something had irreversibly shifted between them now.
Truths were out in the open, and Zanta didn’t know if they would be able to come together through the tangled web their lives had become.
Though she could feel Nia’s presence at her back, Zanta didn’t hesitate to take the chest from its hiding place. It felt strange to reveal the small iron box after it had resided under her bed in secret for the last five years. But she didn’t want any secrets between them now.
Zanta stared at it a moment, running her hands over the lid as she had so many times before. But this time felt different. This time she had hope.
She hoisted it into her arms and found Nia standing in the doorway as if they were back to where they’d been weeks ago, and she needed permission to come in. Nia’s eyes rose to meet hers. Startling light green just like Rowan’s fake eye.
“I’m sorry,” Nia said, her voice little more than a whisper. “I should’ve told you before. I-I should have told you.”
A few steps brought Zanta to her side, the iron chest between them.
“I understand why you didn’t.” She did understand, even if confusion and hurt still roiled through her. “I’m sorry I killed your father.”