The corners of his mouth lifted in what I suppose was a smile. And then his fingers wove through the roots of my hair, grabbing a fistful at my scalp. He stood. And I went with him.
My hands found his, my fingertips tracing the edges of his grip, rooting for enough purchase to free myself from the pain of his grasp. He began to walk, dragging me behind him, and my tail beat the floor as I thrashed in his grip, angry I didn’t even have the power or composure to transition back to my legs.
Thaan’s arms had dropped. The blood vessels in his eyes had popped, his pupils eerily white and surrounded by red. Somewhere across the room, Selena screamed. Cain stopped.
Stopped and looked back at Kye, who had forced himself through the beads of water, and was holding Cain by the foot. Lips peeled in a soundless snarl, his arm shook as he pulled Cain’s leg toward himself, or perhaps pulled himself toward Cain’s leg.
The water beads surrounding him began to pop like tiny bubbles, steam rising around the outline of Kye’s face, until he pushed through the pocket of air and climbed out of the beads like a corpse uprooting itself from a grave. The promise of violence wrought his edges in a warm glow, his golden eyes liquid with fury.
Cain watched in mute surprise as Kye pulled himself free of the last droplets of water, ascending Cain’s clothes like rungs on a ladder until he found both feet and straightened to his full height, looming over us both.
He shot for Cain’s wrist, the one holding my hair. “Keep your hands off myfuckingwife.”
Air sizzled as their skin met, and Cain dropped me to the floor, receding as he gazed shrewdly at Kye as though he’d never seen him before.
Fists balled, Kye advanced another step. But the motion seemed to break Cain from a trance. He flicked his wrist at Kye, and all the water beads in the room left their posts to drill into his chest, throwing him against the edge of the desk. His head snapped backward, arms and legs flung behind him, until the force of it became enough to drag him fully under the desk legs, planting him deep into the corner of the wall.
Without the support of the water to hold him up, Thaan crumpled to the floor. Selena crawled for him. Cain swiveled and stalked slowly toward his door. His limbs lengthened, chest broadening. His chin sharpened to an angular point, the muscles in his neck and arms firming. A tall Naiad I’d never seen before stepped out of the office, too quickly for me to claim a true look at him, and just as profoundly as he had entered, he was gone. The door slammed shut, and the beads dissolved to water in an instant like hard rain, engulfing all of us.
My pulse throbbed in my ears, heart battering my chest, a frenzied butterfly caught in a net.
Selena’s sobs curdled the air. I pushed onto my elbows, ignoring the burn of glass shards lodged in my back. “Kye!”
He was already lifting himself out from under the desk. “Here, Leihani.”
“Help me,” Selena cried, turning a broken Thaan onto his back. “Help me! I don’t know what to do.”
Kye looked dubious, but I inched closer to the Naiad Selena pulled onto her thighs. Soaked to the bone in seawater, I shook wet hair from my eyes. “Lay him flat.”
She did, scooting backward so the Naiad fell from her knees. I glanced up at her. “Swear to me this is yourcordae.”
Selena blinked back tears. “He is.”
“And Thaan’s been using him like he used me.”
She shot a panicked glance around the corners of the room. “Please, Maren.”
“Swear to me that Thaan can’t use him against you,” I snarled.
“I can’t,” she sobbed, laying beside the man and weaving her fingers into his. “I can’t.”
My throat suddenly ached, my chest shrinking until it squeezed against my lungs, too small for my heart. My eyes found Kye’s, solemn as he watched us both without a word, and I imagined him laying in a bed of ice on a mountain, skin blue, life wrung from his bones.
I laid my hand over the Naiad’s ribs, feeling for the silent organ that would wake at my call to his blood. And then gave the water in his body a hard squeeze.
68
Maren
The Naiad called Pheolix gasped back to life among a myriad of desolated shield weed, glass, and frothy water. The floor inside Selena’s apartments sat flooded; Thaan’s too. Or Cain. Whichever name the Naiad used.
Selena propped Pheolix against the broken cushion of the chair. I wilted against Kye, thoroughly spent, and wiped a thin track of blood from my nose. He drew me in without a thought, pulling me to his chest, letting me use him to stay upright.
“Is it you?” Selena asked Pheolix.
“Only in the cruelest of ways,” he said, his voice thick and raspy. Selena melted into him, sputtering and hiccoughing and weeping, not caring that we watched. His arm wrapped around her back, and his face turned toward mine. Blood from Kye’s punch crusted his mouth, but the color in his skin began to warm. Still ashen and sallow, something about it seemed happier. More at peace.
Kye squeezed my hand. “I’m going to find him.”
