The shadow smiled. “I am regulated to the deep, the lost, the forgotten. Aalto creates, Theia heals, and what do I do? I collect the broken pieces left behind. The monsters searching for salvation. Call my name in the night, pet, when the sun is abed and the moon is new and the night is dark. Let me meet her, this child of the moon.”
I stared at it. The wispy shadows; the coiling tendrils. “And what will happen if I refuse?”
Drip…drip…drip…
“Refuse? Then you will be one of my creatures. A little wraithling to sit upon my shelves with my trinkets and bobbles. But do not worry, darling.” It slid across the floor to my feet, stroking up my leg and waist, then swirled once across my chest, vanishing from sight. “You will not refuse.”
28
Selena
“There she is.”
The silhouette of a Naiad climbing onto the rocks cut through the moonlit water below. Just enough light to bounce off the bronze scales of her tail before she transitioned into legs.
Pheolix reached for my hand, offering to help me up, but I propelled myself upright with the sudden, hot fuel of anger. Aegir leaned into the rocks as I marched past, relief flickering under his sharp green eyes.
Cebrinne sighed when she saw me. As though the very sight of me exhausted her. Theia in the stars, I could throttle her. Grab her by the shoulders and shake the life from her, if she wasn’t so moon-damned determined to do it herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the words ushered out from the tail-end of her exhale.
I halted at the edge of the smooth Parian stone, arms and hands vibrating with a fire lit under my bones. “You’re not sorry. You just don’t want to hear me out. You don’t want to deal with me. That’s not an apology, Ceba. That’s an attempt to silence me and make yourself feel better.”
She sighed again, dragging her feet through the tide pool toward the cave, and the sound of her breath only fanned my flames.
“Why, Ceba?Why?We’ve made it this far. Why jump in before we had a plan? The tunnel is flooded with cursed water, and Xiane says it won’t drain for another day. You say you want your freedom, but your games are costing us time, and you don’t seem to even care.”
Cebrinne glanced at me, her raven blue-black hair dripping with the sea, silk dress heavy with the weight of water. “I’m going to sleep.”
“Ceba!” I stalked after her, ignoring Pheolix and Aegir. Pheolix scratched at the back of his neck, diverting his gaze to the other side of the island as though he’d just set eyes on the world’s most fascinating lumpy gray rock, but Aegir rested his hands on his hips and watched as Cebrinne flopped on one of his shipwrecked furs and flung an arm over her eyes.
I stood at her feet, seething. Some prudent voice in my head whispered that she likely was as tired as she looked. That, if I gave her a day’s worth of time and space, she’d explain herself. She always did. But after hours of imagining her tossing herself down that black pit, seeing the water gush and rise and flood, running for our lives and being forced to leave her behind, I hardly cared.
“Do you want to die, Ceba? Is that it?”
I hadn’t let myself ask until now, too afraid of her answer. But I’d put the question off long enough. I couldn’t manage a day like this again.
I had to know.
Cebrinne just lay there, offering me nothing but the underside of her chin and a scuffed elbow.
A knot thickened in my throat, painful and suffocating. I gulped down my air to breathe past it, my lungs suddenly raw from the salty wind. “You promised,” I forced out. “Until the ocean dries up. Until the moon burns out.”
The tide washed over the rocks behind me, smooth and slow. In. And then back out. I closed my eyes.
“I know I did, Senna.”
“Good,” I spat. “I was worried you’d forgotten.” I turned on my heel, abandoning her to the company of the hollow cave and stomping my way back to Pheolix, though I refused to make eye contact with him. I sank back into the space where I’d sat for hours, rubbing deep circles into my eyes.
“The tunnel might be drained by tomorrow,” Pheolix said. “We could go down in the morning and check.”
I shook my head. “I’m heading back to Calder at first light. Ceba can either come or stay. I don’t know why I care so much when she obviously doesn’t care at all.”
He spun his knife over his knuckles, dim light flashing from the blade. “Because you love her,” he said softly. “And there’s nothing worse than watching someone you love slowly lose themselves after they’ve spent years protecting you.”
“Is that what she’s doing?” I ran an agitated hand through my hair, the strands still caught between my fingers as I cupped my chin with my palm and looked at him. “Losing herself?”
He shrugged mildly. “Either that or she’s finding herself. They go hand-in-hand, sometimes.”
