“She remains so,” said Daithí. He paused to watch Eda press a shaking hand to her mouth, and Kai suspected from the tilt of her brow that her tears had become one with the ocean water. Her response seemed to stir something in Daithí, too, but after a beat, he went on in that same flat and unreadable manner. “We grieved and we re-grouped. I recall that my mother and many others were angry, furious at some new danger that some of our number had subjected themselves to. But some time thereafter, things became easier. We erected homes quickly. We had the strength to mine luminous rock, and to hunt—for the first time in a long time, we had fish. It seemed, somehow, that a handful of Merrow regained the power to Wield the waters in small ways; inconstant and weak though it was. It was enough. Just enough to keep us safe, to feed us, to maintain our home. As an adult, I later learned that a dangerous expedition had been led back to the Laune. Weeks spent tunnelling through the ice, and beyond that, a journey to the darkest depths of the lakebed.”
A thrill of warning ran through Kai’s spine, drawing him up, alert.
The darkest depths.
Kai’s gills sealed against his own breath as each muscle tensed, dread weighing on his very bones. As though his body knew, before he did, what Daithí would say next. Daithí laid one hand on the table, fingers slowly splaying until their webbing pulled uncomfortably taut. He spoke slowly, every word dragging, tearing like tender meat beneath his sharp teeth.
“They had heard a theory, you see. A theory that the Merrow were not alone in their grief; that the world beyond Eisalaan had lost the magic that once coursed through all of Adhlas. That the Laune was the source of all the world’s power, and the heart of the Mother herself. And beyond the theory, a rumour, that the Beira girl had claimed herself a small piece of the Mother’s heart magic from the depths of the Laune—and Wielded it against us all.”
Not a soul spoke, nor moved. The very waters around them had stilled with the dead silence, and yet beneath Kai’s skin, his blood moved like waves in a storm, crashing and swirling and shaking his airless lungs.
No.
He had told no one. No one save for Adeline, who had hardly dived down here for a bowl of seaweed and a chat with Daithí. And if they’d known for years, forhundredsof years—
Who else had known what he did? What he’dhelpedAvette do to his people?
Kai felt his eyes shoot to his friends, so fast he had to blink before his sight caught up. Alun was staring at him,uncomprehending. Oswalt … Oswalt tongued at his own teeth, jaw working—disappointed.
And not at all surprised.
Shame was thick in his throat, a solid thing that strangled his voice when he finally croaked out, “The pendant. They heard about the pendant.”
“Yes,” said Daithí, the single word sillibant against the jagged range of his teeth.
“How?”
It was not Daithí who answered him.
“It was not a secret, Kai.”
He knew her voice, but Kai still turned, still cast about to see which of them held their throat, who had spoken those impossible words.
“I knew. And I told them.”
Eda smiled a wan smile as their eyes met, then released her throat to reach out and pat his hand, a little sadly. Kai barely felt it; he was numb with shock.
“But you didn’t know—no oneknew. Only—”
Even now, her name tripped painfully off his tongue, but he pressed on; hehadto, even if the shame gripping his throat grew stronger with every word until his voice was barely a whisper on the swill of the water.
“Only Avette.”
“Only Avette,” Eda repeated, the words soft and hollow all at once. “I thought it strange when she approached me on the banks of the Laune. She’d never shown a lick of interest in anyMerrow that wasn’t royalty—that wasn’t you. But that morning, she was sweet as honeysuckle. Told me you’d been regaling her with stories of the Merrow. Gushed about ourrich cultureandfascinating folklore. Told me she’dloveto hear more. There was one story in particular that had moved her to tears;The Pearl of All the World, she’d called it.”
Kai’s pulse stopped entirely, his heart a useless weight in his chest.
“What was the basis for that story,she wanted to know. I told her it was a myth, like any other. And later, when you disappeared for a day and a night and returned worn and broken, yetstillinsisted on dragging your weary bones ashore, I went to the Elder Council. We deliberated on the best course forward, but Avette took no such pause. I had come ashore to find you when it happened. Whenshehappened to us all.”
He felt his eyes close against another heavy wave of shame. When he opened them, every gaze was on him, adding to that weight that pressed him down from every angle. He met Eda’s with difficulty.
“You never said anything.”
She patted his hand again.
“I did not think you needed reprimanding, sweet. It would not have changed anything, in the end. You were deceived, and you were working to set it right.”
But Kai was missing something; somewhere between Eda’s rightful suspicions about Avette and Daithí’s knowledge of what Kai had done, there was a fracture, a missing piece. Without it, the story didn’t quite hold water.
