“Are you serious?” She peered up at him through narrowed eyes. “This would be averystrange joke. And not in the best taste, either.”
His voice was not any steadier, no less painful. “I’m not joking.”
“But—” Ceri spluttered. “But it’s ahome, Koo. It’s not the Laune, but it’ssomething, somewhere we can all be together and—”
Her words came fast, tumbling over one another, so thick that Kai knew she must be close to tears; though to confirm it would be to meet her eye, and he could not bring himself to do that. The shame of that small weakness hung around his neck like a noose, so heavy he could not move even if he’d tried.
“I’m not welcome there, Ceriwyn.”
“Because of the Sealgair?”
Kai stiffened. He had not told Ceri about the Sealgair, nor the threat on his life. In his periphery, Alun shifted guiltily, though when Kai looked up, his friend still would not meet his eye.
“Yes,” Kai said finally. “Because of the Sealgair; because their Elder Council would rather not invite conflict into their waters, and honestly, I cannot fault them for that. They have a duty to protect their people, just as I have my duty to ours.”
“But Daithí said they might reconsider—”
Kai shook his head and heard her breath catch.
“The Elders might, but the Sealgair have harboured their grudge for six hundred years. I can’t faultthemfor that either.”
“Can we faultyou?” she shot back. He flinched. Her tone had gone from panicked and pleading to barbed, cold. Each word was a shard of ice between his ribs. “You can’t keepdoingthis, Kai. Hiding me away in a manor, shipping me off to a village of total strangers. You’re the only family I have left, and you keep shunting me to one side and calling it protection.”
She was crying openly now; he could hear it. Kai finally won the battle with his own body; pushing through the painful shame that lay so thick on his shoulders, he turned his head and reached for his sister.
“Ceri—”
But her skin was slick with saltwater, and she pulled easily out of his grasp, then turned and slipped like an eel beneath the tide.
“Don’t,” said Os, before Kai could even register his own instinct to follow her. “She has a point, Kai. Let her be angry, if that’s what she needs.”
Something in the words caught at him. They were thorny and brittle as the coral that snagged at your clothes as you swam past, tearing at skin and leaving stinging little scratches. He faced his cousin and found understanding at once in the grim set of Oswalt’s brow.
“You’re angry too.”
“Yes,” said Os evenly. “Letusbe angry.”
With that, he too turned away, wading toward the splashing and laughter, the blissful cacophony of their oblivious kin. And then there was only Alun; still standing here, only an arm’s length away. Still not meeting his eye.
Kai’s heart climbed up his throat and stayed there, every word he spoke wavering beneath its thundering pulse.
“I understand if you feel the same, Al.”
Alun shook his head. He spoke as though in afterthought, quiet and distant.
“I think you’re making the right choice. Our people need a home; Ceri needs protection; you and Osbothneed to set down that weight on your shoulders. This is the answer. I understand that, and I’d do the very same thing.”
The relief that swept through him ebbed just as swiftly, dragging that shame and unease back up his throat in its wake; Alun still would not look at him.
“But youareangry,” said Kai. “You have been angry.”
Al stared down at the rise and fall of the ocean, at the light refracting in the clear waters around them. He did not deny it.
“My parents were under the ice that day. I don’t know if they made it out. If they were crushed. If they retreated to Dhalias.” Al’s voice thinned, gills pulsing as he swallowed. Kai felt his own gills echo the reflex; for a moment, he thought they might seal themselves and let him suffocate on his overwhelming shame. Alun cleared his throat and went on hoarsely. “I’ll have a chance now to find out, but if I’m honest, I’m bracing myself to hate you. And I don’twantto hate you, Kai. You’re my friend. More than that, we’re a Court and a family—but that could never replace the one I lost. And I know you didn’t intend to hurt anyone, I know Avette was not what she seemed, I just—”
Alun paused for breath, a great ragged one that moved through him visibly, drawing his shoulders back and tilting his face to the sky.
“You could have told us your part in it. You could have told me.”
