Page 102 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

He stared at me, jaw slack like a brainless fish.

“He used it on me.”

Hadrian stood. “He what?”

I flipped a hand. “You can hardly blame him. Probably thought she was going to fucking kill him.” The corrosive burn in my lungs hadn’t completely subsided. It had felt like breathing through acid. Like I’d swallowed toxic mist and let it eat me alive. In the few hours I’d spent alone, I’d found myself coughing black phlegm, the sight enough to turn my stomach. “She lopped it off like wheat in a field. Now we know separating him from that thing won’t make any difference. He’s worn it for thirty years, I’m sure it’s leeched into his blood.”

“This isn’t funny, Kye.”

“Do you see me fucking laughing?”

Hadrian huffed. “He’s alive?”

“He was when we left his quarters.”

Hadrian shook his head, striding to a window as if the sight of me pierced his fucking eyeballs. He ironed his hands down both sides of his jaw. “He won’t let that go.” Hands on his hips, he rotated to face me, leaning into a wooden beam between glass panes.

“Why do you think I’m here?”

“You, I’m not worried about,” Hadrian said, flicking his fingers as if discussing the worth of a butter knife. We both knew Emilius kept me around to ensure compliance from Hadrian, otherwise he’d have sent me off again to fight Rivea weeks ago. My brother sighed, shaking his head slowly. “His entire hand?”

“Entire thing. I haven’t sharpened that knife in a fortnight, either.”

“Aalto burn the stars,” Hadrian muttered to himself. “She’s not safe here now.”

I swung my leg to the floor, sitting upright. “When was she safe here? When Emilius referred to her as a dog? When Thaan locked her in a glass cage?” It wasn’t that I doubted whether Maren could hold her own. I’d seen her do worse things to dozens of men—thousands, actually—than sever a hand.

But the thought of the King setting his sights on her strung ice through my veins.

The King was only human, a mortal man with a beating heart, more than halfway through the decades his life would claim. It was the boy within me that was still afraid of him. I’m not sure I’d ever stop being afraid. Thaan could steal my face, Pirates could chain me to a wall, Rivea could send me to a prison to be hanged in the morning, and none of them would scare me.

But I still remembered the scent of black tar as my mother curled over the foot of her bed, coughing and gasping, her husband asleep on the opposite side. The warmth of her hands when she spied me hovering over the threshold and called me to her, clearing her throat and rasping at me that she was fine. The sound of our feet as she walked me hand in hand back to my room, tucking curls behind my ears and studying me with soft intensity as though worried she might go back to her bed and somehow forget what I looked like.

I’d asked her to stay. “I’ll make room, Momma,” I’d said, scooting to the very edge of my bed. She’d considered it, smiling sadly at me before tucking the blankets under my chin.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she’d said, and I’d watched her close the door behind her, unable to understand why I didn’t believe her. Why it felt like something combed the halls of the palace, leaping from shadow to shadow, flame to flame, hiding between shutters and rafters and dark panes of glass. Something that prowled behind her steps, waiting for the moment to take her away.

A feeling heavy and dark and full of silent static. One that latched onto me like cold hands, that I couldn’t convince myself was nothing.

Thaan addled Emilius’s mind years ago.

Would my mother have never suffered, if Thaan hadn’t done it? Would I have grown up knowing her?

Hadrian loosed a tired breath. “Well. Maren might have been an inconvenience to Emilius before, but you can count on it now. You need to be careful, Kye. Once he wants someone dead—"

“I know,” I said, not bothering to look up at him as I leaned forward, propping my elbows over my knees and clenching my jaw. The chair wobbled underneath me. My thumb pressed roughly against the fleshy mound in my opposite hand hard enough to stain my skin white. “I know.”

46

Maren

“Those are your bones?”

Enough sunlight had crept inside the ceiling of the cave that I could see Ano’s flush, a sheepish pink glow across his cheeks. “Not my bones. Bones of the men I’ve killed.” I stared at him, words beyond my capability. My father pulled his long dark hair over a shoulder, avoiding my eyes. “You must have been, oh, twelve. Sailors hadn’t yet gone missing, but they were beginning to watch you. One day a captain approached me. Said he’d heard you were a troubled child and offered to take you for a gold bouillon.”

I’m not sure why I smiled. Maybe because I’d never heard the story before, and the idea of someone paying that much for me—enough my father wouldn’t have to work another day in his life—was so far-fetched it felt like a joke.

“I knew my answer was no.” Ano scratched the side of his jaw. “But I was curious. What might a sailor want with a troubled girl? Had he lost a daughter once, or was it that he took pity on you, thought he could be a better father? But he laughed and said he planned to sell you at the markets up north. I was so shocked, I stammered my answer—no—but he must have thought I hadn’t meant it. He said he’d be back to the island in time, that he’d ask again. So I uh, waited for his ship to leave port, then sneaked onboard and sank it.”