Page 104 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

My father cringed slightly. “Well, actually. I was so worried they might come looking for you, I left him in my va’a and came back to you. You were asleep. I sat outside the door all night with my knife, heart in my throat as I kept watch on the canoe and the torches as they moved around the market as they searched for him. It was only after you’d left to visit your cursed island that I brought him here. Returned home only to find his little tinderbox at the bottom of the stairs, like he’d left himself a reason to come back and see you. So I brought that here, too.”

He rocked the back of his skull against the hull, aiming his gaze up. “I thought, that by hiding him, the islanders would spare you any blame. But it didn’t matter whether they found him or not. They were convinced it was you. Everything I did, every word I said, only made them meaner, more convinced you were something to fear. But they never crossed that line, never attacked you, and we couldn’t leave with Mihauna watching. So I asked you to try to make friends, to smile and not make trouble, and I told myself I was protecting you. But I knew I was only burying the problem, not fixing it. I could feel you growing angrier, and then concealing that anger, like you had worn a second skin just to shield yourself. The island didn’t force that shield on you, little leaf. I did.”

He blinked up at the sunlight streaming through the crack. Moisture rose from the cave, humid air dancing with the light, shimmering in steady waves. Tears flashed silently down his cheeks. “I knew little by little you’d start to hate me, as you hated them. I told myself, I’d rather she hates me alive than loves me dead. Then they took you, and for all I knew, you were dead. And I looked back at the last few years of your life, years where I’d broken your heart day after day, and wondered what kind of life that was. What had I truly offered you, as a father? Not love. I might have loved you, but that’s not what I’d filled your life with.”

We each sank into the quiet of the cave, my father staring up at the thin veils of sun, my gaze roaming to the dark hallway where Irah rested, neither of us ready to face the other. We let the cool wind mist over us instead, soft and easy and hardly even there. I thumbed through emotions, trying to understand how I felt, but it was like skimming across the books and scrolls of Selena’s shelves, trying to decide what to read. No feeling seemed just right, no words or action or response.

There was a time, long ago, when I would have wept with relief at hearing him speak that way. I sifted through those memories, when a sailor had vanished or my garden had been trampled, when witch and demon trailed behind my own name in hushed voices across the crops and between verandas, and my own father had just sighed and looked at me with desperate exasperation and said, try to be good, as if I hadn’t spent my entire life trying to be just that, good and quiet and invisible.

I’d always believed my challenges lost on him. Something he couldn’t see or maybe avoided seeing. It had been my own private war; me against the world. I hadn’t realized he’d been fighting his own battle in the shadows alongside me. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth, feeling for the taste of different words to try. It’s okay seemed too trivial. I forgive you too sharp, a rock lodged in my throat.

Maybe it was because I didn’t know how to forgive. Maybe I’d strayed that far, let myself become that lost that I couldn’t. But I’m not sure I blamed him either. The hardest part of knowing your parents after you’ve grown is facing their humanity with bracing clarity, deciding what flaws and errors you must hold onto and what you must let go.

“I wouldn’t have left,” I said softly. Kye had offered me the same thing, once. Worried over what the islanders would do after Naheso died, he’d asked me to come to Calder with him. I’d said no. I’d known then, with soul-deep intuition, that I belonged to these waters. My Prizivac blood had been branded by the Juile Sea before I’d even been born. A daughter of the tide, a future queen of the ocean. “I would have begged you to stay. To take me back.”

“That’s what she said.” My father shook his head, leaning his elbow over his thigh and twisting to look at me. “Let her learn to fight monsters. I wonder, sometimes, what she would have done had I been the one to die, and she’d had to raise you alone. Sometimes I hate that I’m still in love with her. Sometimes I wish I could tell her I hate her. It would make everything so much easier.”

“Oh.” I clapped my hands awkwardly on the sides of my thighs. “About that. I, uh. I have someone I’d like you to meet.”

He glanced down at my ring. “Is it—”

I chuckled nervously, twisting it over my finger. “No, no. You’ve met him. This is Kye’s ring.”

His mouth twisted to the side, his brows an unamused slope I could have rolled a coin down—I hadn’t missed the fact that he’s referred to Kye as the Calderian. I dusted myself as I stood, reaching to help him to his feet. He groaned as he rose, a deep rumble familiar and nostalgic, a sound belonging to my childhood I hadn’t realized I’d been missing.

“Don’t faint or anything,” I said, thinking of Palunu.

My father crossed his corded arms. “I’ll try my best,” he deadpanned.

“All right, well,” I leaned down, plucking his torch from its earthen home. “This way.”

We didn’t have to walk far.

She’d crept from the place I’d left her, sneaking along the shadows to eavesdrop, I’m sure, hovering at the rim of darkness. The torch lighted on ankles and knees and layers of white as she scrambled to her feet. Hands wringing over each other, she stepped away from the wall, the firelight breathing her into existence like some goddess born from the dark, lustrous midnight hair and starlit eyes and skin that glowed like the shell of a pearl.

“Makua,” I said, sucking my breath in tight, “this is Cebrinne.”

47

Maren

At the sight of those glass towers rising from the distant seam of the ocean, I tilted my head back, exhaling with relief. I hadn’t expected my father to sail back to Calder with us. I hadn’t known what I expected from Cebrinne. But here we were, three people awkwardly sharing a single boat, each clipped word and clicked tongue and cleared throat like an ice pick against my skin.

It was like they’d both forgotten how to speak. They tittered around each other, Cebrinne aloof one moment, nervous the next, my father fixed upon the waves like a man who had never in his life beheld the miracle of water. I felt like a translator caught between two languages, or perhaps a voyager stuck between Time and Truth, some poor fool at the mercy of the Fates.

“Is that it?” Ano asked, coming to stand at my shoulder.

“That’s it.” My eyes slid sideways, searching for his reaction. I’d always found the City of Towers cold and impending—but breathtakingly beautiful. He gave little away, however, roving the view of the shining glass and latticed iron with an almost disinterested scowl.

But I’d worried he’d stand out among the light-skinned Calderians, already tall and tattooed, his hands bearing the hard-earned trophies of callused labor. So I’d convinced him to wear a naval uniform instead—neglecting to mention my Naiads had stripped the clothes from dead sailors—and hoped that might be enough to throw any possible attention away from the man Emilius had threatened.

Cebrinne glanced away to lean over the hull, pretending a rosy flush hadn’t crept up her neck whenever their eyes met. Ano did the opposite when he looked at her. His gaze seemed to squint over her as if she were a hard glare over the water, a hazardous flame that was better avoided.

Even more exasperating was the scent of them when they did sneak glances at each other. Their hearts sped, their fingers twitched, and a green, fertile tang invaded the air. Not their cordae, according to Selena’s lessons. That scent only lasted a month after it began.

Though I wondered how many cordaes Selena had encountered that had been separated for over twenty years. Either way, I gritted my teeth and ignored it. Two days spent half-sailing, half-pushing the sea against the aft of the canoe, and I still didn’t know what I was going to do with this stupid boat. My muscles depleted from hours of water-calling, I could think of little else than crawling into bed next to Kye and falling asleep.

A splash broke through my thoughts. I turned to find Cebrinne’s side of the boat empty. Ano raised his brows at me.