Page 111 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

Of course he would smirk and wink and pretend everything was fine while heading toward danger. Separating from him now felt like blowing out a candle and trying to walk through the dark. All the light in the room belonged to Kye, and without him, everything was shut away, veiled and obscure, leaving me stumbling without direction.

Kye straightened, aiming his attention straight ahead while I looped and tightened the linen, and though I couldn’t see his eyes, I had the small impression he was glaring. “Done,” I murmured.

He kissed me blindfolded, a peck on my forehead, giving me a final squeeze. “Keep your wits,” he rumbled in my ear, as if I was the one swimming toward our enemies.

I held my own hands over my navel, forcing them to motionless submission as he lowered himself into the water, boots and all. Nori shouldered up to me, Olinne and Aitne directly behind her.

“Shall we go with them, my Queen?” my Oculos asked, her straight, shining hair like a waterfall of blood over her shoulders.

Shame crooked its fingers along my ribcage, tugging me down like an anchor into deep seas. My shoulders sagged with weight, and even my exhale felt heavy in my chest. I had not yet asked my Naiads to do something I wasn’t willing to do. Sending them without me, even to protect Kye and the others, twisted like a pain in my side that already felt too sharp.

“Yes,” I answered, and tried not to let the word sound like an apology.

A minute later, they were all gone, Kolibri with them. Waves broke over Evenstar, an island of ocean spray and windy breaths and nothing else.

“Let’s not waste time up here,” Aegir said, stepping into my periphery. “Follow me.”

If there existed a better caricature of a wasp’s nest than Venusia, I’d hardly dare to believe it.

The entrance hid along the bottom of the ocean, a man-sized hole entrenched in rock and rising streams of sulfur that sputtered, warming the water nearby. Dozens of identical little caves hung in the seabed, and I was unsure I could find it again without him with me. He entered backwards, reaching for my hand as if worried I might get lost.

It wasn’t long before the walls smoothed from rock to something like porcelain, lustrous and blue under a bioluminescent glow that hugged the ceiling. The tunnel was so long, so narrow and winding, I wondered if he’d brought me in the wrong way. If, like the Juile colony, there was a second opening hidden inside.

The water leveled with air, and we stepped into the humid warmth of the nest.

“How old is Venusia?” I asked. The tunnel coiled like a corkscrew, but even with my limited ocean-born Naiad experience, I knew we were inside some kind of shell.

Seawater splashed around our toes. “A few million years,” Aegir answered.

“Just a few?”

He shrugged. “Sixty-five, give or take.”

His heart was beating harder than normal, and I wondered if, like me, he was more worried about Thaan than he’d let on. I coiled a strand of black sea silk around the end of my finger, wondering if the group had already reached the palace. I couldn’t speak to Kye until they did.

Alcoves sectioned off from the main tunnel, first only a few, and then many of them, corridors that twisted out and away. A few Venusians passed us, pausing to press their palms together and bow their heads at Aegir, sending me curious glances as they continued on. It was obvious who I was. My markings were always there, even when the light of them remained subtle. But after churning a rainstorm into the skies less than an hour ago, they were lit and glowing, metallic over my golden brown.

“This way.” Aegir cut under an arched, doorless threshold. A city bloomed before my eyes. The winding floor continued along the walls, opening to a space wide and tall enough to house the entirety of Laurier Palace, though a grand pool of water claimed the center instead. The tunnels stacked on top of each other like a wax honeycomb, too deep to see what might lie at their ends. Aegir ticked his head toward one such tunnel, larger than the others.

He led me into what I could only assume was his throne room.

The room where Naiads dine.

Sidra’s voice drifted through my head, the metallic taste of her wine-blood heavy over the tip of my tongue. Two long pools of water directed us to his dais, spiky succulents lined at the edges.

“I’m sure we won’t have to wait long,” he said heavily, climbing the carved stairs and sinking into the shallow basin of illuminated water on the left, motioning for me to take the right. He scratched absently at the crown of his head, then shook his braids out behind him. “Can I offer you anything? Are you hungry or thirsty?”

“No.” My eyes wandered to the tall ceiling, where celestial stars had been carved into the prehistoric shell, intricate figures with nine points. Peaceful, eternal. Nothing like real stars, roaring with fire and violence, clashing so close and hot I’d thought they might eat me alive.

“Tell me about Perpetuum,” Aegir said, his gaze a gentle stroke over the side of my face.

I shuddered the sea of stars out of memory. “What would you like to know?”

“Everything, I suppose.” He leaned against the wall of his pool, releasing a generous sigh as the warm salt drank his body all the way to his waist. Smoky scales breathed from his skin, wrapping his ankles and curling around the tops of his shoulders, fading into his cresting wave tattoos. “How did Death meet you? Did you find Naiads along the shores?”

“Other Naiads, yes. And humans,” I said, remembering how, like Theia, the Naiads all held a silvery hue, as if drops of the moon had lit them from within. “Death met me at the edge of the world, after I slayed the Abyssi. It led me across the sea of stars, like a friend.”

“What did it appear to you as?”