Page 113 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

50

Kye

Solid rock hit me like a slap to my side. I beat water and salt from my lashes, coughing from the sudden gust of oxygen and aiming my head up at the brightness behind my blindfold. Nori scoffed, diving back into the sea without a second glance.

“Fucking fish woman,” I muttered under my breath, pushing onto my hip, my free hand ready at the base of my skull to rip the silk off. I wasn’t even sure I needed it. I was still firmly rooted in the camp of a Naiad’s tail can’t kill me twice. “Nice of you to drop us off.”

“They’re heading to Venusia to wait with Maren,” Selena said. The stab of ire within me died down at that, until a moment later when she said, “All here.”

As if we hadn’t just left my wife alone on some rock face with a Venusian asshole.

I pulled at the silk strip dripping like the cold fucking tears of winter down the side of my collarbone. “Let’s go.”

“Give us a moment to dry off,” Aren called.

Already twenty paces ahead, Cebrinne whipped around and called off the water from our group so powerfully it felt like being pummeled by a hurricane. She turned on her heel as she finished, stalking to the nearest palace door without a second glance at us.

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, eyelids scratching over dry eyes as I blinked moisture back into my body. Selena fixed Diara’s hair, grumbling to herself about impatient sisters and the need for clear heads. But I’d recognized the look in Cebrinne’s eyes. The need to find a cordae, to know they were safe.

“Where are you going?” Hadrian asked. I hadn’t realized they weren’t directly behind me. Still shaking the last of the Naiad air from their lungs, they moved like a crowd of sleepwalkers across the cliff edge. But Hadrian wasn’t looking at me.

Next to him, Diara flexed the feeling back into her arms. “To get my bow.”

“There’s some in the armory on the way.” Hadrian glanced at me. “But I think we should go in unarmed.”

I stepped back, impatience leaping into my blood. “Why the fuck would we do that?”

My brother twisted his mouth. “Hidden weapons, then. And take a breath, Kye. You already look like you’re about to single-handedly place the entire palace under siege. There might not be anything in there.”

“Fine,” I tossed the word back like a dart. “Come on, Verrata.”

Hadrian raised his hands in a gesture that could only mean, are you serious?

“I want a hidden knife,” Leal said somewhere behind him. Boots against mud thudded after me, Dimas and his cousin tucking into my side. A moment later, the rest of them had joined as well, eyes rolled up at the sky.

“It’s just crows,” Hadrian muttered under his breath.

I veered under the stone arches that led us back from the cliff edge. My steps slowed. This should have been the first place we’d encounter guards. Two of them were always stationed here. Day or night, rain or wind.

But there was no one there now. Over the top of the arch, a black bird waited, thin talons hooked into the grout between stones. It aimed a beady eye at us, the rest of its body unearthly still. The hair along my arms raised, my hand tracing the leather edge of my belt that my knife usually claimed. At my side, Diara lowered to the ground, reaching through dry grass and heather for a loose pebble.

The bird cawed once and launched.

We ducked under its feet. Off it flew, swerving in a wide arc toward the distant towers. Diara hurled her rock at it with a growl that made me relieved she was on my fucking side.

“The armory is this way,” Hadrian said, sweeping his hands down his arms as if dusting off his jacket. I flexed my own shoulders, banishing my remaining goosebumps to Perpetuum.

We crossed the grounds in a tight cluster, though no one was around to contest us. Guards had disappeared from every corner, every bridge, every curtain wall. Dead silence draped over the palace like a hungry fog, leaving my skin itching with sun-damned warning.

The door to the armory was fucking locked.

“Your tower?” Aren asked me.

It was the closest thing to an armory, and the nearest collection of weapons we had. “Going to have to be,” I said through clenched teeth.

We backtracked, waiting for each other before turning corners or stepping over bridges. The empty halls should have made for faster travel, but they seemed to slow us instead, forcing us to exercise caution and restraint and fucking patience I didn’t want to have.

“I wish Cebrinne would have waited for us,” I heard Selena whisper to Pheolix.