Page 126 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

Across from each other, our eyes met. No one spoke, but heat pricked in the back of my nose. Kye cleared his throat. “At least let me find you a prybar.”

Night passed, the sound of stone shrieking as it left its bed the only words between any of us. We didn’t leave the office. Instead we leaned our backs against corners and walls, my cheek against Diara’s ear as I dozed through the turn of stars outside the single window. When Pheolix moved into our corners, we nudged each other awake, or helped clear rubble and sand from the waste, staring down to the bare joists below.

It was nearly morning when the sound of Hadrian’s voice stirred me awake. “Pheolix,” he said, and nothing else.

Diara laid a warm palm over my hand, a bid to wake me. My eyes peeled open, reluctant amid the crick in my neck and an ache in my low back.

Pheolix had finished with the floor, had begun stripping the walls, the bottom half of the room like flesh carved from a ribcage, beams and slats exposed to open air.

A rod of iron in his hand, Pheolix sagged slightly, tracking Hadrian’s voice back to him. But everyone else stared at the same thing I stared at. A single piece of parchment that had landed at my foot, folded and crammed under the frame of the window, which had fluttered loose like a dying butterfly falling to the floor.

I dusted my knees, rising to my feet to hand the parchment to Pheolix. My breath caught as he took it, a raw blend of disbelief and fear in his unseeing eyes. He ran his thumbs over the creases, slow and unmoving like he’d suddenly forgotten how to breathe. It crinkled loudly as he unfolded it.

55

Kye

“Ican’t see what it says,” Pheolix whispered, his voice both dragging and tight like he’d bitten down on a wooden stick to distract himself from the pain of a wound.

Maren took the parchment gently from him, flipping it around to read it. She shook her head helplessly. “It’s an old missive. It bears a scorpion wax seal.”

“The Rivean emissary,” Hadrian clarified, leaning over my shoulder for a view.

Pheolix nodded, swallowing dryly. “What does it say?”

Maren smoothed a pleat near her thumb. “It says, Oberon is dead.” Her obsidian eyes flicked to his, searching for clues in his reaction, nervous to ask what the words meant.

Pheolix didn’t move. I had the impression he was repeating the words inside his own head, turning them over like a locked box, wondering at the meaning hidden inside.

“Who is Oberon?” Maren asked carefully.

Hadrian cleared his throat. “He was the Rivean emissary years ago. He was killed when we were young. I was…ten?” He glanced at Kye for confirmation, but Kye only offered a helpless shrug, as if the name called nothing to mind.

“Oberon was Thaan’s Oculos. His link to Rivea. Thaan had him killed when he thought Oberon was feeding secrets to the Rivean King. Nineteen years ago.” Pheolix tossed the prybar numbly to the floor. “Whatever she meant by leaving this, I don’t understand.”

I tried to reach for his arm, but my hand fell flat through the air. “Maybe it will come to you,” I offered, though I could almost hear the false hope in my own voice. What did such optimism mean to a man slowly losing his memory? “What were you hoping to find, Pheolix? Why did Selena leave this for you? Why didn’t she tell you where to find it?”

“Thaan could enter my mind. Demand my secrets.” The drone smiled sadly. Ironically. The answer lay trapped between the seams of history, sewn together years ago. A time when he might have recognized the words for what they were then rather than what they meant now. “We were protecting someone from Thaan. Selena wouldn’t have been able to leave a detailed note in case he found it. This—" He balled the parchment slowly, reverently, then made a motion as if he’d planned to throw it and thought better. “The name of a dead man, a man I already knew was gone… Who is returning to Evenstar to train today?”

We awkwardly glanced at each other.

“Pheolix,” Diara said patiently, “are you sure you wouldn’t rather get some sleep?”

He blinked slowly. “No,” he said, standing back and waiting.

The room filled with half-hearted attempts at volunteering to go. Maren pursed her lips together, making that face she made when speaking to Nori in her head. Or me, I supposed.

Bruises littered my arms and chest, each stretch like a wooden stake between my ribs. My eyes closed, knowing I couldn’t refuse training, not when Pheolix had worked through the night to destroy Selena’s office for a useless note from the past. At least I’d sleep in my fucking bed tonight.

“Be ready in five minutes,” Pheolix said, ignoring our low level of enthusiasm for training. He turned and strode from the office, the door snicking shut behind him.

Diara glanced at Hadrian. “I’m not sure he should be alone.”

He raised a brow. “Want me to go in there and help him change his pants?”

“No,” she fired back. “I want you to stay with him.”

“You want me to babysit the assassin?”