Page 134 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

It might have been irrational. But I’d never been a man of reason.

58

Maren

Someone moaned, the sound long and deep, carving into my bones.

“Who’s there?” demanded a voice over the wail. “I know those steps. I know you’re him. Come to barter for my soul. You can’t have it, you wretched lying demon!” A body ran at his cell door, and I jumped in surprise as the prisoner inside slammed his weight against the iron bars. “YOU CAN’T HAVE IT.”

The nails over glass continued.

My heart began to pump in my ears. The noises made me want to crawl deeper into my own skin, my legs wooden as I forced them through the dark. The moaning elongated into an echoing sob, so loud it vibrated inside my head.

The prisoner charged his iron door again, landing in a crash that rattled his hinges. He grabbed the bars of his door, pressing his eyes hard through the wide grate, leering at me.

“What’s this?” he asked, licking his lips. “Who’s this?”

I sent a quick look back toward the stairs, still bathed in shadow. Then faced the cells and sang.

The prisoner’s eyes softened into black. The moaning stopped. For a moment, I could only hear my heart, thudding softly against my breastbone.

Then the nails on glass returned.

“Pretty,” a voice said. “Almost as pretty as my mother’s voice.”

I walked past the quiet cells, halting before the very last one.

Inside, Kazimir sat over the floor, legs bent under him, carving into the wall with something that might have been a broken bone. His eyes flicked up to meet mine.

“Someone has been feeding you shield weed,” I said, a small seed of disappointment rooting through my chest. I’d been depending on being able to incant him. Not being able to added another layer of difficulty to my task.

The Rivean scoffed. “Haven’t touched it since I was a child. Allergic. What do you want, witch?”

I’d already opened my mouth to ask my first question, but I paused. “Allergic how?”

He laid his jagged bone on the floor with a dull sigh as if I’d just interrupted him from deciphering the world’s most prestigious texts. “It makes me sick,” he said, his northern accent rolling over every syllable as if I were too stupid to understand.

But I did understand. I couldn’t quite believe I hadn’t understood it before. “You’re Naiad.”

Kazimir went still. He turned, just barely. Just enough to see me from the corner of his eye. “What do you want.”

I stared at the man who, in another life, killed my husband. Who had chased us across Rivea, through rain and snow and strikes of lightning, who had bargained to take me prisoner in the mountains.

“What would you have done with me, if I hadn’t escaped in the mountains?” I asked. It hadn’t been on my list of questions for him, but I was suddenly curious.

“Is this because I taunted your prince? Told him the entire prison guard could be of use to you?”

He let the word drip slowly from his mouth, ensuring I understood his meaning. My jaw lengthened. I hadn’t been present when he’d said it, and Kye hadn’t repeated it to me.

Kazimir shook his head, turning away from me and reaching for his bone again. “I was trying to get under his skin when I said that.”

“What did you want with me?”

“What will you give me, witch, if I speak to you?”

I raised my satchel, filled with bread and apples. Roasted duck and fennel and onion lathered in butter, a raspberry pastry at the bottom. Each was wrapped carefully in wax paper, but I pulled back the satchel flap, letting the scent hit him through the iron gate.

He swallowed a mouthful of saliva. Then swallowed again, dropping his bone and walking to the door, the light combing through his red-black hair. A heavy drift of it covered his jaw like black rust, loose and wild. I held an apple just out of his reach.