Page 142 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

Over my shoulder, Kye hardened into stone. Leihani, he said warningly. What if it's someone you don’t want to protect?

I slid his blade across the pad of my thumb, glancing darkly at Kazimir to ensure he knew I was serious. Warm blood pooled inside the cut, dripping down like black trails of ink in the dim light.

Kazimir swallowed again, hands wrapping around the iron bars of his cell. His heart, a soft rhythm across from me, lit into a rapid beat, boots running hard and fast. “I’ve never vowed myself to a Naiad,” he whispered. “You’ll have to teach me what to say.”

I wiped my blood from Kye’s knife with my skirts, passing it through the bars to him. “It’s easy. Repeat after me.”

62

Kye

An entire month passed with that Rivean asshole sleeping in the room beside ours after he vowed his blood to Maren.

Aitne had vacated the room, reminding us she’d only stayed to mend Maren’s leg, which hadn’t pained her since she’d returned from Perpetuum. I wondered in secret how Ano felt about being moved into the moldered servant quarters when a prisoner lived in our tower, though he didn’t seem to mind.

The last of winter melted away, leaving the ground waterlogged under rain that flew so hard toward the ground it felt like a slap against my skin. Just inside the door, I shook it out of my hair, letting my hand banish the worst of it until the wall next to me looked like an outraged dog had released a deluge after its bath.

Maren sent me a testy look over her shoulder.

You could just call it off me, I reminded her, stealing an apple from the basket on the table. One from last harvest. I chomped into it, flopping sideways into an armchair, my jaw slowing as I realized it was as soggy as the palace grounds outside.

I’d woken up in a mood, and it hadn’t gone away. The air felt dark. Heavy. And not from the stormy clouds outside that scooped the sunlight out of reach. It was like a shadow had laid its hand over the palace, reaching for me.

Reaching for us.

Gave me the fucking gooseflesh.

Don't you have some other chair to lounge in on Evenstar? Maren said, mouth crooked

I took another bite. Nope.

Not true. The others were waiting for me. But I was waiting for Leal. I’d asked him to sit with Maren while she questioned Kazimir, a request I suspected made her feel like I doubted whether she could squash Kazimir like the little fucking mosquito he was. Which was ridiculous.

I knew she could.

I just didn’t want that fucking Rivean alone with my wife.

Not after he’d taunted me in the office of the Deadman’s House, or forced a blade through my chest, or beat my brother before bartering for Maren, pulling her into his forces to do who knows fucking what with her.

Even now, I could feel him watching me as he sat across from her with his beady little fucking Rivean eyes, wishing I’d leave the room. Nope. Sorry, you little Naiad fuck. No wonder he’d hated me so much in Rivea. I’d thought it was because I was royalty, the assumption I usually made with everyone who hated me.

It was because I was human.

“What’s your tail look like?” I asked through mouthful of mushy apple.

Maren clicked her tongue, sending me an even more withering glare. It’s rude to ask a Naiad that, Kye.

Really? I swallowed, licking bland apple juice from the corners of my mouth. “Is it blue?”

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to answer him.”

Across from her, Kazimir surveyed me with the flat temper a blacksmith reserves for a blister that won’t pop.

Go be threatened somewhere else, Maren hissed. Intimidating him doesn’t help me.

I snapped the last bite of flesh from the apple between my teeth, chewing slowly as I gazed out the window. Doesn’t help who?

She sighed from her nose, long and slow. Time to stop teasing her before some poor soul found my mangled body in a ditch somewhere.