Page 143 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

Aalto knew, I might have been a little threatened. Why was every Naiad the prime definition of fucking male beauty. Even with his dark auburn hair tied back in a choppy tuft behind his head, the longer strands hung over his cheeks like a night-faring bandit, slinky and sly and annoying as fuck.

His face was almost as punchable as Aegir’s, a comparison I hadn’t thought possible.

In my periphery, he smiled coldly at me. I made a show of checking my nails, hoping he felt like an idiot smiling like that while I refused to look at him.

As far as I was concerned, these sessions were pointless. An entire month, and though he’d given Maren the name of the person he was protecting—Cerbin, the name of a person who, according to Hadrian’s Rivean spies, didn’t exist—as well as intricate details regarding Rivea and the Emissary and his guard duties and Oberon and the grass on the ground and the clouds in the sky and the sound of brown crickets chirping in the dead of summer under the old altar of the fucking blah blah blah blah blah—

He’d given us nothing that might help us find Thaan or Selena.

Though I caught him, sometimes, looking at Maren the way a drowning man looks at their rescuer, a look that should have—and did—bring me some sense of security. At least I didn’t believe he’d betray her. It still fucking annoyed me.

The door opened, feet shuffling into the apartment behind me. With a lazy heave, I rolled to my feet, leaving the chair beside her open for Leal. Maren tilted her head just enough to eye me sideways, a small smile on her lips.

Even in miniature, it was a smile I couldn’t resist.

She’d already looked away, but my hand wrapped around the back of her neck, sloping her head even more toward me. Her golden skin was cool and smooth under my palm, and touching her sent a shiver down my bones, flaring into my veins. She tasted like Leihani. Sweet and rich as island sun, but spicy too, like the starblooms my mother used to grow.

My mouth sank over hers, and I almost doubted we weren’t somehow still cordaed. That she wasn’t tied to my blood for eternity. Because why else did my heart thrash in my chest when she met my eyes or my breath stall in my lungs when her body met mine?

My jaw rolled, and she loosened into the kiss, letting the weight of her head fall fully into my hand, her neck stretched and bare. I had half a mind to tell Leal to get lost then throw the Rivean off the balcony just to waste the day kissing her.

“Oooh. Apples.” Leal’s voice surprised me enough to break me from Maren’s spell. I glanced behind us at where my friend conducted a survey over the innocent basket of apples as though determining which was the least bruised. My mouth pursed.

A dark electricity hovered through the air; one I’d felt before. Maren disappearing in the Brána Do Podsvetia. Chaining me to a chair while she left to fight Sidra. Walking up the stairs of the King’s tower, belting my knife to her waist, staring at the door as it closed. Call it instinct or natural worry or my fucking premonition ring.

Something rooted my feet to the floor.

Warned me not to leave.

The air was thick and charged with something wicked, something full of teeth and talons, floating just beyond the reach of my fingers. I breathed it in, and it lifted every hair on my body.

What’s wrong? she murmured. Her voice wavered, mutated, like she’d woken me from a dream.

“I’m staying,” I said, glancing down to find my fingers twisting my premonition ring. My pulse flickered quietly under my skin. It might have been selfish, choosing to stay. Pheolix led his lessons blind, with Aren and I the most experienced fighters. Aren had mostly healed, returning with us to Evenstar over the past week, but I’d taken the lead. “Leal, you go.”

“Would rather not.” He turned his apple core, searching for a fresh bite. “Nori’s starting to cut a mean hook.”

“Even if Aitne is there?”

“Aitne’s in Leihani helping her mother. But I’ll see her later. She and I are going for a walk.”

I raised a brow, readying a gibe at him when warmth spread over my hand, obsidian moons sparkling in front of mine. “Kye. We’re fine. You should go.” She nocked her chin east, pointing through the wall to distant Evenstar. “Help Nori even more with that hook.”

The scent of her skin vibrated inside my head, that near-black in her eyes almost as intoxicating when she was calm as it was when she was angry. The static in the room flickered, the shadows dying down, seeping through the cracks in the floor as though they were made of ink.

Maybe I’d never recovered from jealousy. Maybe I’d only told myself I had because I’d explored every inch of her, every freckle and valley and scar, and though it was as familiar to me as the taste of cool water, I still longed to drink her in again, to be the only one who did. Maybe it wasn’t who was spending their time with her, it was simply enough that it wasn’t me.

Sometimes I wondered if the cordae hadn’t broken all the way. Or maybe it severed her from me, but not me from her. If it had remained with me like a sorry ghost, a ley line rooted in my blood. Invisible and imaginary and undeniable as a portal that always led me to her.

Or maybe I was a scared little fool with a scared little child in my scared little mind, shrieking for the thing that protected me from my own vicious thoughts.

Maren squeezed my arm, gently. As if she knew. Then turned back to lay her notes out on the table, feather pen ready in a very Selena way.

“Did Oberon personally know the King of Rivea,” she said, already scribbling something down, her attention to me severed as neatly as a book closing.

I tucked a kiss into her hair. Be back in a few hours. Don’t go to bed without me.

She didn’t glance up at me, but her lips curved. Don’t be late.