Page 160 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

A splash chased us onto shore. Metal whispered, human knives and blades unsheathing and pointing toward the dark ledge, where Sindri climbed a moment later, pulling his cloak over his shoulders. He ignored the open threat, finding Kye among our faces. “Apologies, my Videre. You left before naming an Oculos, so we had no other way to ask—”

Our stares swiveled to Kye, alarm threaded in the other human’s expressions. Kye’s throat tightened. “What is it?”

“We are assessing damage to the colony, but the ammonite caretakers have deemed the structure unsound. The colony will need to seek refuge elsewhere.”

“They are welcome in Juile,” I said, my fingers creeping along the inside of Kye’s arm, weaving through his. He grasped them back, squeezing. “The colony is large enough to house them. Olinne, please let Aoede know the Venusians are coming.”

“Of course, my Queen,” the Naiad said, sweeping her pale curls behind her shoulders to offer me a small bow before diving into the water.

Sindri stepped closer. I stiffened, and Kye shifted me behind him. But Sindri merely bowed the same way Olinne had, hands together. “I’ll alert the colony,” he said before slipping between the waves.

For a moment, no one spoke. We stared at the dark ocean, letting the wind crawl through our hair and clothes. Sindri’s face blurred in my mind, a blade tipped with the ash of shield weed in his hand, a burn humming into my arm.

“Maren.” Diara had pulled in close to me, her hand on my arm. I started, looking up at her. At Hadrian standing directly behind her. “Is Aegir dead?”

Water drenched my dress, gooseflesh canvasing my skin where the sea licked the heat from my body. “Yes.” I raised a hand, attempting to call the water away. Nothing happened, as I suspected it wouldn’t. The pain of Sindri’s shallow cut had ebbed, but the ash was alive in my blood. It would be a few days before I could call to water again.

“Aitne,” Kye called softly. The healer glanced up, apprehensive at the caution in his tone.

A latch in my chest tightened as she crossed to him, hands wringing together in uncertainty.

Diara watched too, sympathy wrapping around the curve of her shoulders. “What happened to the Venusian colony?”

“It’s crumbling.” I gazed at the stones in my hand, unable to say more as Aitne sucked a raw lungful of air from the mist. How could I truly explain to Diara what had happened in Venusia? That Kye had traded his existence for mine at the peril of his own, preserving my life and invoking a new corda-cruor. That, in the same moment, he had almost died.

Again.

My thoughts drifted to the Sylus Mountains. To deep snow and frigid winter, a hundred black dresses and a single man at the bottom of a slope, gazing up at me until a blade carved life from his chest. How that mountainside had ruptured, how I’d called the sky to wail and the stars to flash and molten rock to fly, swallowing that mountainside and the screams of the enemy. All because that cordae had been broken.

Divided into two.

“We found him in your tower,” Diara said. The familiar tartness of her voice had smoothed, and I wondered if she knew I’d think it my own fault.

“I know how you found him.” My throat threatened to fold as the image of Leal, throat torn open, surfaced in my mind. I tore my gaze from Aitne, who stood with her face in her hands, weeping softly against Dimas’s shoulder. My attention returned to the stones, two small weights in my hand. Thaan’s heart, divided into two stones.

The divide.

“Maren?” Diara said.

My fingers wrapped around the stones, the moon’s words drifting through my head. “I know where Selena is.”

70

Maren

Astone-faced Dimas left early the next morning, escorting his cousin back to Ascento to be laid in the family grave.

Aitne watched his entourage until they disappeared under the skirts of the pine trees behind the palace, and then she remained long after, stationed at the window in silence. I’d asked if she wanted to go, but she’d said no.

Words of consolation bloomed within me, though I said none of them out loud. I might have tried to explain that life as a Naiad cordaed to a human was hard. That both sides harbored hurt and distrust against the other, that other Naiads would look at her bond to a man and recoil in disgust. That finding a mate among her own kind would have been safer, easier.

They may have been true, but they were worthless words.

“The royal carriage is making its way to the King’s tower,” the healer said.

I didn’t miss how Hadrian and Kye met each other’s eyes. But we had more important matters to discuss than King Emilius’s return.

“Are we ready to begin?” Hadrian asked. Beside him, Aren leaned against his forearms, clasping his hands patiently. A month after his fall down the stairs, with daily mending from Aitne, and he was back to training.