Page 167 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

Across from me, Pheolix swallowed. Cebrinne took his hand and squeezed.

“I’d offer you all the chance to turn back to the palace in safety, but I know none of you are willing. You’re here because you’ve been here, for weeks, through snow and wind and lightning. You’re here because you’re family to me. I never had brothers or sisters growing up, and I realize now, I never needed them.” My gaze drifted from Hadrian to Kazimir, Aitne to Diara.

“You’re my brothers and sisters. With Thaan standing across from me, there is no one else I’d rather have at my side, behind my back, than you all.

“We’ve hashed this mission to threads over the last few days, but at its core, it’s simple. Get in, kill Thaan, find Selena, and get out. I want everyone to step safely back on this ledge only hours from now. But if you do not make it back—” I paused, a thistle caught in my throat. The wind died, and my voice with it as the soft wash of the tide crept over our feet.

“If you do not make it back, know what you’ve fought for. For a future where humans are more than vessels and Naiads are more than weapons. Where our bodies belong to us, and where no one can decide what we will do with them. Where children aren’t trained to kill, where mothers are not forced from their young, and families aren’t ripped apart.”

Kye’s thumb caressed mine. My mother’s eyes swam, though she’d tucked her chin low, her teal blue gaze glimmering against her midnight hair as my words stirred within her. Kazimir’s throat worked in silence.

I stepped forward, breaking our little circle to enter it instead. “We are not confronting a tyrant’s power; we’re denying his authority over our lives. This is not a war. It's a revolution. I will crawl to Thaan on my belly if I must, to ensure he dies. But I refuse to bow. I refuse to beg. I refuse to break. And I know that if I must crawl, you will crawl with me.”

Diara leaned forward, forehead to mine, and wrapped her arms around my back.

Then Aitne, and Olinne, and finally Nori.

“We’re here with you,” Hadrian said softly. “Every step. Even on our bellies.” At his side, Dimas nodded.

They dove in, burrowing themselves into the tide. Until only Kye remained, his hand open for mine.

“You won’t leave my side?” I said, just to hear the sound of his voice before the sea gulped us into the embrace of quiet war.

“Never,” he said. “I’m so entwined with you, our souls are woven together. Today, tomorrow, a thousand years from now. To the island, the mountains, the edge of the stars—and then beyond that. To eternity, wherever eternity goes. Even Death could not untangle me from you.”

At the mouth of Nahli’s cavern, I turned around to count shadows. The air around us coalesced, seaside breeze shifting clouds over our heads, burning out the stars like candle flames snapped out of light. Icy fingers dripped down my shoulder as I stared at the pitch-black sky. A blanket of invisibility.

Darkness was here with us.

I smiled. A good thing I’d wrapped my stones in an extra layer of silk, lest they give us away. “Let’s get Selena.”

We surrounded Kye like moons in orbit. Then stepped through a curtain of moss, into the volcano’s throat.

Like the lowest tunnel of Paria, the Nahli wept. Water ran down its walls, slow drips and fast streams, their echoes rousing the soundless air like murmurs in the dark. The air tasted thick with moisture and forgotten memory, sitting over my skin like I’d walked through a cloud. A frigid hand slid across my back, a shadow gliding in front of me, and suddenly the cavern was even darker than it had been the moment before. Footsteps were already padding toward us, recognizing the shift in the wind, the hearts and scents that had entered.

Now, I whispered into Kye’s head.

He lit like a lantern.

A glow at first, a beacon amongst the black ink of nothing. A target.

I slid my silk blindfold over my eyes, taming Kye’s brilliance into a warm, shapeless light.

Then called to the water between stars.

Electricity crackled from my hands—but it was the rupture of still air that I sought, the muffled tremor through rock that shook my blood like a brontide along a stormy coast. Stone vibrated under my feet, a titan waking after a deep slumber.

The first drone stepped in. A male, judging by the width of his shoulders, the way he moved with power in his limbs, though it might have been a female. His silhouette draped over Kye’s radiance, a dark blur over a bright hymn. He lunged for the light, but twelve ghosts surrounded Kye, twelve shadows swathed in dark, twelve planets revolving a dazzling sun. Someone—Sindri, I think—threw the drone against the cavern wall loud enough to feel the crunch of a skull through rock and air.

Brighter.

Kye’s glow scorched my eyes behind my blindfold. A single star surrounded by the empty night. Darkness danced between the rest of us, spinning us into threads of shadow, though I thought I caught a smoky wisp as we neared the first bend in the cave.

Another drone came and fell, his neck snapped by Pheolix like a brittle limb of driftwood. Water lapped at my toes, so cold it almost burned. It swallowed my legs like a man dying of thirst, until waist-deep, I stood over the same passage I’d found when I discovered the Breath of Safiro, and dove.

I’d forgotten how narrow the tunnel was. It pulled me like an underground river, tighter and tighter until I found the end, a hole so constricting I had to force myself through. Dimas was next, and I turned to wait for him in case he became caught, my pulse an anxious drum in my ears. A soft blue illuminated my byssus dress, flaring against the rock.

Hands curled around the edge of the narrow tunnel. I grasped on and guided him out like a cork through a glass neck. Together, we rose to the surface, peering out only enough that our noses breached the water.