Page 168 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

A canopy of glowing worms had stretched across the ceiling before, a constellation of twinkling blue. Now the rock was bare. The walls were bare. Water echoed somewhere as it dripped, though I couldn’t see where.

Are you both on the other side? Nori asked.

I stroked silently across the chamber. Yes. I hadn’t explored Nahli when I’d been here before. I expected to find a rock ledge, maybe a deeper cavern above the water where Thaan and his sixty drones could remain dry. But the wide pool licked every edge of the chamber. There’s nothing here.

Something in Nori’s consciousness sent a shiver down my mind. They must be below.

I glanced down, past my treading feet. The well had nearly killed me when I’d swum down it the first time, before Naiad oxygen woke the siren in my veins. We’ll need to breathe for the humans.

That meant rendering them low-conscious. Nori swore into my thoughts. All right. Shall I send the next one?

One by one, we passed them through, careful to avoid making sound. My skin tightened over my flesh with cold and anxiety. The longer we took, the greater the risk—it wasn’t as if we could easily escape. But there was no way to rush, either, and I didn’t dare ask Nori to send them two at a time only to risk one becoming trapped.

Kye’s light crawled down the tunnel before his face poked through.

Don’t try to come in head-first, I instructed. Your shoulders will get wedged. Give me your hands—and you might want to quiet your light.

My breath eased as Kazimir wiggled out after him, the last before Nori. I waited for my red-wine Oculos, joining her at the surface. “We’ll have to use our tails to reach the bottom,” I whispered through the dark. Suspicion unraveled through my bones, made only more chilling by the frigid water. A river was one thing, with escape routes in opposite directions.

A deep dive into a bottomless well was another.

Diara must have sensed the hesitancy in my voice. “We’ll wait here,” she offered.

I shook my head. “I’d rather you wait on solid ground. Any Naiad could swim beneath you here and drag you under.”

Hadrian shook water from his hair. “We’d have no way to know if you need our help.”

I ground my teeth, anxiety building. Stunning drones into blindness and alarm with Kye’s light and my thunder would only work for so long. Eventually they would realize they were under attack before the moment we reached them, eclipsing our powers. And as much as they’d trained, my Naiads weren’t the fighters the humans were.

“We’re coming,” my father said, in a tone that I’d rarely heard.

My belly roiled softly. The first hitch in our plan. “All right.”

I reached for Kye before remembering he didn’t need me to dive under. He kissed me anyway, brisk and cold. Lead the way. We’re all behind you.

Steeling myself, I dipped into the water, transitioning to fin and fluke and scale, and made for the belly of a volcano. The water thickened with shards of ice like slush. Each stroke felt like waking the dead, except the dead was me, my limbs churning just to keep heat active in my blood.

A steady beat waited just below—a heart.

Its owner must have heard mine in the same moment. Hands grappled for mine, but I caught theirs first, slamming them into the wall. The water stirred around us with vicious waves, Kye and the Naiads closing ranks behind me. I pinned the drone to the rock with my weight, and Kye hummed enough light to make out the faint outline of their body, graceful shoulders and a long neck. Pheolix reached through to snap it. And froze.

A pair of fiery ocean-blue eyes gazed back at us through a curtain of sable hair.

73

Maren

Recognition lanced through Pheolix’s body like the echo of a hammer against bone. His hands curled around Selena’s jaw, over her cheeks and through her hair, pulling her into him. She responded with an urgency that made me avert my eyes, melting against Pheolix like snow over hot stone.

I glanced up to the top of the well, the chamber above. We could’ve taken her then. Stole back through the cavern and to Laurier Palace, or even hidden her in Juile or Venusia, undersea escapes that Thaan could not reach.

And spent the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, diminishing Selena’s existence to three years.

She pulled from Pheolix to look at all of us. A smile for Olinne, a squeeze against Kye’s shoulder, an entwined pinky with my mother. Curiosity stole over her face as she glanced at Kazimir, who watched her from the back of the group, a resistance in his eyes. Then she looked at me. Her palm laid against my cheek, cool and soft and familiar. A stone tumbled down my throat, wedging itself painfully at the bottom. I laid my hand over hers.

Her gaze lifted toward the surface, then back to me. A question.

Resolve hardened through my chest, marbling in my blood. I shook my head.