Page 170 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

I watched as the flames brightened and died. What a quiet end, to someone who had so loudly destroyed lives for a millennia.

We left his bones, and the knife that had cleaved through them, in that small obsidian room. Lowered ourselves back into the cold, swimming up the volcano’s well to its wide chamber, then out the narrow vein we’d climbed through. Starlight melted into my hair and dress as I stepped out of Nahli’s cavern mouth, the taste of earth and leaf and roaming sea releasing the wind caught between my ribs like a welcome hammer to a cage. I wondered if Mihauna was watching. If, even in the cavern, she’d seen what we’d done.

A hand massaged my shoulder, a tall body leaning in to kiss my temple. Kye gave me a slow grin, winding his hand around the back of my head to cup my opposite cheek, pulling me in to plant a second kiss in the same place.

Aitne and Dimas passed us, the healer’s mouth turned up for the first time in days, walking toward the water. I watched them drift through the ferns, Diara and Aren close behind. Hadrian slapped Kye’s arm, walking backwards toward the shore.

“We shouldn’t dally,” my mother said, though her voice was warm, almost thick as she stopped beside me. “His drones might arrive any minute.”

“I know.” I watched Kazimir stride to the sand alone, pausing before he left the moss and lichen-drenched rocks, turning to look back at us. Thaan was dead; his blood vow was fulfilled. He’d return to Rivea soon.

I wasn’t sure why, but the thought blew through me like a fistful of stones.

“Will you be returning to Leihani, little leaf?” my father asked.

I’d been waiting for the question. Had suspected he’d made himself wait to ask it until now. The words probed a memory in my mind. “Makua,” I said, “before I found you in the caves, Palunu saw me in your house. She spoke strangely to me.” It wasn’t a question, but I let my words lilt as though it were one, knowing he’d understand even as my mother sent me a quizzical glance.

My father raised a brow. “That started sometime around the first few days of the wet season.”

Kye tilted his head, nudging himself to the side to make room for Olinne. “What started?”

“The islanders began to speak warmly of Maren,” my father answered, scratching low over his cheek. “They knew I was building a boat to find her, even though I had tried to hide it at first. They started bringing me material. Rope, wood, sails. A few of the young men wanted to come with me. To find you and claim you back.”

“But—why?” I asked, cringing only a little. Or perhaps the better question, how?

“You killed Sidra,” Olinne said, the words like a melody in her sweet voice. “You lifted the curse. Sirens may befriend islanders again.”

“The islanders don’t…” I almost laughed at how childish the words were, though I forced them out anyway, even as warmth bloomed behind my cheeks. “They don’t hate me?”

My father smiled sadly at me. “No, little leaf. You are one of them. They want you to return home.” He glanced hopefully at me. “And your court is below our sea, isn’t it? Does that mean you’ll return to the islands?”

My gaze met Kye’s, a nervous churn in my stomach. Maybe that was why my feet were reluctant to leave the emerald palms and ferns here. Why it felt like we’d been tricked, somehow, into laughter that left our mouths too easily, deep breaths that flowed too readily. There was still one last problem to resolve. “Actually, Makua—”

A scream shattered the night.

Aitne dropped to her knees like the sand had burned her feet, Dimas reaching to help her—

I was already moving, running, leaping over long blades of pili grass and ferns.

But not fast enough to reach them as a Naiad rose from the tide, grabbed either side of her head, and twisted.

74

Maren

Dimas reached for the dagger at his hip, but Aitne hadn’t even fallen before a second Naiad shot from the waves to snatch the blade from his belt, sliding it across his throat.

Drones.

They crawled from the sea like a nightmarish swarm, pale blue under the moonless sky, the cold flowing from their fingers as their eclipse frosted through the air. Skin sizzled, puffs of smoke under their feet as they walked across a bed of ashy shield weed that hadn’t been there when we’d arrived. As though they didn’t even feel the burn.

I hadn’t come with bloodlust. Not when I’d come for Thaan and Thaan alone. But at the sight of Aitne and Dimas, crumpled and unmoving as the tide trickled over their faces, water slid off my fingers like an angry river, and a roll of thunder broke over the clouds. The urge for minimal damage slid from my body like a torn veil, the remaining color of the world one of deep and dazzling bloodshed.

Everything happened in slow motion, like the shadow of a drifting cloud, too far for me to halt it.

Aren stretched a hand behind his neck, reaching for his sword.

His arm shielded Diara as she reached for an arrow, nocking it into place.