Page 3 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

“This one promised me a ladder that could reach the sky,” Darkness said, “so that he might harness the lost power of Aalto. A power he claimed lay dormant in his blood. A pity for him that he never achieved it. He belongs to me now, until I deign to release his soul to Perpetuum.”

“And that is what Thaan will become?” I asked.

Darkness didn’t move, but his shadowed eyes lifted to me. “Thaan of Safiro upheld his end of our bargain. He traded straight across. Heart and soul and humanity for the blood of a monster. He will not become a wraithling. But he will be mine. One day, when the Fates are through with him, he will be a creature of Darkness.”

“The Fates,” I repeated. Selena’s patient explanation still fresh in my ears, I couldn’t help but connect what she’d said only hours ago in the wake of my fractured cordae.

The Fates marked Nikolaos for dead.

Darkness gave a smooth push into the airless cavern, sending his wraithling back to its home above. “The Fate of Love. He will answer her for severing his corda-cruor from his body without her blessing. Such bonds are blasphemy to break. Of all the bargains I have made since the dawn of my time, his remains the only one I should have refused. Tell me what you seek, my darling. And I will tell you what I’ll require in return.”

“I need a way to stop time.”

Darkness stared at me a moment. Then, slowly, his smile widened. “Stop time, pet?”

“For three days.”

“Three,” he repeated. “The sacred number. And what do you plan to do for three days while time is stopped?”

I hesitated. Could Darkness truly sense my lies?

He dipped his chin, smoky gaze locked into mine, and then loomed closer, churning and blooming like black vapor. His feet left the floor, floating behind him, and he walked on the heels of his elbows through the air. “Play me for a fool, you will not, my pet. Either voice the truth of your soul or leave my home for the light.”

I didn’t budge as he drifted into my face and disappeared. “I need to rid this world of one of your creatures.”

“A wraithling?”

“No,” I said, my resolve tightening in my chest. “The creature that lives deep in the Brána Do Podsvetia.”

Darkness swept back, a wind forceful enough to tug my hair from my shoulders. The god surveyed me in full, eyes narrowing through the swirling mist of his shadow. “You’ve come to ask me a favor so that you may kill one of my creatures?”

I’m not sure how I’d managed to ignore that perspective until this moment. I’d been so focused on Kye, so determined as soon as Selena explained what I must do, so dependent on the idea that Darkness would leap at the thought of taking something from me, that I hadn’t even considered he might refuse my bargain.

He didn’t wait for my answer. “The Abyssi at the bottom of the Brána Do Podsvetia was once like you. She found me in grief, searching for a way to reach a lost soul. She came the other way. From Perpetuum, on a new moon when Theia’s back was turned, seeking a way back to life. The cavern she now guards is the gateway to the sea of stars. A passage not made for mortals. She crossed it but failed to barter with the Fates. They refused her request, whatever it was. Now she belongs to me.”

My brows lowered. “I am not afraid.”

Darkness wrapped his smoky fingers around my chin, stroking my jaw, the cold dripping from his hand. “Liar,” he breathed. “Grief sits over your shoulders like a hungry demon. It’s feeding on you as we speak. Drinking you in waves. You are afraid of failing.”

A cinch in my throat constricted, though I refused to acknowledge his observation as truth. The soft burn of impatience returned. Poison crawled up my walls like black vines, hooking into my chest, and my lips peeled back from my teeth. “I am not afraid.”

The shadow smiled. “They come for power. They come for revenge. They come to heal a broken heart. Most Naiads come for the third. A corda-cruor lost. What a curse it must be for a siren to bond for life. I am Darkness, and you cannot hide why you came from me. I cannot see the future. I cannot see the present. But here in a house of shadow, time stopped the moment you set foot in my realm. And I can see your past. Most take days or weeks to make their way here. They bargain with themselves before they bargain with me. You should know, pet, that it’s the souls with a broken heart I send away. They don’t have the same ambition as ones searching for power or justice. They’re just looking for a way to lick their wounds. Give me a drop of your blood and I will free you to find a new cordae.”

I stepped away, wrenching my chin from his grasp. “I am sent by Theia the Moon to rid her waters of a monster that feeds on victims of the sea. I am a Guardian, a protector of life. The Queen of Juile, the third in Theia’s Triad. I come with a broken heart, but I refuse to turn back.”

Darkness stared flatly at me. Long enough to make me shake with soft fury. Time may have stopped when I’d fallen through the bottom of the lake, but I somehow felt the seconds ticking by, each one a small explosion in my ears. I stared back, seeing nothing of the playfulness he displayed when I’d first arrived. Curling and dripping and whispering in my ears. Now he watched me with a hardness that lashed anger down my spine.

“Did you know, dear mortal, that the moon once tasked another group of three to become her Triad?”

“Yes,” I said, fists curling. “Xeno, Corvus, and Androma.”

He held my gaze, as though the names were more profound than I could imagine. “And where are they now?”

“It’s a myth.”

“If it were mere myth, why would you believe in it?”

“I don’t have time for games, Darkness.”