Page 4 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

“Time is all you have down here,” he laughed coldly.

I glared. “I don’t know that I believe it. But if there’s a chance, I have to try.”

Darkness clicked his tongue. “Myths are born from legends. Legends are born from tales. Tales are born from truth. The best truths are tragedies, aren’t they? Fables shredded and resewn throughout generations, only morsels of the truth tucked inside each new weave. I was there the day Theia blessed the Three with immortality. Corvus betrayed his brother, Androma was sacrificed to a monster, and Xeno lost his mind. Some blessings are a desecration, my pet. And what became of the Three, after they had won? Have you ever heard the rest of the tale?”

He raised his brows, half hidden in his shadows, waiting for my answer.

I crossed my arms. “They became the Three Stewards—”

“The Three Stewards,” he repeated, mouth cracking in a smile that verged on mockery. "You’ve probably been told that they protected land and sea and light as well.”

Unable to deny that I had, I merely glared, ignoring the flicker of unease that rippled through my gut.

“They forget, the other gods,” Darkness said, his voice dropping to a murmur. He angled his head, and I couldn’t decide if the black dripping from him moved more like ink or ash or something as non-existent as night-woven fear. “Theia looks to the future. Aalto sees only the day at hand. They forget what has come. What has gone. What has been left behind. I hold the past. Every tear, every sob, every shattered soul. Theia forgets that Xeno couldn’t stand the sight of Corvus after he sacrificed Androma to the sea monster, that he exiled his brother after they returned. Theia forgets that Androma never overcame her fear of dark places, that even in immortality she hides, a shell of her former self. Theia forgets that the Three Stewards never lived the life they were promised.”

His shadows tipped toward me, climbing, winding, falling like soot. “If you return from Perpetuum, it will only be because you’ve made bargains with us all. The Fates. Theia. Myself. Gods who do not care what happens to you or your soul. Gods who will take from you more than they will give. Gods who would use you for their own means. As a message, as a weapon, as a tool. The Fates are indifferent to your life. Theia will neglect any purpose of yours that is not also hers.”

“Ah. But you won’t,” I finished for him, scorn heavy in my voice.

Darkness smiled faintly, so small the curve of his mouth was merely a hint of smoke. “I will never forget, darling. The memory of you will plague me through the cord of time, every stitch and loop and knot. Until I am succeeded by a new Darkness. Freed from the curse of what once was.”

“So, you’ll bargain with me.” In the deep vault of the house of shadow, there was no air to fill my lungs. But I held my breath.

Silence elapsed like dragging feet the longer Darkness studied me, his face a map of hard lines, barely discernible in the dim room. The black around him flickered, velvet flames dancing across his shoulders. I swallowed, straightening. Waiting.

“No.”

2

Maren

Ibalked at his response, but I didn’t have time to argue as he waved his fingertips. My feet lifted from the surface-less place I stood, my body jolting as I tilted up. And though the world around me hadn’t yet changed, I could feel myself leaving his realm, his house, as I was sent somewhere above. Toward the watery bottom of the lake, which rippled against the vibration of my movement.

Kye.

Three days.

I could never make it to Brána Do Podsvetia without help. The forbidden channel lay across half the mountainside. Weeks of travel from where I’d left the Naiads at the edge of Sylus Lake.

“No! No!” I gasped, feet running in midair as I struggled to evade his grasp. Fire ignited in my chest, a bolt of anger through my veins. “I’m not done, I’m not done, I’mnotdone!” My voice punctured my own thoughts, hard and sharp as I ascended, groping for something to hold onto. A corner of rock or a shred of air from which I could steal water. My heart beat a wicked drum, blood crashing in a frantic surge. The Breath of Safiro glowed brightly, illuminating the nothingness around me.

The rippling water above grew nearer. “Darkness!” I shouted, “You coward. You pathetic little”—I thrust a hand out, calling to the black liquid. It didn’t heed me. But electricity snapped between my fingers. “CAECUS!”

A sharp white crack blinded my vision. Thunder vibrated down the wall-less cavern. My body halted.

Sideways. Suspended as though I lay on a bed. My legs and arms churned slowly, my glare fixed above. Blood clattered through my thoughts, louder than the panting from my mouth. I angrily blinked away the brightness behind my eyes, unearthing the sting of hot moisture between my lashes.

Shadows swirled in front of my face, oozing from the corners of my vision and gathering over the top of me. Just beyond my reach, they formed the shape of a man. He drifted closer. Close enough that the glow of my stone sent his shadows scattering. Close enough to make out his shoulders, his jaw, his eyes.

He wore a tunic of gleaming black, the material thin but not delicate. It slipped around him like water, as though he’d captured a calm pool in luxe swells of fabric, flooding and receding with each stretch of his limbs. The arcane markings traveled his skin beyond the boundaries of his clothes, around his neck and into his hair.

“Caecus.” His voice came as a whisper, but it shook me somewhere at my core, crackling down the walls of my mind. “You may think that is my name. But that is merely what they call me when they curse my existence.”

I’d never seen darker skin, though somehow it shone bright and luminous under his fading tendrils. I gasped at his beauty. A proud nose, a strong chin, eyes a cold stone gray that somehow grew crystallic at the center. I froze as he inched closer, reaching a hand for me. For my chest.

The image of him blurred through my glossy eyes. I blinked back furious tears, waiting for him to reach through my flesh. To cleave apart my ribs, to grasp my heart, to suffocate the life from me. But his fingers curled around the Scale of Safiro.

“Where did you get this?”