Page 50 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

The fuck I did.

I’m coming, I said, and thought I caught a small wave of unease from her, though it vanished before I could tell for sure.

Aalto in the clouds, it was cold for a day in the middle of winter, even with the sun shining thick over the sea. Wind blasted me from the side as soon as I stepped onto the sky bridge. Taking the enclosed passage below would have been warmer, but in this season, the open overpass was the fastest route, even though the seaward gusts raked across my cheeks and batted my skin raw, scraping through my hair like a pair of talons.

“You’re in a hurry,” said a voice inside the doors at the opposite end. Posted outside the Admin offices, Hadrian leaned against the wall. “Where are you headed?”

“Nowhere,” I muttered, my boots loud on the marbled floor as I treaded around the corner past him. I hesitated, then ducked back in. “Want to join me?”

22

Maren

Selena opened her door at the first rap of my knuckles. She stepped back smoothly, meeting my eye with an air that stretched between calm reluctance and gentle confidence. Her gaze flicked to Diara, standing just beyond me, and back. “No cordae, then?”

“He says he’s on his way,” I answered. My spine had locked somewhere down the hall. Every step closer to Selena’s door added to the weight of my limbs. I felt as though someone had caked me in mud and set me inside a kiln. I was one step from the edge of shattering.

“Are you…purposely here without him?” She watched me with muted patience, as if I’d spontaneously found myself at her door with a bottle of wine and troubles concerning my marital bed.

“No.” I pushed past her, waving for Diara to follow me. “Let’s just get through this.”

Like Kye’s friends, Diara had gathered enough on the mountainside to know Naiads were not the same as humans. We’re sirens, though you might call us witches, I’d told her when she’d asked. It seemed appropriate, considering the name had followed me my entire life. Just eat shield weed once a week and—I’d paused, considering my words carefully—avoid looking into the water if any of us are swimming.

Selena followed us back inside, crossing her graceful arms and eyeing Diara with deep apprehension. “Maren,” she finally said. “I’m not sure it’s wise—”

“It is,” I interrupted. Her wall of books covered the northern wall of her apartment, and I let my attention glaze over them, not entirely sure that I was looking for anything specific. “I want someone who has worked in Thaan’s office. Someone well acquainted with his correspondents.”

My aunt waited a beat, watching as I selected a worn spine and flipped the book open against my arm. An old record of communications from the Rivean emissary. Someone named Oberon.

“I’m both of those things,” the Naiad pressed.

I flipped the book shut, shoving it back onto the shelf next to Selena’s old journal. “Yes, but you’ve also lied to me since the day we met.”

Her throat tightened. But she didn’t deny it.

From the corners of the room, I became vaguely aware that everything had gone utterly quiet. I hadn’t even seen them, but Aegir and Pheolix stood in the doorway of what used to be Thaan’s quarters, Cebrinne peering from around the threshold of the second bedroom. The stillness here now erupted, a bottle of sparkling volare shaken violently until its cork flew loose. Diara shifted on the balls of her feet beside me, resting her hands on her hips.

I moved to the center of the room. “What else did Theia say in this prophecy?”

Something in Selena hardened, encumbered with the same porcelain shell I wore. “I assume you spoke with her yourself, since you know now that it exists.”

I resisted the urge to glance at Diara in reluctance. But I’d made my choice. I’d wanted her here. In this room of Naiads—my people—my blood, she was the only one I trusted.

Selena closed her eyes, drawing a heavy breath into her chest. “How did he die?”

She asked the question like it was a penance. Like stringing the words from her tongue was a small agony, as if the pain of knowing Kye had died in some other timeline tortured her as much as it had tortured me. The back of my nose and eyes itched with heat; the light in the room had grown a bit hazy, a bit blurry. I thought the tendons in my neck might snap with the effort it took to speak without choking on my own tongue, though when they did finally leave my mouth, my words dripped with fire.

“When the Riveans burst through the trees. We were only halfway up the mountain, and Kye was at the bottom.”

Selena wouldn’t have remembered how I was torn through the earth as Kazimir’s sword rent Kye’s heart. How I’d blazed down the mountain with lightning and lava, how I’d screamed and screamed his name into the endless nothing between us, how none of my Naiads could reach me while I buried the world in pain.

She wouldn’t remember that I’d crawled in beside his body and wept. That she’d bid me to rise, to find the Abyssi, to cross the sea of stars and bring him and Cebrinne back. Even the tiny details she’d given me before I’d swam to the house of shadow, the Morai candle and the blood betrayal drops, would have left her memory.

None of that had ever happened.

Selena’s shoulders dropped, though they didn’t relax. “I never meant for that, Maren.”

Her voice sounded like it came from somewhere underneath me. Watery and obscured, the syllables landing in and out of an echo. She’d never remember the sight of Kye slain in the snow, eyes open and unseeing, a stream of blood dripping from his nose and mouth. Neither would the rest of them—Nori, Olinne, Aitne. No one alive had ever seen Kye die, no one but me, yet it was a vision that would flash and churn and descend uninvited in my head for the rest of my life.