Page 53 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

“You won’t break it,” the drone said.

Olinne pointed a finger at him. “Do not trust him, my Queen. Drones have no mind of right and wrong. They have no morals, no honesty, no meaning to their lives. They are loyal to the master that made them, and that master does not sit at the table with us. They—”

“Not him,” Cebrinne said dully. “He’s just an idiot.”

Pheolix smiled at bare air. “I’ve missed you, Ceba.”

She scowled in return.

Aegir cleared his throat. “Two hive heirs and a gnat,” he continued, a gleam of nostalgia in his eye. “Thaan intended for me to choose one as a cordae, then use them to trap me.”

Pheolix’s knife spun in his fingers. “I was the obvious choice.”

“But Cebrinne and Selena had called upon Theia already,” Aegir said. “They’d already been handed the prophecy, in which the moon revealed the existence of two crystals. One from the abandoned tunnels of Paria, and the other”—he gestured to my neck—“hangs right in front of me.”

I didn’t move, though my fingers itched to find it then, a gentle weight against my chest.

Aegir ran his hand down the short length of his beard. “I might have killed the three of them, but at our first meeting, Cebrinne gave me an answer to a question I’d been asking for years.”

My brow crept up my forehead. “Which was?”

The Videre opened his hand. “A way to kill Thaan.”

I sent my focus across the table to Selena. “The entry from your journal only mentioned one stone.”

“Well, I assume you only read a single page.” Her fingertip slid over a river that spilled into the Anatoly Sea. “There was a brief point in time where I hoped we might find the other.”

“And what would you have done with them, had you found both?”

Aegir turned his head to study Selena. She exhaled slowly. “We never got that far. The Scale of Safiro is unreachable except for one person. The child of the moon.”

The Calderian wind scratched quietly at the tower windows, and even through the walls, the taste of sea salt and damp rock tingled over my tongue. Somehow, even though we’d just returned from the Sylus Mountains, even though they hadn’t seen each other in over twenty years, I couldn’t shake the notion that Aegir, Selena, Pheolix, and Cebrinne had planned this conversation. Had practiced it, had honed and shaped and molded me so that I would someday find myself here in this seat as they stared, waiting for me to announce that, of course, as the sole person alive who could recover the second stone, I’d be happy to do it with them.

“No.”

Selena’s mouth parted. She glanced at her cohorts next to her, then back at me. “Maren—"

I rose slowly from my chair, my fingers splayed wide. Around me, Diara and my Naiads rose as well. Kye and Hadrian leaned forward off the wall. The Stone of Safiro tipped forward, swinging gently through the air as I leaned over the table, my words sharp. “I am not your weapon.”

“Maren.” Selena hurried after me in the hallway, reaching for my arm the way she had when I’d accused her of keeping secrets and stormed out of her apartment. The familiarity of it, distinct in my memory, jarred something loose in me. Some hidden pin, the last thing keeping my composure together. I whipped around.

“Understand that I owe you nothing,” I growled.

“You’re right.” Selena’s eyes shone thick and bright. “You don’t. You don’t owe any of us a thing.”

“Then you’ll excuse me, as I have a colony to lead and a husband with a human lifespan that I don’t intend to waste fighting your war.” I didn’t miss the way Kye winced, his hand warm at the small of my back, and some part of me broke at having to say the words aloud. I turned away from Selena again, pulling my arm from her grasp.

“Where will you go, that he will not try to reach you?” Selena called softly after me. “You think you’re safe in Juile? Thaan was afraid to face Sidra. He was afraid of his own past. You are not protected from that fear.”

Long shadows graced the floor behind her apartment door, the others listening. My Naiads waited ahead, almost to the edge of the stairs, a curl of disgust over Nori’s mouth. Hadrian and Diara didn’t move, but Kye laced his fingers into mine. “You don’t have to decide anything right now,” he said.

“He’s wrong. At least listen to our plan,” Selena’s voice was smooth, controlled, gentle. Yet a desperate hunger burned in her gaze. “For the first time in twenty-five years, Thaan isn’t in the palace. He’s not directing the King, not communicating with foreign nations, not sending his fleet after tiny colonies in the mountains. He’s in hiding, and that makes him twice as dangerous. We have no idea what his next move is.”

“Then I suggest you strategize,” I threw back at her. “After two decades of manipulating others, I’d say you’re pretty adept.”

Selena’s gaze slid to Kye, a silent plea bursting from her seams. “You can’t outrun him. You can’t escape him. I’ve tried.”

I crossed my arms. “Thaan can’t enter the water.”