Page 54 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

“And yet he pulled me under the surface when I was a child and forced me to transition. As long as he controls the Naiads sworn to him, he can reach you. You’ll let your husband die, your colony, leave every siren alive to either be killed or enslaved—”

“You know the worst part of being used by someone you trusted, Selena?” I wheeled my way around Kye, facing her completely as the last shreds of my calm snapped like the leash of a mad dog. I wondered if she’d have the same audacity to speak to him if she could remember seeing him dead. My arm stretched protectively in front of his stomach, and I claimed a step closer to her.

“It’s that every time I choose myself, every time I voice my thoughts, my apprehensions, I am the problem. Notice how you sat me down at the head of your table but didn’t ask for my opinion. I came to Calder with no one to trust after a lifetime of choosing to be alone. Because that was the best way to protect myself. And when you held out your hand, I trusted that I could take it.”

I shifted away, my feet near silent over the stone floor. “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice”—I angled a finger toward her face—“and you can fuck off.”

Her mouth opened, and exhaustion dumped over me, the sight of her a faster drain on my reserves than trying to command an ocean of water. “I’m more than the collateral damage in your war, Selena,” I said simply.

“Of course you are,” she whispered back. “You always have been. But if you think you’re the only one who has permanently lost something, you’re wrong.” Her hands wrapped around herself, her chest and stomach.

I should have felt something, watching her curl into herself. But the panels of iron and glass swam sickly behind her, the thrash of the sea against rocks below a tasteless harmony of water and granite. “You’re trying to appeal to the part of me that once searched for family by accusing me of leaving you. You’d make me a villain who lets you suffer because I put myself first. At least in all your lessons, you taught me one important thing. No one plays the victim more than the person willing to wound people they love.”

I turned then, leaving her standing next to her dancing crane statue as Aegir and Cebrinne watched from the door, her slender throat constricted into a tight knot. Kye shadowed my steps as I returned to our tower deep in thought, and none of them spoke, but I knew they followed by the soft clacking of their boots, the steady beats of their hearts.

Hadrian closed the door behind Olinne, turning back to face me with a quiet cough, which earned a glance from Aitne. Diara crossed her arms, a stern line sandwiched between her brows, though not as severe as the grunt of impatience from Nori.

Wearing the expression of someone deeply affronted, my Oculos was the one to break our silence. “I never liked that siren.”

“Sidra was safe in Juile,” Olinne said, smoothing the pleat of black byssus silk that lay over her stomach. “She waited a thousand years for Thaan to return. She never would have allowed us to live under the risk of attack.” Aitne nodded.

“To invite us under the guise of Aegir teaching you star-wielding,” Nori continued, spinning to pace into the center of Kye’s sitting room and back.

Kye found my eyes. “Well, Leihani? Should I pack our bags for a life under the sea?”

I shook my head. “No.”

They exchanged glances, all except for Kye, whose gaze never left mine, the edges of his mouth tilting up. I may have fooled them, perhaps, but I’d never be able to fool him. Kye knew too well I couldn’t run from a fight, especially one that threatened the people I loved.

I reached through the swathes of my silk dress and drew it out, holding it up for them to see. Hadrian’s forehead creased as he recognized the leather cover, and I offered Selena’s journal out to him.

“I’m not turning my back on the colonies of the world,” I said. “I’m taking things into my own hands and finding the second stone without Selena.” My finger tapped the soft leather. “Somewhere in these pages lies the location of the second stone. I need this journal decoded as quickly as you can.”

24

Maren

I’d expected Selena to try another appeal in the days following the failed meeting she’d organized. She didn’t. Besides the rare sighting from across the courtyard or when we passed each other on our way to the kitchens, I hadn’t set eyes on my once mentor or Cebrinne. I refused to let my thoughts wander over how they were spending their time, so naturally, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Their reunion had been so tearful, so touching, it set a roil in my belly. I suppose I’d thought Cebrinne might want to return to Leihani. To at least ask about my father, a man still hopelessly in love with her. Had I been so childish to believe that, despite my own reluctance to forge a new relationship with Cebrinne, she’d want to see her cordae again?

Had the three years she’d spent with him been so meaningless?

In another lifetime, if Cebrinne had never searched for a family to use as a stepping-stone in her flee toward freedom…would she have chosen my father?

Would she have chosen me?

Was the sum of my existence merely the product of a human caught in a siren’s song, the crumbs left behind after fate had enjoyed its meal?

It did little good to send myself down that particular spiral. All it did was make me feel small and forgotten and pathetically lost, yearning for a past that hadn’t even existed. I’d already decided I couldn’t forgive her for abandoning us. So why, in quiet moments when time stretched like shadows across the floor at dusk, did I find myself looking for hints that she would have stayed, had things been different?

It was a waste of my energy. I focused on Selena’s journal instead.

We devised a pipeline of information, Aitne shuffling updates from her mother in Juile while Olinne swam the northern coast in search of shield weed for our small human team. Diara resettled into the admin offices, combing records and archives to trace Thaan’s last known steps. Hadrian supplied translated excerpts from Selena’s journal one small stack at a time, portions of her coded writing he’d deciphered by candlelight. Kye and I traded to comb through them, bartering rest in the hope we’d find the location of the second stone, a creeping doubt in my chest that had little to do with exhaustion.

I knew I could simply ask Selena.

But asking was like admitting I needed help. Like every lie, every half-truth, every manipulation would be wiped clean, swept under the rug and left to gather dust. Asking was a pill too bulky to swallow, one that offered only doubt and mistrust and the bitter aftertaste of betrayal.