Page 61 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

“Maren,” she began, but I didn’t want to hear. Everything that had ever come from her mouth had been uttered to twine me into a thread with which she could sew her plans together. Every sweet memory had been soured, every lesson had been tainted, every word now a broken vow. Looking at her was a knife between my ribs, and the thought of taking her counsel churned sickness into my belly like mud between the spokes of a wheel.

Who might I lose next under her guidance? Would it be Nori, Aitne, Diara?

Thaan wants me to kill Hadrian.

So kill him, she’d said, flippant and easy, like the choice to end a human’s life wasn’t even worth her time compared to her carefully laid tracks for me. Before she’d left the palace at my side, riding toward a fate that sealed Kye’s death.

“Maren,” Selena said, softer. “I have never thought of you as an assignment.”

My lungs narrowed; it hurt to breathe. I swallowed that constricting pain down. “I asked you for no more lies. I asked you to see me as your equal.”

Loose strands of hair drifted from my face as Selena exhaled slowly. “There was nothing any of us could have done to change the tides of fate.”

I shook my head. “Then it seems there would be little harm in telling me what was to come.”

Anguish reflected at me in the ocean-blue of her eyes. “That isn’t true. There is harm in approaching a fate you can’t escape. There is worry, and dread, and agony. There is grief in counting days and hours and moments, knowing they are coming to an end, and I wanted to protect you from it. I didn’t know what would happen once the choice to cross the sea of stars found you. I looked at you, and I saw that you were free and happy, more than I’d ever been, and that was precious to me. I didn’t want to destroy that happiness for you. What you see as a betrayal, I viewed as a shield.”

Her words nipped at my throat, tightening my windpipe even further. I stole a moment of quiet, delaying the sound of my voice for fear it might crack. “Your shield,” I breathed, “is a cage. I don’t need to be managed. I don’t need to be mothered. I’ve lived my entire life without one.”

Hurt crackled behind her eyes, but I looked away and did not glance at her again, nor the siren that stood behind her with hair like a cool waterfall. I walked from them, and continued to walk, slipping into the throat of the cavern.

27

Maren

Istepped back enough to give Kye a single, solemn nod.

Hadrian drove his fingers through his ash-brown roots. Diara’s pale-green eyes widened, her neck stricken.

“My Queen,” Nori began, but I didn’t let her get further than that.

“Take Olinne and Aitne above,” I commanded my Oculos. “The rest of you should follow.”

They glanced at each other like my instruction was unclear, like my words were inaudible, salt and fog stirred under the thrash of the sea.

“Come on.” Pheolix smacked the shoulder of the nearest person to him—Aren, who started. “The water down there will soon be the water up here, and someone needs to walk me back up this thing.”

Aegir shook himself loose of the group, holding a hand out for Pheolix. “Here, gnat.” He turned away, easily striding away. Cebrinne surrendered only a short distance, mouth hitched to one side in thought. Hadrian ran a coarse hand over his mouth. He looked like he might try to argue, but Diara, who had frowned at the pit for several long minutes, grasped his arm and swept the opposite way.

His eyes bulged, choking on the damp cavern air, and though he still looked as if he doubted whether Kye and I possessed sound judgment, the cord of his muscles relaxed, unwinding the moment her fingers curled around him. He let her shuffle him to the first bend in the tunnel, where they waited for the rest to follow.

Kye was the last one to step away. He traced my bottom lip with his thumb. Don’t make me threaten Darkness to get you back.

I smiled against his skin. I wouldn’t mind seeing that. Maybe I will.

I’d make sure you enjoy it even less than he did. His fingers stilled, and he tilted me up, securing my mouth with his. My heart had begun to skip, knowing what it was about to fling itself into. But his lips slowed again, a dizzyingly quiet pulse in my ear. Kye left me with a quick kiss, one with only a hint of bite, a taste of ire, should he have to terrorize a god simply to reclaim me. But it was sweet and lush and mine all the same, and I felt it tumble through my skin, settling into my blood.

He was the last to leave my side, but only by a few inches. He took half a tread away, just enough to give me space to turn and leap. His eyes were the last thing I looked at before I stepped off the edge, wild and calm and burning.

The hole in the bowels of Paria swallowed me in a single gulp, but not before a blur flew overhead, blue and black, gleaming.

Someone had jumped with me.

My feet hit liquid, shining under the twinkling lights of the starry ceiling above. And then it folded in half, renting a chasm through the center, and flung me into the deep.

It was all too familiar, yet completely distinct from my dive into Sylus Lake. There the water had been brisk, fresh, tucked between crystals of ice and under pine and ashwood. I caught a taste of the Parian pool as I descended, wet stone and forgotten earth. Like ancient secrets and whispers and shadows that lurked just beyond the corner of my vision.

I tried to crane my neck, tried to see who had followed me in.