Page 64 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

We both startled, looking at him. I’d forgotten he was there, forgotten we still stood in the house of shadow. He gazed at us, our joined hands, and something sad reflected behind his eyes. “You’ve been apart for some time.”

Cebrinne cleared her throat, stepping gently out of my reach. “Yes,” she said, the pitch of her voice once again controlled. As soon as her heel landed, her edges rippled. Wavered. Like she was made of burning paper, curling and contracting, warping her limbs and shrinking her down. Flesh darkened, hair fell away, and skin caved in over her eyes and ears and mouth, sealing them closed.

A gasp burned through the expanse, my gasp, and I hit my knees. I hadn’t realized that was it, hadn’t realized my chance to say goodbye had come and gone.

She thrashed under the light of my stone, and I quickly wound my fingers around it.

“Is she in pain?” I demanded, unable to tear my eyes away. Darkness drifted to me and offered a silent, gentle hand, as though I wouldn’t like the answer. My light peeled his shadows away like scalded skin, droplets of silver ichor beading under his arcane tattoos. I grasped his palm, shock still painting the walls of my mind white and numb.

“Hold tight,” he said, gazing at the ceiling-less expanse above.

I hardened at that word. “Wait.”

Darkness glanced sharply at me. Skin flecked gently from his jaw, shriveling as it husked away, floating from him like ash from a fire.

“How will I use them together?” I asked, careful to not look in Cebrinne’s direction. “How will they kill Thaan?”

He watched me, his eyes flickering as they studied the shadows of my face. “Kill him?” The tone of his voice blew through me like an uneasy wind. His forehead creased. “Do you not understand what the stones are? What Thaan traded?”

“He traded his humanity,” I said, remembering my long talk with Sidra, who had spent a thousand years ruminating over what exactly Thaan had bargained. “To break his cordae and gain the power to shapeshift.”

“Oh, lovely pet.” Darkness’s eyes shifted to the Breath of Safiro. “They come for power. They come for revenge. They come to heal a broken heart. But such things cannot be healed without Time and Truth and Love. He stole from all three when he made his pact with me.”

I pulled back just enough to frown into his shadowy eyes. “What are you saying?”

“The thing Thaan traded for his power, the thing you hold half of in your hand,” he said, “is Thaan’s heart.”

My mouth opened. I stared at him, speechless.

Darkness smiled sadly. “Immortality makes us reckless. I am Darkness, I am forgotten, I am banished, I am alone. I have only the past, and it plagues me like a ghost. I can remember simple things. The sound of laughter, the taste of summer berries, the brush of a kiss over my cheek. But reliving memory is like trying to taste salt by looking at a painting of the sea. I am old, and mortal pleasures lie beyond my reach.

“A Naiad father dropped into my house, his daughter slain, his cordae cold and distant. Humans had torn his family apart. He’d called to the other colonies, and they had turned their backs on him. He begged me to take it away, his anguish. And I realized I hadn’t felt anguish in a long, long time. So I took his heart, sliced it into two, not caring that he was a Videre, that his cordae would break, that his mate would bury an island in the aftermath—a rare island of humans who favored the moon over the sun. Theia learned what he’d done, and she cursed his heart into stone. Half to remain under the sea and half to remain on land, exiling Thaan and Sidra to opposite realms. Then Theia imposed a sacred law: anyone could restore Thaan’s heart, but only a child of her choosing could reach it.”

I listened quietly, my mind tracing over the memory of Thaan reaching for the Breath of Safiro in Selena’s destroyed office. How he’d recoiled, almost as if… “His own heart burned him.”

Darkness held out his hand for me once again. “Would yours not do the same, had you abandoned it?”

I let his hand hover in space, unwilling to finish our meeting. “Let my mother go.”

He took his time looking at me, gathering the details of my face, his smoky tendrils waving languidly about his skin. “I cannot unbind a bargain such as hers without inciting the ire of Time.”

My blood crashed in my ears, my teeth pressed painfully together.

“But,” he said. And my heart stopped. I clung to that word, hanging on it like the floor had given under my feet. “But I can amend our deal so that she can leave with you now. I’ll give you a year with her, and her fifty may start when it is over.”

I shifted my weight. Darkness had already asked for my afterlife. What else could I offer him?

What can a mortal give to a god?

But I wet my dry lips, quieted the thrash of my heart. “What do you want in return?”

Darkness smiled, holding out his open hand again. This time, I took it.

29

Maren

Water had filled the cavern.