Page 65 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

I blinked, the feeling of Darkness’s hand still in mine. But he’d gone. And so had everyone else. The glow worms watched from above, hanging stars just over the water’s surface.

The whispering tunnel wind had died, its silence now somehow even more eerie. But I hadn’t surfaced alone. Cebrinne hovered at my shoulders, face cast in blue as she gazed at the span of rock opposite the ledge we’d peered across not long before.

Water dripped, sloshing gently against the walls. The taste of it lingered over my tongue. Both ancient and fresh, like cold rain over moss and primordial stone. My teeth chattered.

I’d lost the feeling in my toes by the time I splayed them wide and transitioned to fins, dipping under. The water drank my shoulders and head in a soft slurp. A black hole loomed far below, and I crossed it, Cebrinne following without a word.

The Scale of Safiro rested on a dais of unassuming, jagged slate, gray and bleak and sharp. A prism of crystal like the one around my neck. It brightened as I neared it, and the Breath of Safiro grew vibrant in answer. I glanced at Cebrinne. She glanced back at me, the blue glow stroking every curve of her cheeks, reflecting off the bronze of her tail. I reached.

My stone vibrated against my chest, agitated—and the Scale did the same, quivering until it fell from its pedestal, sinking to the rock below where it continued to pulse and shake.

The moment I touched it, it stilled.

The one at my breast did, too.

But something scorched my blood, igniting where skin met stone like two fires set at opposite ends of a string, burning straight to my heart. Fire exploded in my chest. It snapped through every artery, branching down my limbs. Heat crawled through my lungs and up my throat, blood and burnt flesh in my mouth. My body contorted into odd angles, and I tried to let go of the Scale, tried to drop it. But it stuck to me like it had melted into my flesh. My skin radiated bright enough to burst.

I was a highway of water, caught between two burning stars, and lightning had struck.

And then, just as quickly, it stopped. The stone sat heavy in my hand, smooth and sharp-cornered, as though nothing had happened. Cebrinne’s teal eyes floated inches from my own, wide with worry, her hands on my shoulders.

Static fizzled in my head, the taste of burnt blood in my mouth. The pit lurked below. Black and steep and endless. I blinked at it, fingers curling around the Breath of Safiro. Cebrinne felt down my opposite arm for my hand, circling her fingers between mine, towing me away.

They waited for us just inside the mouth of the cave, facing the water where Xiane had said all the past sirens lost to the pit below were found. When we padded out of the dark throat of the cavern, they turned their heads in surprise. I held up the crystal, and their faces split in wide grins.

Closest to me, Diara reached me first, shaking her head with a sigh of relief. Aren let out a low whistle while Kye pulled himself to his feet. They released a collective breath at the prism in the center of my palm, frosty at one corner, clear at the other. Aitne reached to stroke it with a finger, and my hand closed around it by reflex.

Something inside me, intuition or instinct or impulsive warning, pulled at my center like thread tight on a spool. Do not let anyone touch it.

Selena was the last to approach us. Sitting on the bear pelt between the places Pheolix and Kye had already vacated, she cautiously wove through the humans, pulling Cebrinne into a tight embrace. “Once is too many, and you’ve now done that twice,” she said, chin tucked into Cebrinne’s shoulder. Cebrinne shrugged, a hidden smirk in her eyes. Selena turned away to look at me. “You reached it.”

I nodded once. “I reached it.”

Pride swelled in my aunt’s eyes, but at the same time, she swallowed, her fingers kneading softly over her chest. “And what did it cost you?”

My line of sight drifted to Cebrinne, who hadn’t said a word. She stirred, the barest wince, her brows threaded together in a desperate please.

“He asked for something he hadn’t felt since the dawn of his time as Darkness. So, I gave him the feeling of the sun for a full year,” I murmured, numb as I locked myself into her eyes. “Warmth from its rays.”

I could already feel it, the lack of heat. I suppose for the next year, fires would become my friend.

My mother’s shoulders relaxed.

Xiane scoffed. “A terrible thing for a creature who doesn’t keep warmth easily to barter.”

Aegir nodded, though unlike Xiane, criticism was void from his voice. “The price for the stone would have been high regardless. If not warmth, something else. At least she didn’t lose the ability to produce body heat.”

As if he’d had the same thought, Aren reached for his coat, hoisting it over my shoulders.

I pulled the soft fur tight, closing the edges at my neck and looking at the rest of them. “We should go. Thaan knows where the stones are. He’s known all along.” Selena’s brows rose in surprise. I avoided her eyes, my half-truth still sticking to my tongue like rotten nectar, turning to Xiane instead. “How many exist in your colony?”

The Naiad firmed, her edges suddenly like stone. “Nineteen.”

I turned the new stone over in my palm, inviting its points to stab into the fleshy mound under my thumb. “Paria is free now. There’s no curse at the bottom of its tunnel. All there is left to do now,” I said, “is fight Thaan.”

Her jaw worked in silence, and when she took a half step from me, I knew her answer.

“Thank you for doing what we couldn’t. For taking that thing away from our colony.” Gray wind rushed through the cavern mouth, and I fought the urge to hold my arms over myself, warding the chill of it away. “I can’t risk our small domus for your war.”