Page 75 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

“Well, you’ll send her my regards.” Pheolix licked his lip, leaving it bright red. He continued looking across us, raising his brows. “You brought humans. I suppose if you were raised among filth, filth is what you’ll return to. I’m surprised to see you alive, Prince Nikolaos. I thought I sent you to Perpetuum the day I let Maren live in that glass box.”

Kye’s mouth curved into the barest shadow of a smile. “I guess you didn’t bury me shallow enough.”

“No?” Pheolix’s brows raised.

“It was lonely without you, Thaan. Decided to come back and drag you to the fucking afterlife with me.”

Pheolix chuckled, but something like restlessness or uncertainty sparked behind his pale eyes.

His roving gaze landed on Selena. For a moment he looked like a cat who had cornered a bird, a grinning smear lost between wicked and playful that sent the heel of my hand over the handle of my knife.

But then he noticed the Naiad beside her. Cebrinne.

He stared, his thoughts shrouded behind Pheolix’s white eyes, his smile turning waxy with petrification like a knot in a log forgotten under mud and sulfuric ash and the heavy burden of time.

His gaze flicked back to me. Then to Cebrinne again.

The corner of my mouth lifted. “Keep thinking, Thaan. You’re almost there. You’ve almost fucking got it.”

Pheolix scoffed, ignoring me. “And are you sleeping well out here, Hadrian, among the sticks and reeds and dead leaves, now that I’m no longer in the castle?”

The soft sound of yawning wood interrupted him, accompanied by the stretch of sinew. An arrow lay nocked in Diara’s bow, her fingers tight over the fletching aimed at Pheolix’s head.

“Leave,” she said. “Or lose your spy.”

Selena’s breath guttered. “Wait.”

The mirth dropped from Pheolix’s mouth. He tilted his head back toward Maren. “I’ll go. But first, tell me this, my dear. What did you trade to Darkness in order to reach the stone?”

Maren lifted her chin, proud and haughty, but she didn’t answer.

Pheolix clicked his tongue. “I often consider the way you fought me just before signing your life away in blood. The way you refused to give me ten years, twenty years, fifty. Darkness does not make meager deals.” He strode forward. Diara’s bowstring drew fully taut. Selena’s hands raised, a shaking plea to lower the arrow. Pheolix smiled once again, his voice a clear whisper. “What piece of your mind or flesh or blood did you bargain away, just to be rid of me? To be a little wraithling on his wall? Perhaps we will spend eternity together, you and I. You were always mine, after all.”

I don’t remember my feet moving, my body clearing the mud and stone and ice, my fist drawing back.

I vaguely recalled the snap and whir of Diara’s bowstring.

The exploding bite of iron and cedarwood through my arm, however, rang as clear in my memory as a bell.

“Mother fucking sun and stars and eternal blighting dust,” I seethed, twisting away from Pheolix, who had stumbled back and blinked like he was clearing cobwebs from his eyes.

Aren laughed, often his choice reaction whenever we’d reached a topic in conversation unruly enough to be deemed awkward. “You weren’t even in front of her that time.”

I scowled at him. Hadrian shook his head. “Can’t go catching arrows for everyone, Kye. That’s your right arm.”

It hardly mattered. I used both to fight, better than he fucking could. Gritting my teeth, I raised the arm in question, rotating it to assess where Diara’s arrow had landed. It hurt like they all had, a blast of fire straight through my sun-damned muscle, but I couldn’t blame her for loosing it when she had. Not when I’d planned to knock Thaan out of Pheolix using the flat edge of my fist in the same moment.

“You going to need this back,” I asked dryly, holding my arm out to her, “or can I keep it?”

Diara tracked the thin dribble of blood as it dripped to the rocks. She lowered her bow with a mumbled, idiot. But the rest of them commended my quick response between heavy sighs of relief that Thaan had left, as if I’d intentionally stepped between an arrow and Pheolix’s body.

Aegir sighed, and though the sound was soft, something about it grated like sandpaper in my fucking ears. “You all right, gnat?”

Pheolix sniffed roughly, wiping a trickle of red from his upper lip with his thumb. He frowned in surprise, folding the hem of his shirt up to wipe it away more skillfully. “Never better.”

“How many times?” Nori said. “How many times has he used you to spy on us?”

The drone coughed quietly, as though remnants of Thaan had stayed behind like dust in his lungs. He pressed his fingers against his chest, rubbing absently in a slow circle. “That’s the first time since he left.”