Page 76 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

Olinne snorted with heavy suspicion. Selena reached for Pheolix’s hand, fingers sliding over his. His rubbing stopped as he caught it, anchoring it in place.

Nori shook her head. “It’s not safe to travel with him.”

“What do you propose we do?” Cebrinne asked firmly. “Send him back alone? He’s blind.”

Pheolix laughed softly. “I can manage.”

Nori’s mouth twisted. “I’m sure you can.”

Selena threw her an iron glare. Aegir’s mouth thinned.

“No one is returning alone,” Maren said. “We’re heading to Calder City. It’s not as if he’s discovered some secret plan of ours.” She waited for a reply, eyeing the Naiads like a mother haranguing her brood, but the snap of her voice squashed the conversation against the rocks at our feet. She shifted her attention to Pheolix. “Is it likely that Thaan might send his drones after us again?”

Pheolix weighed the question, tilting his head right and left in a motion so small it was almost indistinct. “Fairly likely. If nothing else, to intimidate us.” He sighed, pulling Selena’s hand away to take a step forward. He knotted his fist into his hip like he had something further to say but decided against it.

Maren nodded, glancing up at me. “Which way to Locklier Castle?”

Nori and Olinne adopted Diara as their favorite human. They walked alongside her through the vineyard, asking if she hated all men or drones or just Thaan, each answer seemingly acceptable in their opinion. Aitne had taken my arm, a softness in the touch of her hand as she eased the shaft from its bed. She sealed my open skin, leaving it stinging and itching and tingling painfully when I turned my wrist. Her honeycomb brows raised at the sight of a nearly identical white scar on my opposite arm. I smiled guiltily. “I guess I like to collect them. There’s a third behind my shoulder as well.”

The evening sun hung high and gray when we finally reached the castle door. Kolibri had snorted and pawed at the open trail ahead of us, braying under the agony of keeping pace with human legs. At the sight of men working along the vines, she lay her ears flat and ducked her head low, only a breath away from charging them like a fucking bull.

The groundskeeper recognized me and Hadrian, an impressive feat as our clothes were salt-stained and wrinkled with sleep and wind. Dimas’s mother took one look at us and hissed and squawked like a mad goose at her servants to start baths and launder clothes. I was supplied a fresh shirt and pants from Dimas, who, unlike his mother, never squawked.

An hour later, I sat on the bed of one of the guestrooms Maren and I had been directed to. We hadn’t enjoyed a bed to ourselves, let alone walls and a fucking bolted door, in nine days—though it felt like weeks. Sediment scrubbed from our hair, our skin scoured with soap, I lay my hand on the bedspread beside me and made a lazy circle.

Maren raised a brow, a smile on her mouth. She crossed the room and placed herself beside me, head lolling onto my shoulder. My fingers laced hers without my telling them to, a hound searching for a scent. I couldn’t help myself. If Maren was within reach, I fucking reached. If I could touch her, I did. Something pulled me to her like a magnet, a compass always leading me north. Cordaed or not, it was there, a constant tug in her direction, a need to feel her with my hands and blend my breath with hers. It made me question the authenticity of a corda-cruor, the strength and intensity of it, since it was now gone and I felt the same as I always had.

But I wasn’t Naiad. Maybe I’d never understand what it had been like for her before. What it was like for her now. Maybe the difference was as wide as a canyon, as deep as Darkness’s house of shadow. I’d never know. Everything felt as it always had. Maren was a fall I couldn’t escape. Even now, I looked at her, and I was still falling.

I’d waited, those first few weeks after returning from Perpetuum, to try and understand if anything had changed for her. I suppose it made me a fucking coward that I couldn’t bring myself to ask outright, too nervous to hear the answer. To hear her feelings hadn’t changed might have been a balm at first. A salve over an itch that would eventually wear off, leaving behind the prickling question of whether she’d lied to calm my worries.

To hear that her feelings had changed, well. I’m unsure if I could recover from that.

And then, perhaps, there was the other issue, one as fucking fragile as my pride. My mortality.

My mind did what it always did when the thought reared its delicate fucking head. Scramble and stumble to bury it under more present, pressing topics like finding wood for a fire or an apple with which to potentially maim myself when Maren’s hellhound caught a sniff of the fruit within my fingers.

Are you tired? I asked, pulling Maren’s hand into my lap, massaging my thumb into her palm. She exhaled with a heated groan. The sound pulsed down my spinal column like a drug.

Yes, and if you continue that, you might as well forfeit my staying awake for anything that requires more work than snoring.

I tilted my head toward her to find dark eyes fettered with those long lashes, sleepy and hungry at the same time. My thumbs delved into the fleshy mound under hers, the knots in her forearm, watching her body melt into mine with slow satisfaction.

“I have to feed Kolibri,” she murmured as I moved her shoulders, head rolling to the side.

“She’ll be fine. She can eat the stable hand. Probably already has.”

Maren laughed, but she tapped my working hands, lifting away. “It will only take me a few minutes.”

I stood up too. Wrapped an arm behind her waist and tilted her chin up, brushing my lips against hers. “Stay here. I’ll do it. Don’t fall asleep.”

She didn’t argue, and when I reached under her knees and lifted her up, she rooted around for a firm hold onto the collar of my shirt, pulling me in as I laid her over the bed. My lips found hers again, sweet and warm, and she shivered when I tugged the sheaths of her dress aside and wrapped my hand across her stomach.

I loved the shape of her mouth, loved how it pushed and pulled against mine, soft but firm, plush and smooth and sharp. I loved breathing her in, her scent rich and thick and warm like island sun. It was spicy too, like the starflowers that bloomed in creeping vines under the shaded forest north of Laurier Palace. I loved the hum of her voice, how it almost vibrated within me, stirred within my bones like embers in a fire.

My kisses roamed the corner of her jaw, sinking into her neck. She swallowed against me, turning her face to nip sharply over my wrist. I smiled into her skin before letting my teeth explore the curves and valleys of her throat.

Knuckles tapped against the door in a rapid-fire string of knocks. I’d hardly pulled away to tell whoever it was to fuck off when it opened, betraying us to a flurry of red-gold hair, long green skirts, and a pinched mouth.