Page 81 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

I turned to glance at Kye over my shoulder. Thaan wouldn’t give a human any advantage over a Naiad.

I couldn’t forget the smile Thaan had aimed at me when he’d locked me in my glass box, as though I’d erred in a way that only fools err. The way he’d sneered, You gave your human husband shield weed? Thaan took risks with the humans he puppeted, but that was one risk I knew he wouldn’t take.

This did nothing to quench Kye’s distaste.

What if he just wants to get to know me? I paused to sweep my sea silk skirt out from under my foot. It shimmered down my hips and behind me, catching the bright light as it rippled away.

Kye’s footsteps creaked behind me. He doesn’t.

How do you know?

He didn’t answer. Like he had when I’d asked why the Queen sleeps elsewhere, he grated his teeth like an angry mill crushing grain to dust. The hot iron scent of anger stained the air.

Take a breath, Kye. You’re choking me.

Once that door closes, I can’t get to you.

Kye, I said, glancing admonishingly at him again.

He stepped up behind me. A full foot taller than I was, two stairs below, he leveled me, eye to eye. Are you so sure that you could strike him with your lightning, or freeze his blood before he could attack you?

My smile faltered. My instinct was to answer yes. Of course I could. I was a queen, a siren queen, and I wasn’t sure when or how it had happened, but there was very little about humans that worried me now. But something in the way he asked bound my tongue. His voice, even inside my thoughts, had smoothed and sharpened like the fine edge of a flat blade, reflecting back into my gaze. More mirror than sword.

He swallowed, fingers turning his premonition ring over his middle finger.

My hand twitched over the carved railing, worn smooth with the traffic of palms before mine. Caution hooked around my edges like the damp corners of paper, curling them over themselves, over me, cold and rigid. “Is there something about him I need to know?”

Kye’s forehead creased tight. “He’s mad, Leihani.”

I studied him, which might have been a mistake. My cool composure folded under the weight of his stare, a slowly billowing cloud of disquiet descending over me instead. “I’m not afraid of madness,” I said, lowering my voice. “What else are you not telling me?”

A flicker of something crossed behind his gaze.

A look I hadn’t seen in months. He frowned, pulling his lower lip in to scrape against his teeth, letting his eyes drop to stare at the hollow of my throat. The scent of his anger shifted. Soured. A trickle of cloying fear tainted my next inhale, more complex than I’d once realized.

“He hates women,” Kye said.

There was more. He opened his mouth, let it hover for a few long moments, unwilling to meet my eye.

“I’m not afraid of that either,” I said carefully, though a hundred thoughts tumbled uneasily through my head as he struggled.

“I can’t—you haven’t seen—” He ran a hand through his roots. Wind slithered in gusts against the glass panels. I counted them as the moments slid by, as Kye rallied his thoughts. “He hates women,” he said again, “finds them beneath him, and he wants to speak with you alone. Why would he want you alone? What does he need to tell you that I can’t be present for?”

“I don’t know, Kye. Does he blame me for your avoiding the war?”

He was already shaking his head, throwing his glare at the violently orange sun outside, a heavy roll in his jaw. “He’d use you to threaten me if that was his worry. That’s how he uses people.”

I pressed my lips together. Thaan did the same, and I was no stranger to that style of manipulation. I reached for his hand, summoning his eyes back to mine. “I have my song. I have my water-call. I have the stones. And I’ll be in your head the entire time.”

Kye sighed, long and silent through his nose. He wrought his premonition ring from his finger, slipping it over my thumb, the metal cool and smooth over my knuckle. “Remember the night you married me?”

The question was so unexpected I couldn’t help but smile. “Yes.”

“The way you walked into my rooms without an ounce of trust?” He twisted to reach for his sheathed knife, gliding it from the leather strap of his belt.

“Yes.”

Kye pulled the slit of my skirt over my thigh, leaning in close to snake his hands up and over my waist. My body rocked slightly against his tugs and pulls as he wrapped his belt around my hips. “The way you were ready to kill me if you needed to?” He grasped my hand, guiding it over the silk to let it rest against the hilt of his knife.