Page 94 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

“Do you understand what you are, Maren?” Aegir asked, turning to look at me fully. “Why Theia would have sent Cebrinne to Leihani?”

The wind-kissed stone was cool under my fingertips. A shiver ran down my back, disappearing at the base of my spine. “I’m a child of the moon,” I said—though I’ll admit, I’d never fully understood the words. The vision of my ancestry returned, thousands of faces leading back to Theia, young and vibrant and almost mortal as she held a basket of flowers.

“You’re the child of a Prizivac Vode, a daughter of the sea,” Aegir said, motioning to the soft glint of my tattoos. “But the people of Leihani are the only humans in the world devoted to the moon, not the sun. Everywhere else, altars and temples are constructed in Aalto’s name. Humans rise with him in the morning and sleep with him at night, and when they pray for stronger crops or healthy children, their prayers are whispered in his name. But the islanders of Leihani—” He clicked his tongue. “Why do you think, a thousand years ago, that Theia separated Sidra and Thaan so forcefully? Let one keep their lungs and the other keep their tail, so that they’d never meet again?”

I laughed, an awkward tumble of air from the back of my throat. “Sidra buried Neris Island under lava when Thaan broke their cordae.”

When Sidra had recounted her story, I’d thought Theia’s punishment seemed severe. Even more when Kye had died, when I hadn’t been able to calm the volcanic tide inside me, the clash of light and stars in the air or the chasm that split rock and earth. The endless dark with only the sound of roaring wind and Kye’s name on my voice, shouting, shouting, shouting.

I shook the memory away. Or tried to. The sound echoed somewhere in the shadowed sands of my mind as Aegir studied me.

“It wasn’t penance for a crime,” he said. “The Juile colony lays at the feet of Leihani. Theia separated them to protect her favorite people, the only humans who revered her. She didn’t send Cebrinne there because of a divine foretelling by the Fates. She sent your mother because she planned you.”

He stepped away from the wall, closer to me, silver cloak swelling behind him under the wind’s current. “There hasn’t been a male siren born to the Juile colony since Sidra destroyed the main island. Sidra always assumed it was part of her curse, a way to ensure the colony’s eventual demise. But Theia sent a Prizivac Vode who was not born of Juile to the island of moon people to have a daughter. Even now, the moon could smite Thaan herself, but she hasn’t. She’s the goddess of the future, and she waited for you.”

I raised a brow at him, unsure what to even say. Doubt curled in my belly like smoke, cloying—almost choking. But somewhere in the alcoves of my mind, the small recesses that pooled and drained like slow, stagnant water, Theia’s words rippled.

You are the beginning.

“It begs the question,” Aegir said, “what happens after Thaan is gone? What plan does she have for you?”

Something in me stirred. Fluttered and folded and collapsed, only to waver again, beating wings against my ribcage.

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “I don’t know, but I have to go. I have to find my father.”

42

Maren

The moon floated high enough to flirt with the overhead clouds by the time I’d prepared myself to leave. Full and round and heavy, she sat like a mirror in the sky, glinting a reflection back to me I didn’t wish to see.

You are the beginning.

Kye arrived as I pulled my silk cloak over my shoulders, a leather-bound tome under his arm, the title a simple word spelled out in symbols too ancient for my eyes. He set it down with a heavy thud, eyes lighting softly as he fixed his golden stare onto the clothes that lay underneath my black Naiad dress.

“Do you want me to come?” he asked, fastening the cloak at my neck.

I leaned forward, ignoring his hands and letting my forehead strike the hard wall of his chest just below his collar bones. “No,” I lied, the word vibrating against his skin.

The morning I’d left Leihani, I’d told Kye I hated the islanders.

That was after Naheso tried to drown me under the marshes of my breadfruit trees. After I’d killed my uncle and walked in a daze through the market covered in swamp water and blood to find the village healer, Akamai, and had discovered Kye instead. It felt like a lifetime ago, though it had been less than a year.

My belly twisted like a fist. Returning to Leihani without Kye at my side felt like wandering back into a cage I’d accidentally escaped. I’d been small there. Forced to mature early yet treated like a cursed child, shunned and kept out of sight. Wherever I roamed, I could be anything or anyone. A witch, a siren, a queen. In Leihani, I’d always be exactly what they made me into.

Defending the islanders against Aegir or refusing to allow Emilius to use them in his war was one thing. Returning to the island myself was another entirely. I’d once thought I might never go back. Moons above, the largest part of me still balked at the very idea.

But a quiet part of me begged to return. Not just for my father, who I hoped was simply visiting a friend or socializing on a veranda other than his own. I missed my tiny house with windows so close to the sea I could almost touch the waves. I missed warm, rich soil under my nails, separating seedlings from their mothers, wiping sweat off my brow after a long night under the moon and plunging into the salt water without a care about my dress or hair.

I wondered if this was what Kye felt whenever he returned to Laurier Palace.

It didn’t matter if I wanted him with me or not. We both knew that after what happened with Emilius, Kye needed to stay in the City of Towers. The residents of the palace would quickly realize the King was suddenly missing a hand. Questions would soon circle like sharks.

I suppose my one comfort in leaving now was that Emilius had the brief chance to kill Kye, but he hadn’t taken it.

I let him fasten my cloak and kiss me goodbye, promising to return tomorrow. Twenty minutes later, I found myself staring past my toes into the dark, furious waves of the Juile Sea.

“No horse?” a smooth voice asked in the dark.