Page 97 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

A pang of trepidation struck me—what if, after all this time, I’d brought Cebrinne home to my father to find he’d given his house away to live with one of the islander women?

Love had said a cordae merely fractures when one half leaves the realm of the living. But Cebrinne and Ano were both living again. Their cordae was intact. He wouldn’t have found someone else…would he?

Palunu brushed a lock of hair off my shoulder. “The mountains, sometimes. The caves. My father’s old boat. He tried to sail to Calder with it months ago, but the riptide carried him back in. Traders want a steep fee for passage, and he’s been saving, but a fisherman’s wages are not built for voyaging pleasures. He’s been building a Hokule’a in the meantime, to see if he can make the journey himself.”

“He’s been trying to sail to Calder?” I shook my head. “Why?”

Palunu frowned. “For you, of course. Why else?”

A raw burn crept down my throat, then. Inches from me, Palunu’s face swam, tilting back and forth like a rocking ship. I blinked her back into focus, heat prickling the beds of my lashes.

“Oh, child,” Palunu whispered sadly.

I’d swept myself onto the island with faux confidence, burrowing my insecurities under the superiority of a newly appointed Queen, but she’d somehow reduced me to a sniveling child within moments anyway, in a way I would have least expected.

“Do,” I stalled, swallowing the lump in my throat down, “do you know where he is now?”

Palunu opened her mouth. The door flap behind me rustled, footsteps padding softly onto the veranda above. My aunt glanced at the sound.

“Mihauna bless the night,” Palunu said, eyes rolling toward the sky as her lashes fluttered shut. Her knees buckled, tilting her backwards. “I’m dreaming.”

The grass caught her fall in a crash of whispers.

Cebrinne helped me carry Palunu into the house, as we didn’t wish to leave her unconscious in the grass. Huffing with exertion, we laid my aunt across the dusty floor, then gazed at each other across from her, hands anchored into our hips. A prickle of guilt needled under my skin. Palunu would wake to find we’d gone. I wonder if she’d doubt her own memory.

Morning had cast the houses in thin gold when I emerged from the door flap a second time, though with Darkness’s bargain still in my blood, the air was a cool nip against my face. Across the western sky, the moon had yet to dip below the sea. Good luck followed when the full moon shared the sky with the sun, I thought to myself.

“Any idea where he might have gone?” Cebrinne asked, dusting her hands.

I edged around my father's—now my cousin Nola’s—house, hesitant to let any other islanders see me, my eyes lifting as I scanned my memories for ideas.

What if the King already has him?

The question burst through my thoughts like a bubble of air erupting over the surface. What if the sailors had taken him? What if there had been a tenth ship sent to arrest him, and I’d missed it somehow, crossing under its keel on my way to the island?

What if he’d been found, killed, dumped—

No. No. I reeled my thoughts in, tucking them tightly in check. Think.

The mountains. The caves. His canoe.

He wasn’t in the boat. I’d have seen him when I laid my cloak across it. My gaze trekked across the swaying palms and ferns that furnished the mountain’s base.

The cave with the dangling ferns, a voice swept softly against the current of my thoughts.

Arms crossed, Cebrinne had flung her glare towards the market, her weight rocked fully against one hip. “Should we have the colony search the island again?”

There’s a cave that delves into the mountain. You can only reach it by sea. When the tide is low.

“Let me check somewhere else first,” I said.

44

Maren

We didn’t wait for the tide to shrink away. We found the cavern under the waves beyond a graveyard of ruined ships. The cave tucked into the northern edge of the island, the very opposite of my father’s house.

Air battled water at the mouth of it, enough trapped inside to gargle and burp angrily, a rampage with every swell and fall. Finding it and swimming in had been no problem, but we fought the rough waters, hands and elbows braced against the narrow throat of the cavern as it roared and spit at our faces in the near dark.