Page 99 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

He jumped at the sound of my voice, his knee slipping sideways under him, head careening forward to thwack against the hull. My father scrambled to his feet, whipping around—and then freezing in place. Then stared, his mouth cracked open.

“Hello, Makua,” I said.

I expected him to return the greeting. My little leaf, he’d say, when I was small and curious and eager to please. That name had dwindled throughout the years, as the islanders began keeping my name in the company of hardships that had fallen over Leihani. Shriveled crops or scarce fish or sailors that washed to the shore with dead lungs full of salt.

He didn’t say it. His brows slanted instead, pitch-black eyes varnished with a slick shine, and his mouth moved in silence, words I couldn’t hear.

The stone in his hand fell. He became a smear of brown and gold and green before my equilibrium rocked backwards, my feet losing the sturdy sense of ground, arms wrapping around me in a thunderous hold.

“They let you go,” he said, face buried into the side of my neck. “Or did you escape?”

“Well,” I began, but I was certain he was only half listening. He’d pulled away enough to set me down, his stare darting over my face and shoulders and arms as if he expected to find a smattering of open wounds and bruises.

“What are these?” he asked, holding my wrist and running a finger down my arm, trailing a long line of molten tattoos. “What—what is…” He stopped, hand cupping the tips of my fingers, his attention fixed solely on the glittering ring on my left hand.

My father’s throat narrowed, tight over his Adam’s apple. He sniffed, once, hard and short. “Are you hurt? Has anyone hurt you?”

“I’m fine.” My words were as hoarse and clipped as his, the hard lump gathering again at the back of my soft palate.

“You’re fine,” he echoed softly. “You’re fine. You’re safe.” He sniffed again, blinking up at the crack of sky spilling through the rock like an open chimney. Water welled in the rim of his eyes. “Does anyone know you’re here?”

I shifted awkwardly, a tumble of emotions vying for my attention. He combated something similar, caught between checking me for bumps and bruises in an almost business-like way as he battled back tears.

“A few people,” I admitted, ignoring the feeling of Cebrinne watching from the shadows.

“We’re leaving.”

I didn’t mean to laugh. The sound was hollow and thin and frayed with disbelief like the snap of a dry, rotten rope as it broke into two, broken threads disintegrating in my hands.

A year ago, my father would have ignored that laugh. He’d always let his ears glide over my sarcasm, as if it were too slippery to acknowledge, something he’d never gain enough purchase to walk through. But he stared at me now, a piercing set of deep, dark eyes, unwilling to let me go.

“I should have left years ago. When your mother first told me she was different—you would be different. I should have taken her and you and traveled to the far east. To Perpetuum with her prophecies and foretelling and messages from Mihauna.”

“Her prophecies—” I threw a glance over my shoulder toward the dark tunnel I’d just left. My mother had explained Theia’s prophecy? She’d spoken to him? He’d never mentioned that before. My father had always avoided the topic of my mother, as if the memories were more like wounds, my questions like salt poured into him.

“I did everything wrong,” Ano was saying. “Every moon-damn thing. I always only half-believed her, even when she carved that hole in the water and walked me through the ocean. The moon couldn’t want my daughter. Me, a nobody fisherman on a tiny island, no true land or titles or importance. But when your mother got sick.” His voice broke roughly, almost angrily on the word. He waved the heel of his hand in front of his face, closing his eyes and swallowing hard. “And the little things started to come true. It wasn’t that she could fold water in half like a fishing net that made me start to believe. It was the details.”

“Makua,” I tried to cut in.

“The island,” he said, stopping to gulp down another breath, “my island, the people I had always loved, who had accepted her and embraced her and loved her, started to ignore her, avoid her, accuse her of bringing harm to our shores. Just as she said they would.”

It sounded prepared. Rehearsed. As if he’d spent nearly a year writing it in his head and now couldn’t free it from his thoughts fast enough. I wondered how many hours he’d thought it over alone in the dark of this cave. Every question I’d ever asked about my mother, everything he’d left unanswered, everything he might wish he could say to the daughter that had disappeared.

I released a small gust of air, conceding to hear the rest in silence.

He shook his head and sucked his teeth loudly, sending his gaze along the walls like I was something that burned to look at too long. “And then they started to look at you like that, too. That was when I started wanting to leave.”

His voice vibrated strangely, almost wavering as it met my ears. A stack of small wooden poles leaned against the wall beside him, and he grabbed one, but only to hold one end loosely in his hand and smack the other against his opposite palm.

“But she was adamant, she had spent that one night when she’d been able to speak repeating herself over and over, drilling into me that remaining on the island was the one thing that kept you safe. I didn’t know if that was true, but I do know something was hunting her, that it might someday hunt you, and what if I did take you away? What if the island did somehow protect you, and I discarded the whims of a goddess anyway? What if I stole you—would Theia smite us both?”

He let the question hang, his last words echoing quietly against the cavernous walls, long enough that I opened my mouth. “The one night she could speak?”

The blood betrayal—she must have taken a drop of Thaan’s blood to Leihani with her.

“And then,” he said suddenly, his breath twice as fast and shallow, “you started to pull away from me. And I didn’t know if it was because you were getting older, becoming a woman. Or because the island refused to welcome you. Rejected you. Or because I was such a hopeless father that I could no longer reach you.”

I stood in mute surprise, watching his lips move, still trying to make sense of his words five sentences before. My mind turned slowly, like I was trying to run through ankle-deep mud to keep up with him. By the time I realized what he’d said, my silence hovered loudly between us, too long of a pause for authenticity. I tried anyway.