Page 19 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Cebrinne

T he first exploration of the Parian tunnels yielded little more than still air, stunted vision, and more bones than I cared to rationalize. The second as well. And the third.

When we crested the surface of the cavern on the final night, Selena immediately sank against the inner wall where we’d made our beds, arms slung over her knees.

“We’re not going deep enough,” Aegir said, calling the water off himself. “We’re only finding pools of water. Rooms where the Naiads lived. Theia said the Scale of Safiro would be in an underwater cavern? Where is the room where the Parians dined?”

“We don’t know.” I quirked my mouth, intolerant of the memory, and sat down beside my sister. “Thaan had Ursa’s body carried here to the surface. This is where he drank her blood wine.”

“There should be a passage that leads to the ocean floor.” Selena lifted her head to look at us. “Maybe we’re searching in the wrong place. Maybe we need to dive down outside the island. Search its perimeter.”

Wind crept in, less forceful than it had been the day we’d arrived, brushing us with cold fingers. Selena shivered.

Aegir sent his call over the two of us, lifting the water out of our hair and clothes. Brows softly drawn, Pheolix watched, a strange expression in his eyes. “I’m going to Cypria to find more driftwood.”

“Why?” Selena glanced up at him. “We have plenty. ”

The drone ran his fingers through his saturated scalp, corralling wild strands from his face. He gave a short sniff from the cold, a noise we’d all taken on since that first night. “It burns fast. We’ll run out before the morning.”

“It’s fine, Pheolix,” Selena said, but he waved her off, turning to wander out to the sharp rocks. Her eyes dropped to the thick lines of his tattoo, the firm muscle of his back rippling softly with each step he took.

He dove in, disappearing from the tide.

Aegir sank to his knee at our makeshift fire pit, rolling a fresh log of driftwood into the ash bed. “We can make a plan to search the underwater reef for a way in, but it will have to wait. You need to head back to Thaan tomorrow.”

My stomach squeezed. A daily dose of freedom wrapped in beeswax left me cursed as much as blessed.

The thought of returning to Thaan rooted something within me I didn't quite trust. Deeper than the flex of my fingers or the clench in my teeth that pulsed whenever he floated into the corners of my mind.

Something corrosive that scoured the lining of my chest, a gnaw and rot that ate at me like rust eats away iron when buried under the sea.

A cancer in my thoughts, a violent attack of slow-spun torture, stealing my strength and leaving me brittle, robbing me of one precious iron flake at a time.

Selena stood quietly, walking to the edge of the cave, her gaze cast far over the water. Even from here, the moon reflected off its surface, twisting itself into the distant sea.

“She doesn’t like it here,” Aegir observed quietly.

I loosed a long exhale through my nose. “Neither of us do.”

“Because of Paria?”

I glanced over my shoulder at the dark interior of the cavern, driving away a sudden shudder.

“Yes. And no. We were taken from our home as teenagers. We didn’t say goodbye to our mother.

Thaan forced us underwater to transition before we knew we were Naiad.

I thought they were going to drown me, then suddenly I had a tail.

Half my body felt like someone had set it on fire.

Paria is where they brought us. I hated Paria, but there were some Naiads who understood. Some who were kind.”

“There’s always some who are kind,” Aegir said. “That doesn’t mean they’re also right.”

“They paid for us.” I watched my sister’s hair blow in the wind. “They just wanted their colony to survive.”

He studied me long enough that I finally turned, tilting my head as I waited for whatever it was he hesitated to say.

His mouth worked for a moment. “You carry it better than she does.”

I barked a quiet laugh. “No, I don’t. I just conceal it better.”

“I’m not sure you conceal anything.”

“Fine,” I said. “I bury it better, then.”

“What were their plans for you?” Aegir asked.

“I don’t know.” I sighed, shoulders dropping.

“I was too busy hating everything. Once I understood what my bronze tail meant, I hated them for it. Hated them for my Prizivac bloodline. Hated my skin, my body. Hated that I was a siren, that that was the reason I’d been taken.

Hated that Paria fell before they had the chance to answer for what they did to us.

Then Thaan killed half of them and took the other half for himself.

And there was nothing left to quiet that hate.

It might have been put out if they’d had the chance to acknowledge what they did. But they perished first.”

I paused, watching the way Selena’s byssus silk dress rippled around her calves. “Have you ever hated something and then watched it die?”

Aegir shifted slightly, pulling his knees close enough to settle his arms over them.

“I’m not sure that I have.” His braids fell over the side of his face as he angled his head to look at me.

I hadn’t been this close to him before. Beads wove through his braids, the texture of pale chalk.

I couldn’t decide if they were shell or bone .

“Thaan told us he planned to attack right before it happened. Selena was terrified. She wanted to run. She wanted to help. If we did either, Thaan said we’d be killed. So I pulled her under the water in one of the little pools and we huddled together until it was over. I thought I’d feel guilt.”

I leaned my head to the side, gathering my hair over a shoulder.

“When something you hate dies, the strange thing is that when the guilt follows, it's not from the death itself. It’s from the numbness instead. You should care, but you don’t.

You realize your soul is probably broken and worthless.

You realize you watched an entire colony fall and you walked away without an ounce of compassion.

You think the guilt might come days, weeks, months later.

Then one night you look up at the stars and realize it never will. ”

My muscles released a small shake, and I leaned against the rock to hide it.

That numbness had never left me. It sat on my shoulders like a shadow, and I’d never grown skilled enough to see through it.

It stole the vibrancy of the world, every color and hue, everything that should have made me laugh or cry or shudder in fear.

Those things echoed around me, mocking me beyond my reach, under the veil of the shadow.

At times, it suffocated me. Hung like a cloak from my shoulders for someone to yank, a sudden chokehold I couldn’t escape.

“You weren’t scared?”

“No. Selena has always had enough common sense to hold fear for the both of us.”

Hand in a soft fist, Aegir dropped his temple against his knuckles. “Is it that, or do you not hold enough room to fear for yourself because you’re always calming hers?”

The thought made my mouth twitch. “Maybe it’s that. It doesn’t matter. Or change anything. The only time I feel afraid is when I think something might happen to her.”

Without the constant shake of our walking, the bioluminescent jars had dimmed. We listened to the waves. The stunted slam of water against rock, the slow creep of the tide as it drifted away and prepared to strike again. Clouds scraped over the half-moon, a shroud crawling across the sky.

“I don’t think your soul is broken, Cebrinne,” Aegir said softly.

“No?” I turned my head to study him over my shoulder. A small smile graced my lips, though my heart didn’t send it there.

“No. And if it is, I think you will someday find a way to collect the broken shards and be at peace with them. You will find a way to savor your own scars.”

My smile quietly dissolved as I gazed at him.

The sharpness in his eyes wore away just a little, the hunter in the green suddenly softer and quieter.

Even in the gentle pools of them, something lingered, focused and potent enough that I couldn’t hold his gaze.

I sent my eyes to linger over the tips of my knees, where silk ruffled under the wind.

“Do you think I will find peace once Thaan is dead?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Do you think you will?”

I wound a silk layer over a single finger. “I think peace is a myth. I think the harder you look for it, the further it evades you. Like old men searching for their youth. It’s a lie you tell yourself so that you’ll feel better about never having it.”

I felt his silent attention drop to my hands, watching me spin my finger into my silver dress.

This close, I could smell his skin. Spicy and warm, like driftwood sitting under the sun.

“If peace is a myth,” he said, “then all my dreams are parables. But some things are true without morals or hidden lessons.”

A splash of water made us both turn to look behind us, down into the depths of the cave.

We’d found a few fish that had somehow traveled from the ocean floor into the cavern, their source of entry unknown.

Still, the sudden noise in the dark made me shift my weight, banishing the chill that lifted hair at the back of my neck.

“Is it true you killed your grandfather?” I asked .

Aegir’s brows rose. Then he relaxed in a way that left him slumped into himself. “He asked me to, so I did.” His voice sank into a murmur, and the sad melody of it coasted along my skin, rousing some haunted part of me.

I wondered what it felt like to be sad.

“Why?”

He merely watched me. My hands had stilled, silk trapped between my fingers. A thick cloud glided overhead, sending a slow shadow across Aegir’s face. He sighed, glancing back over the water. “I guess the fragments of his soul were broken. He couldn’t find peace.”

I pulled my heels close, wrapping my arms around my legs. “Do you think he’s found it now? In Perpetuum?”

Aegir started to answer—then flung an arm over me as he stood.

A heartbeat thumped behind us, padded footsteps against stone.

Aegir faced the dark, hands ready to cast water and drown whatever climbed out.

Beads of liquid crawled toward him, crossing paths over the rock walls and floating through the air, gathering to his palms. Selena hurried to my side.

I frowned into the dark tunnel ahead, peering over Aegir’s shoulder.

“What is it?” Selena whispered. “What did you hear?”

Aegir’s eyes narrowed.

A clatter of logs hitting the stone floor echoed in the dark, and a smirk framed with rough-spun rusty hair tilted out of the shadows. “Found the underwater passage.”