Page 27 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Cebrinne

“ Y ou could become lost in these tunnels. Time has forgotten them.” Xiane kept her voice low as she led us down one of the dark passages.

It broke and separated, a tangled network of unmarked tunnels, and at times, I found myself convinced we’d crossed the same rock corner before.

That we were going in circles. But it steered only down, as though a massive corkscrew had hollowed these walls.

Selena walked beside me in silence. She hadn’t said a word since we’d caught up to her. Pheolix hadn’t, either. Unwilling to heed Sicia’s suggestion that he stay behind, he watched Selena without a word as she walked ahead.

“How far is it?” I asked.

Xiane paused to study the rock’s formation. Striations scarred the stone, the layers denser with lines as we descended. “Not far.”

I nodded. We’d been climbing down for what seemed like hours.

The air felt wrong down here. Almost choking, the way smoke catches in your lungs.

But the only thing to choke on here was the dark and the cold.

Currents of it filtered above our heads, wind with no beginning and no end, shifting as easily as the tide.

It swept low enough to scrape my hair with long talons, as if something unseen passed above.

The walls wept. Water trickled down them like tears. I had the strangest urge to wipe them, but when I tried, Xiane caught my hand.

“Don’t touch the walls,” she said .

I nodded, unsure which stopped me from asking why: the look in her eyes or that I didn’t want to know the answer.

We walked in silence, listening to the steady wind, the drip of cold water. “You’re Ursa’s daughter,” I finally said.

Xiane shook her head. “I’m her niece.”

Aegir glanced sideways at her, though his expression lay masked behind his green eyes.

I nodded. “Were you not here when Paria fell?”

Brows pinched, Selena shook her head in distaste at the directness of my question.

But Xiane sighed, walking on. “We were away when Thaan attacked. We came back after it was over. By then, my aunt had been dead long enough her blood had lost its power.”

I frowned. “You’re still a Prizivac Vode , are you not? You still have your own power.”

Xiane didn’t immediately answer. Our footsteps echoed, the rock sending them back to us at different levels of volume. Sometimes a whisper. Sometimes a wail. I wondered how far Aegir had explored alone in the dark while waiting for us.

“Any Naiad could start a colony,” Xiane said.

“It’s simple in execution. Round up a hundred sirens, convince them to offer a drop of their blood.

Their loyalty. Each drop supplies you with power.

With longer life. Your children will inherit a fraction of it, but most stays with you.

For the longevity of the colony. Until you name an heir. ”

Selena and Aegir listened, eyes ahead, both well-versed in the ways Naiad power transcends over generations.

Xiane quirked her mouth. “You choose a child and either allow them to take your blood while you live or plan for them to after you die. If it's while you live, all you have to do is swear your loyalty to them, just like any other Naiad in the colony. And the transfer is complete. If it’s after you die, it needs to be done quickly. Within an hour. ”

Aegir released a deep sigh, tilting his head to his shoulder to stretch a strain in his neck.

“A break in the chain will steal all the power,” Xiane said softly. “Set it back hundreds of years.”

I glanced at her. “A break in the chain.”

“When a monarch dies and their blood expires before their heir can reach it. Parian Videres have suffered such a fate for the last three generations. Now we remain here in secret.”

My mouth parted in understanding. “You’re a Videre , but your power is a fraction of what it should be.”

Something in Xiane’s dark eyes smiled sadly. “It’s why Ursa took a gamble with Thaan. He swore his loyalty in blood. By Naiad law, he shouldn’t have been able to attack. She had no reason not to trust it.”

I watched the hem of my byssus dress shift over my knees with each step. “Thaan’s blood isn’t fully Naiad. He traded part of himself to Darkness, and we don’t know what he is. He can do things Naiads can’t.”

Ahead, a soft haze of light rooted between the edges of the rock. A hue quieter than our jars. Fog gathered at my mouth, not unlike the eerie chill of Pheolix’s eclipse, and I crossed my arms against the cold.

I stepped around a crevice in the rock. Then stopped. “We were here. When Paria fell.”

Xiane stopped too. “I know. I didn’t recognize you at first, when your friend was lying on the floor. But afterward, when I had a good look at you, I remembered you. Ursa had brought you here thinking to possibly name one of you as heir. I always wondered what had happened to you both.”

She turned her head, and we followed her line of sight to a single glowworm hanging from the ceiling. “We’re here.”

The end of the tunnel opened, the ceiling above as wide and tall as a mausoleum.

Worms covered its surface, their silky strands suspended like delicate icicles, drawing our attention up and across the vast canvas of it.

Twinkling like a night sky, stars soft and lulling.

The air sang softly, the tune tragic and lilting, a sound that raised every hair along the back of my neck.

“Don’t touch the water,” Xiane said, tugging Selena away from the clear pool that lay ahead. “The crying walls feed into it here, and there’s a drop-off just a few feet away. You can see it if you look.”

We stretched our necks, aiming our sight below. If there was a drop, it was nearly impossible to see. The gentle glow bounced off the smooth surface of the water, but a stark edge lay just ahead, a sudden ending to the light.

Pheolix whistled.

“Where’s the crystal?” I asked.

Xiane tapped her fingers against her thigh in thought. She took a deep breath, her chest lifting in silence. Then bent to look across the cavern floor, selecting a gnarled gray pebble. “Stand back.”

Aegir met my gaze, archer eyes both apprehensive and curious. We moved a collective step away from Xiane as she took aim over the still pool, arm recoiling behind her head.

Below her, the water rippled.

No one had touched it .

She watched the circles form. Expanding, overlapping. For a moment, I thought she had changed her mind. Then her arm snapped forward.

The stone flew, bounding off the ceiling.

Drops of water fell from the silk threads where it hit, and the surrounding worms lit up, twice as bright as the moment before.

Each row of worms followed, illuminating the rock canvas above, chasing shadows strand by strand as though unraveling a dark dream.

The drops fell and hit the water. The rock bounced away.

A shallow wave crested in response, stretching for us at the edge of the pool, and Xiane backed out of its grasp. I could have sworn it lengthened into fingers just before it receded. Selena’s heart thundered beside me, but I calmly watched the clear water fall away.

A pit lay beyond the water. We listened for the sound of Xiane’s rock hitting the bottom, but it never came. Across from us, perhaps fifty feet away, something small among the rocks hummed with light.

Aegir crossed his arms, eyes narrowed as he studied the cavity below us. Selena did the same with the ceiling, as though searching for a way to swing across. I stared ahead, watching the soft light flicker and fade back into the dark.

It was there. Across the divide.

“How did it get here?” Aegir finally asked.

Xiane shook her head. “We don’t know. We’ve tried to get it out for a thousand years. The water was peaceful here once. Now it’s angry. Our colony has only whittled since it appeared, and no matter what we try, Paria is dying. That stone is a curse.”

“It’s here because Sidra was born here,” Selena said. “Thaan made her his corda-cruor then took her from Paria. They say the Naiads of Juile are cursed and dying as well.”

Aegir rubbed the side of his face in thought, gaze dropping to the water. “Is that fact, or speculation?”

Selena’s mouth thinned as she scanned the starry ceiling. “Both. ”

Aegir glanced at me, and I understood the question in his eyes. Had Theia explained how to get it?

But my thoughts hid over the memory of Theia’s words.

The Breath of Safiro. The Scale of Safiro. Only one Naiad can reach them.

I shook my head at him, mouth grim. He lowered his palm, fingers straight.

“If you’re calling to the water here, it won’t answer,” Xiane said, watching him. “It’s freshwater, not that that should matter, but it won’t answer our call.”

“I assumed.” He sighed, the air billowing softly from his mouth in a small cloud. “Had to try. We could devise something. Some kind of bridge.”

Xiane’s jaw feathered. “We’ve tried.”

Aegir rotated on his back foot, peering more closely at the wall. “There are dry sections. We might climb across.”

“Tried that as well.”

“Have you attempted saltwater?” Pheolix asked, his dark brows furrowed. “Transporting a few buckets from the sea?”

“More than once.”

“Could throw you in,” Selena muttered under her breath.

Xiane dipped her head. “Haven’t tried that yet. A few Naiads have fallen in. We find their bodies a day later, washed up on the island shore. Only one has survived.” She released a regretful breath, shaking her head slowly. “But she couldn't walk or speak. She died the following day.”

Selena craned her neck, staring down below. “If we could measure the depth,” she started, “then the distance across, then the height from here to—”

I ran, splashing through the cold pool, and dove.

My sister’s scream followed me all the way down.