Page 32 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Selena

“ S low down, heiress.”

“Keep up.”

I hauled myself out of the water and onto the rocks, panting.

It had been a long time since I’d pushed myself so hard.

We’d completed our four-day swim in three, upriver and all, and my arms and legs ached with the burn of unspent lactic acid.

The sea dripped from my hair and the hem of my Venusian dress, the ripples of silk snug and transparent against my skin.

“I have no problem keeping up.” Pheolix climbed onto my rock. I pulled away, forcing myself to my tired feet, and he laid a hand across my thigh, tamping me back down. “Sit.”

“Piss off.” I tried again to stand, but his hand may as well have been a bolt, nailing me to the rock. I glared at him. “I could kill you, you know.”

He smirked back. “You’re welcome to try. We haven’t practiced for a while.”

I was in no mood to provoke his heart into giving out.

Especially since the vision of him, pale and motionless on the Parian cave floor, hadn’t stopped flashing in my mind.

I tucked my chin, eyes shifting to where he sat just out of view.

The tight skin over his abdomen was all I could see, wrapped with those lined tattoos, the muscles in his arm ribbed and curved.

A vein snaked from his wrist and over the back of his hand. It ticked, just barely.

“Take your hand off me,” I said .

Pheolix loosed a patient exhale. The sound of his breath punctuated the rolling waves. “I’m sorry about what’s going on between you and your sister.”

“You don’t even know what’s going on.”

“You’re right.” He scanned my face carefully. “I don’t. You could tell me about it if you wanted. You don’t have to, but you could.”

“Yes, and what good would that do, other than offer you ammunition for more jokes to use at my expense? You’re a loner, Pheolix.

You make fun of cordaeing and death as though you’ve cheated both.

You probably don’t even know what love is, what it means to watch someone throw their life away little bits at a time until they’re just a shell of what they used to be.

Don’t pretend you have anything to offer me. You don’t.”

Each word dripped with acid, caustic as they left my mouth. Pheolix absorbed them in silence, and when I ended, he remained silent as though he’d expected more. “Feel better?”

Moon and stars, I did. The tension released from my shoulders, and my body wanted to go limp from it, slumping forward to stare at that vein in his hand, tracking his heartbeat by its tiny twitch.

Even so, the backs of my eyes burned. My hands curled, nails digging into my palms, and the ache in my chest moved to my throat, the foul swallow of fear and pain and helplessness suffocating me with every breath.

“Yes,” I sighed. Social etiquette demanded I apologize, but I couldn’t bring myself to. It would be like gulping all that acid down again, inviting it back. So I sat there instead, fighting away each sniffle and cough, banishing the burn in the back of my nose.

He hadn’t moved. His hand still lay across my leg. It was heavy, too heavy to simply rest there. He was actively applying pressure, forcing me to feel the rock through my skin. Grounding me. I watched his side from the corner of my eye, the lines of his tattoos stretching softly as he breathed.

“You can let me up now.”

“I will. After we’ve sat a few more minutes. ”

In the corner of my eye, the lines of his tattoos expanded and shrank as he breathed.

“Do all drones have tattoos like those?”

“All of Thaan’s do.”

I remembered them, vaguely. The simple lines that spanned the width of the drones’ backs, hugging their sides but ending before they met in the middle.

“Why does he make you get them?” I asked.

He arched his back, looking at them from over his shoulder. “Thaan doesn’t make us. We get them ourselves. Bragging rights, I suppose, though it’s nothing to celebrate. One for every year we last.”

I frowned. “What do you mean? Every year doing what?”

He shrugged. “It’s not important, heiress.”

Inked in a slant that pointed at Pheolix’s hips, the lines converged down his spine. I stared at them, counting.

“Thirteen,” he supplied.

“Who has the most?”

“I do.” He stretched his neck, gazing nonchalantly at the sky. Gray, like his eyes. “Looks like it might rain. Seems to rain a lot when you’re around. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the rain follows you.”

“It’s spring.”

“Mmmm.” He closed his eyes, the shadow of a smile over his lips. “I almost forgot what spring looked like. What it smelled like.”

The weight of his palm cut warmth into my skin where everything else lay cool. Something squirmed in my belly, a small flare in my center, leaving me restless. I folded my shoulder and arm over my lap, out of the way of his side. “No spring in the mountains?”

“There is.” He shrugged. “The days are shorter, though. Even in summer, they’re short. We’d rise in the dark, head to the caves, and return to the dark once more.”

“Sounds like the perfect place for you. ”

He chuckled softly but didn’t answer. I dared a sideways glance at him and found him watching the waves, a wrinkle of regret in the corner of his eyes.

“Why were you sent to the mines?”

He turned, arching his neck to look at me. The stubble along his jaw coveted more brown than the warm hue of his hair. I had a sudden curiosity over what it would feel like under the pad of my thumb.

“You know why,” he said softly.

Mouth closed, my jaw worked, testing different theories before they left my tongue. “Because of me.”

“Because I disobeyed a direct order regarding you.”

“Breathing for me?”

Pheolix sighed. “I wasn’t supposed to do it. Thaan had entered Deimos’s mind. He’d wanted to do it himself.”

“So why did you?”

“I don’t know.” His mouth twitched as he considered his answer.

Then released a breathless laugh. “Impulse. I hadn’t planned it beforehand.

We’d targeted young Naiads before, but I’d always been one of the extra bodies nearby in case things go wrong.

I just happened to be the closest one to you when it came time to take you into the water, and all of a sudden, I didn’t want any of them to touch you.

I think I just...” He grazed his jaw with his opposite hand, scrubbing his chin in thought.

“I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I was powerless to stop it. It was the easiest way to show Thaan he didn’t own me, I guess. ”

His words from that day reverberated softly through my skull.

Jealous at being played at your own game, Thaan?

Something about his answer tightened the coils in my belly. A quiet cinch I hadn’t expected.

A game. He'd wanted Thaan to know Thaan didn't own him. So, I became a game .

I wrapped my hand around his thumb, sliding it off my leg. Pheolix watched, letting me.

“Are we abandoning our little quest for the stones?” he asked, pulling his hood low over his eyes. Whatever quiet, soft moment we’d shared left us both as we clambered to our feet.

I shook my head. Then hoisted myself up, climbing over the rock lip above. The palace grounds yawned into view, grass just beyond my fingers. “There’s no we . And I don’t know.”

Stones, ambush, freedom. In the last few weeks, ever since we’d called to Theia, our plans had unraveled. Cebrinne had ripped the rug from under my feet, not in a single, solid jerk, but thread by thread, inch by inch. I felt like I didn’t know anything.

“What are they for?”

“What is what for?”

“The stones.”

I slowed, glancing around us. Guards patrolled nearby, along the curtain wall and across the fields, but they didn’t make me as nervous as the birds.

Finches, crows, owls, eagles. Rumors skipped between the palace Naiads that Thaan could shift into anything.

A sound, a shadow, an overhead cloud. But I’d only seen him become things that were living, usually innocuous little birds.

I didn’t trust anything from a raptor to a dove.

“Lower your voice,” I hissed.

Pheolix smirked, but he dropped into a hushed tone anyway. “I scanned for birds the moment we surfaced.” He leaned in, his warmth drifting across me. “Have you never paid attention when he shifts into a bird? His heartbeat is too loud and slow to pass for anything with natural wings and feathers.”

I crossed my arms, glowering. Though I hadn’t spent very much time with Thaan while he took the shape of a bird. Thaan avoided spending long periods of time with anyone except maybe his Oculoses , making the ability to gather little observations, such as a bird’s heartbeat, a challenge .

“They have something to do with Sidra and Thaan.”

“Could you use the stones against her as well?”

I shook my head. “Maybe, but I don’t think she’s as invincible as he is. He’s the way he is because of his deal with Darkness.”

“So the stones were laid by Darkness?”

“No.” I stopped, turning to face him fully.

“They’re a curse. Theia made the stones after Sidra sank the island of her favorite humans.

Sidra sank the island because Thaan made his deal with Darkness.

Thaan made his deal with Darkness because his daughter died, and he couldn’t move past it.

Sidra is cursed to the sea, Thaan is cursed to remain on land.

If you have any other burning questions, ask them now, before we get any closer to the palace doors. ”

Pheolix bit his lip, holding back a smile. “That’s all of them.”

I huffed, turning around. “Good because that’s about all I know. All Theia shared, anyway.”

He patted my arm, eliciting a ripple of annoying warmth to seep into my blood. “That’s all right, heiress. We’re still best friends.”

“We’re not best friends.”

“Well, that’s rude.”

Unbearable.