Page 35 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Selena

W e plopped Vouri in my vanity chair. Cebrinne threw open my wardrobe, shuffling through the hung gowns.

“Search the ones in the back for something I haven’t worn recently,” I said, gathering Vouri’s braids in one hand and angling them left and right.

What to do with a shaved head and a crown of rope?

I didn’t even consider unbraiding them all.

Every Venusian wore braids, and instinct warned me against suggesting their dismantling.

Cebrinne tossed a dress onto my bed, a heavy garment at least three years out of season. More of a winter piece than spring, it landed in an enormous puddle of striking satin resembling the color of the tropical leaves in the palace solarium.

Vouri’s eyes bulged. She stroked a cautious finger down a shining corner of the satin fabric. “I can’t wear this. I’ll destroy it climbing down the rocks.”

Cebrinne shrugged. “Take it off when you get there. Senna doesn’t care if it’s ruined, though.”

I nodded, still musing over Vouri’s hair. “She’s right. I don’t. You can keep it.”

“Keep it?” A sparkle lit in Vouri’s eyes.

I smirked down at her. Byssus silk was delicate and lightweight.

Nearly sheer. Most Naiads wore simple sheath dresses, and even though Vouri’s Venusian garb was more illustriously styled than the average siren’s, it didn’t change the fact that all of her dresses were the same silver silk as the rest of her Domus .

I pulled her braids to the side, shielding her shaved scalp from any wandering eyes, and twisted the length into a bun under her ear, pinning it into place. “Ceba, I have a box of masks on my wardrobe floor.”

My sister stooped, sliding shoes out of her way.

“Undress in the bathroom,” I said, adjusting the final pin in her hair and pointing down the hall. “If you need help lacing the back, we can do it for you.”

Vouri slid out from my vanity seat. She gathered the dress at the waist, offering us a shy smile. A heavy contrast to the bold confidence that usually angled the sharpness of her mouth. We watched her disappear through the door together, our own smiles dropping as soon as we heard the door latch.

“Get dressed,” I said.

“Senna, we’re not done talking about it.”

“We’re done talking about it tonight.”

“I can’t ignore fate.”

“No,” I said. “You just want to give up. You’ve been looking for a path, and Theia offered you one.

It’s not the right one, but you don’t care.

Well, I care, Ceba. I care that you want to go kill yourself just to be free of him.

And I know you think I’m just here fighting you for the sake of fighting you.

But yes, if that’s what it takes, I’ll fight you.

If that’s what keeps you safe, I won’t stop fighting.

Thaan has taken everything— everything —from us.

I’ll spend my last breath fighting to keep you.

Now, get dressed. I have a king to deal with, and you’ve promised to sneak Vouri out of the palace. ”

“I’m going to Leihani,” Cebrinne said quietly. “I picked out a name.”

I turned to look at her fully. “A what?”

“A name. Alana.” She didn’t even flinch under my iron stare.

“It’s common enough here that the islanders wouldn’t find it odd.

And common enough there that it would go unnoticed in their yearly census.

I’m going to Leihani, Senna. Not today, not tomorrow.

I know you don’t want me to, and I’ll wait until you’re ready. But I’m going. I’ve made up my mind.”

Didn’t want her to ?

She made it sound so casual. So nothing . I didn’t want her to rearrange my wardrobe. Didn’t want her to spoil the ending of my book. Didn’t want her to take the last cookie from a tray.

Leave me to let her own blood take her life? Didn’t want her to didn’t even come close to what I actually felt.

Her words didn’t sound like words. They rattled and wavered, her voice lost under the roar of sudden wind and tide in my ears, a haunted echo in a storm. And I don’t think it fully registered until I stood there trying to break through the gale of those words.

I’m going to Leihani.

A void opened under my feet. I stood erect, staring into her teal eyes.

Eyes made for the tropics, for island water and jeweled birds.

But I felt myself fall, a sudden drop that sent my body plummeting somewhere deeper than the bowels of the palace.

An unending spiral, a cavern that yawned deeper and deeper below.

She was still talking, her voice still trapped under the wind, but I couldn’t hear anything but the tempest vacuum of space I’d been thrust into.

“No,” I murmured. My fists flexed at my sides. I watched her throat tighten.

“Senna.”

“No. You will not. I promise you, you will not.”

I scrambled to halt my fall, latching onto anything that might save me. Any idea, no matter how wrong. Just to buy me time and convince her we could break her vow another way. Any other way. I’d lock her in her room. Accuse her of stealing to have her sent to the dungeons.

Give Thaan the true details of how we’d spent the past few weeks.

Each thought turned my stomach, but what choice did I have? What other choice had she given me?

I. Refused. To. Let. My. Sister. Die .

Cebrinne shook her head softly. “I am. Aegir already knows. He said he’d help my daughter when she comes.”

“Well, I won’t. I won’t be here. I promise you.

” My words vented from between my teeth, each one fuming with hot ire.

Each one a foothold against my fall. “I promise, Ceba, if you do this. If you abandon me after I’ve stayed by your side all our lives, through everything else, I’ll never forgive you.

If you break my heart, you may not have it back.

I won’t stay here in Calder and wait to meet her .

I won’t help her. I won’t protect her. I won’t give her Theia’s message.

You can’t cordae a man for life and have a daughter just to throw them away, and if that’s what you choose, I won’t help you. ”

Cebrinne’s gaze had lowered at some point around the word abandon . She stared into the corner of the floor where a thin film of dust had gathered, her throat still strict, and swallowed silently. Then reached into the small brown canvas bag she’d brought with her, untying its strings.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked.

Jaw hard, I studied it for only a moment. It was a candle, thick and tall. Black. Not just black. Deep black, the deepest shade I’d ever seen laid into wax. My eyes flicked back to hers.

“Aegir helped me make it. The wick is braided with three strings. The wax is harvested from moon bees. All I have to do is wait for the blood moon this autumn and light it, then add a drop of my blood to the melted wax.”

My stomach heaved. Acid burned up my throat. My jaw hardened as I stood across from her, and though I remembered Theia’s words, I was unwilling to comprehend the purpose of a candle made from blood and moon. “I don’t want it.”

“It’s the promise of a Triad. It will light itself when the first enters Perpetuum, and keep the Triad open for the other two.

As long as it remains lit, the gateway is open.

As long as it’s lit, I’m there. Senna.” She reached for my hand, and I backed away, stumbling into the wall.

That sound in my ears roared again, feral and violent. Blinding.

“What about everything we’ve sworn to each other?” I asked, staring at it. “What about until the ocean dries? What about until the moon burns?”

Cebrinne closed her eyes. Then opened them, thick glass over her teal gaze. “Selena.”

“Don’t you love me?”

Her mouth opened. Her brows slanted. She looked at me with the same burning betrayal that laced the quiet shake in my voice. As though I’d thrust a knife into her stomach and twisted.

The door opened. Footsteps meandered through our apartment.

I stole out of our bedroom before Vouri appeared, grateful that my mask covered half of my face, only pausing as I passed the beautiful Venusian.

“I can’t stay, but you look lovely, Vouri.

Ceba will stitch you up.” I smiled as though my eyes weren’t misty.

As though the choke in my lungs didn’t exist. And gave her arm a gentle, excited squeeze. “Good luck.”

Dusk had already come and gone, leaving the world floating in a ribbon of night, but light flooded the expanse of the palace. Not buttery and warm like the sconces usually were. The palace servants had somehow coaxed clean, cool light instead, as bright and silvery as the moon.

The massive windows had just been washed, each one a canvas of twinkling stars, though clouds threatened to block them out.

The first drops of rain scattered across the grounds, and by the looks of the skyward veil drifting across the moon, the Queen’s Starlit Bloom might soon be lost in a downpour.

Music strung me down the great halls to the ballroom, but as I breached its grand threshold, it wasn’t the pipe of the reeds or the thrum of the fiddles that lured me in.

The refreshment table dripped with opulence.

A diamond-woven silk runner, rows of tall crystal flutes, a bowl of sparkling volare .

I ignored the footman waiting to ladle me a glass, grabbing one and filling it for myself instead, knocking it back in one motion.

The poor human blinked at me in surprise.

I refilled a second glass, hesitating for only a moment before using it to chase the first.

I’m going to Leihani.

I filled a third and drank that too.

None of them doused the coals still lodged in my throat. None of them quieted the burn in my stomach or caught me from the fall within those words.

Cupping the flute in my fingers, I turned, eyes roaming the crowd.

King Emilius often appeared late at parties, especially those thrown by the Queen.

I usually did as well, but Cebrinne’s words had all but banished me from my apartment.

So here I was. Among the social elite of Calder.

Masked, curled, oiled, poised, pinned, primped, powdered, perfumed.

Suddenly, they were all as horribly foul as Cebrinne had always said they were.

As shallow, as boring, as pathetic. Egos as fragile as the glass in my hand, loyalties as fickle as the liquid inside it.

I drained another flute.