Page 39 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Cebrinne

“ C ebrinne,” Thaan said.

It was his voice.

But he said it with Madam Freisa’s mouth.

With her strict lips. The seneschal of Thaan’s administrative office was a slender woman, almost bony, the skin beginning to sag under her jaw.

Something about her face drooped in a way that was tight , every ounce of her youth stolen by Thaan’s invisible regime.

I glanced at the faces around her. Naiads. Ones I didn’t recognize.

They stood around us in the dark. Boxing us in so we had nowhere to go. I grabbed Selena’s arm.

Our mother isn’t coming, is she?

“Drones,” I murmured.

Madam Freisa’s chin lowered.

My breath frosted. It gathered in all the rain-soaked crevices of my hair, ice crystals blooming along my mouth and across my skin. I pulled off my swan-feather mask, my fingers so cold they ached as I stretched them.

Drones.

Thaan had called his drones in. Two months ago, I hadn’t even known they existed. But there was no arguing what they were.

And there was no point in trying to run.

In trying to convince him I’d walked down to the water out of innocence.

So much for disguising Vouri in a gown. I flicked the mask away, eyes shifting to meet Madam Freisa’s.

“Is she incanted , or are you standing here with me?” Her pupils appeared normal.

But Thaan was so skilled at incantation , I could never tell.

Madam Freisa’s mouth twitched. Her jaw flared. Her hair shrank into her scalp. Spine lengthened. Shoulders widened. The skirt of her secretary dress pressed into her legs as they stretched, pant legs instead of a bodice, that strange tunic I despised softly flapping against the wind.

Thaan tilted his head, eyeing me with marked disdain.

I stared back. Numb. Waiting for fear to come.

I don’t know why it didn’t. I’d been waiting for years to feel it again. The only time it came and went was when Selena strayed beyond the boundaries of my sight. But she was safe, tucked up into the palace ballroom, most likely with Pheolix not far behind. There was no one here for me to fear for.

Except myself.

Maybe I’d used up all of my fear the day we’d been taken.

Maybe you’re born with only a certain amount, and most burn through theirs slowly, a moment here and there across the span of a lifetime.

Maybe—when they’d stripped me from my sister and dragged me under the waves, when they’d forced their mouth over mine, shoved Naiad air down my throat, brought me back to shock and white-hot pain at the surface, when I’d looked down to find a tail, bronze and gleaming under the full moon—maybe it was then that I’d dumped a lifetime’s worth of fear into the fire.

I’m not sure. But it didn’t come now.

“Why are you not at the Queen’s masquerade, Cebrinne?”

“It bores me.”

Thaan pressed his fingers together, eyes veering to the side as though in deep thought. “You don’t mind the rain?”

“No.”

He smiled, though that smile resembled more of a snake’s hiss.

Too wide for his face, a face that wasn’t made for happiness.

“Aren’t lies fun, Cebrinne,” he mused, turning to run his fingers down the stem of a plump lilac bloom.

Water dripped off the tiny petals, catching moonlight as they fell to the grass.

“Let me try to tell you one of my own. Though I doubt I’ll be as good as you are, with all the experience you’ve gathered lately. ”

He paused, angling his head to look at me from over his shoulder. “I have no idea who you were with at the water’s edge.”

I forced myself to stand still. To not respond. To ignore the creep of nerves, the tickle of freezing wind across my shoulders, the ache along my spine to shudder and send that itch away.

“I didn’t see her walk down with you, nor did I see who sat on the rocks, nor the Naiad she joined in the water. And when you say the Queen’s masquerade was boring, well. I believe you. Because I’m certain you went. I’m certain you danced. Gossiped. Ate. Drank.”

My thoughts spun.

The pigeons that had nested under the archway—how had Thaan known I’d be here with Vouri?

Did he know the young woman in a masquerade dress was the same one who worked in his offices?

It was dark, and Vouri had been wearing a mask.

Had I been meeting only Aegir, I could have spun a tale supporting my pursuit of his cordae .

But reviewing the moment in my mind’s eye, it had been clear that I wasn’t there for Aegir.

I couldn’t deny any of it. But that didn’t mean I needed to confirm anything, either. I drew myself to my full height.

Thaan smiled. “Who is she?”

I didn’t speak. The air grew even colder, and I fought against the shiver in my chin, the chatter of my teeth.

The Naiads shifted on their feet, watching. Taking a collective step closer.

“Not sure?” he continued, releasing the lilac.

“It seems odd to walk someone you don’t know down to the water in the dark.

Odd that she’d dress for a party and not attend it.

Odd that she joined my office after you began this mission, that you’ve spent only four days here at the palace since then, separated by lengths of time away, that your paths shouldn’t have crossed. ”

Thaan waited for an explanation I didn’t have.

Or at least, wasn’t willing to give. He pressed his fingers together again, and I stared at them.

Those fingers. Long, thin, cruel. I’d never known why, but I’d always hated when he did that.

I knew he was deep in thought, and I hated the places his mind took him.

That, and I just didn’t harbor enough patience to stand and let someone join their fingertips just to stare at me.

Or maybe because the gesture was so markedly him .

I flexed my own hands, trying to draw heat back to them. Trying to call to the nearby water, to press against the eclipse of the drones standing around us. There was plenty of water around, between the sea and the mist and the pelting rain. But none of it answered my call.

Thaan’s eyes dropped, watching my hands in something like bored pity. “Cold, Cebrinne?”

Cold was an understatement. I couldn’t feel my lips.

Couldn’t wring the water from my dress or hair.

The skin under my nails dimmed to cyan, and the ability to keep my chin still failed me.

I trembled from the cold. It leeched into my blood, freezing me to the marrow.

I wasn’t even sure if I could take a step.

Thaan’s eyes flicked back to me. “Forgotten how to speak?”

He waited. So patiently. The kind of patience only a man with burning intolerance could have.

Every shape of his figure exuded calm, his eyes claimed haughty disinterest, but I knew that under his skin, every pretense of his composure was counterfeit, a mask as pointless as the one I’d thrown down to the grass.

I hoped someday he would combust from all the pressure of it.

Jaw quaking, I forced my mouth open. He leaned forward, only an inch.

“Go to Darkness,” I said.

His gaze cut through mine. The cold began to burn. Not just over my flesh. In my lungs and through my heart, the burn of the eclipse frosting my veins. I wondered, briefly, if it could kill me. The cold of the drones. If it could , not whether he’d let them. That, I knew.

Thaan would never let me go.

“If you don’t care to speak,” he said slowly, stepping toward me, “if you’d rather not hear the sound of your voice, I have a remedy. A way for you to never speak again.”

I saw the words for what they were. A simple threat. A means of manipulation. That’s how he did everything, controlled everyone. Threats and duress and smooth exploitation. I’d never seen him grow violent, though I knew he sometimes did. He preferred to let others use violence for him.

He sighed, drumming the pads of his fingertips together. “Last chance,” he whispered.

I merely waited for it. I knew what was coming.

“Cebrinne Euwen Naeva Evanthe of Cypria. I call to your blood.”