Page 41 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Selena

“ T hirsty?”

Emilius locked the door behind us, gesturing toward his private liquor cabinet. Bottles lined the back, each one a different size and shape, corked with wood and glass. “Wine?”

I’d already drunk enough that heat whirred through my extremities, painting my cheeks and chest like blooming roses.

But Naiads metabolized alcohol faster than humans.

On most nights, I could drink and dance all evening, falling into my bed with only a small hint of that weighty float that only came from sharing my secrets with the bottom of a bottle.

Even now, the weightlessness was fading.

I nodded, waiting as he poured from his carafe, studying his private rooms. His velvet curtains had been thrown wide, stars splashing across the night sky.

A leather chair sat under a tall bookshelf, the side table next to it stacked with tomes that looked as though they’d never been touched.

The scent of jasmine hung in the air over an incense burner littered with fresh ash.

Antlers had conquered an entire corner, disappearing up into a loft above.

Wide panes of glass comprised the exterior wall, framed at a sharp angle to slant directly under the full moon. I’d always marveled at his chambers. How lovely it might have been to live under such a roof, to watch stars and moon make their journey over your head.

“Don’t be too impressed,” Emilius said, following my line of sight. “All this glass is hot enough to drive you mad come summertime. ”

Still hot from the dance and Pheolix’s body pressed against mine, I took his proffered glass with a coy smile, sating myself with a deep pull.

It burned quietly down my throat, bubbling in my stomach.

I’d have to find a way to make him drink a large amount in a short period of time if I hoped to inebriate him. “Sometimes I think I’m mad, anyway.”

“Mmmm,” he hummed. “Don’t we all.” He watched my finger glide across the glass rim, lifting his glass to his mouth. “How did you come to know Cain, Selena?”

My finger stopped.

I glanced at him. His brown eyes had already flicked to meet mine, the look in his gaze more edged than it had been the moment before.

He threw his glass back, then rapped the wooden surface with a knuckle before reaching for the bottle.

“I met him as a teenager.” I watched as he refilled my flute, unsure about the question.

“At first, I thought Deimos was your lover.” Something about the way he stood, the way he held his glass, the way he watched me now, lust replaced with calculation, set my bones on edge. Usually, I could handle my drinks. I must have had more than I realized. My mind felt fuzzy and soft. Tepid.

“Then I slowly realized Deimos answers to Cain,” Emilius continued, drinking his second glass in a single swig.

“And that seemed twice as strange to me because Cain reserved two rooms in the Westward Sea Wing, and rather than share a room with either of two beautiful women he stayed with, he lives with Deimos.”

“You’ve been paying attention,” I said. My words slurred. I blinked at the sound of them melding together, too liquid to be my voice.

The words, too, were wrong. I wouldn’t normally confirm something so easily.

I looked again at the glass in my hand .

“I have,” Emilius replied. “More than I did when he first came. Do you know what I realized? I realized my meetings with Cain and Deimos have no ending. They stop halfway through. One minute I’m speaking to them.

The next I’m alone in the room and hours have passed by.

Or I wake in my bed, wearing clothes I don’t remember wearing.

I wake next to food I don’t remember eating or women I don’t remember bedding. ”

Something’s wrong, the voice inside me warned. But underneath that, another one giggled. A blare lit through my head, wide with alarm, yet I had the oddest urge to simply laugh.

He tilted his head. “Everything all right?”

I sank against the wall, my legs as heavy as iron, my mind cumbersome as each thought dragged through it. Sing to him , I ordered myself. But it was almost as though I’d forgotten how.

I opened my mouth to try anyway.

The King of Calder punched me in the stomach.

Air whooshed out from the single blow, vacating my lungs. I buckled, folding over his arm, but he carelessly yanked it out from under me, letting me flop onto his rug. The sudden need to vomit struck just as hard, but I reeled it in, mouth gulping for air instead, begging my lungs to fill.

“Selena, Selena.” He lowered into a squat just beyond my head, hooking a finger through the strap of my mask and pulling it off.

“Do you realize I’ve experienced the same thing with you?

” His face spun in a slow circle. Behind him, the ceiling rotated in a faster one, the difference between the two so disorienting I had to close my eyes.

“It’s odd, isn’t it? You’re the most beautiful woman in the palace.

The most beautiful woman many men have ever seen.

Your sister is nearly as flawless as you.

Deimos is far from ugly, but why would the two of you waste your time with little Cain? ”

The texture of his rug was the only thing I could see. Crisscrossing fibers, coarse but plush, each dyed thread its own voice in a violent chorus of Calder blue .

I managed to cough, dragging a fragment of air deep enough to use my voice.

He struck me again.

The force of it didn’t make a sound. Neither did I as I rolled slowly onto my back.

Pain rippled, surging and then surging again, made even worse by the desperate reach for air that wouldn’t come.

My mouth hung uselessly open, my chest hostage to a torrent of spasms. Water clouded the corners of my eyes.

A strand of hair stuck to the side of my mouth, and I made to wipe it away, the motion clumsy. Imprecise.

“That’s where I always lose you,” he said, still crouched beside me.

“You open your mouth to say something, and I find myself staring into your eyes, thinking how vivid they are. It’s always right before it all goes blank that I think I might be in love.

But then I wake up. And remember I’ve never been in love.

Try that again, and I’ll just continue to hit you. ”

He patted my bare shoulder almost affectionately, dropping back into casual speech as I coughed and sputtered.

“So, I visited the Aalton temples. None of them had answers here in Calder City. But can you believe my luck, Selena, I was visiting my brother and stopped in a sun shrine in Merriam, and one of the herbal priests there had heard of a temporary ailment involving lost memories. He’d been studying his records and found the affliction more pronounced along the coast. Until somewhere close to the Rivean border. Then it disappeared entirely.”

I tried to shift away, but I couldn’t move.

I was too heavy, too liquid, too low to the floor.

Almost sunken through it. The King drew me upright.

I wheezed as he did, clutching my stomach, the bottom of my ribcage already throbbing with the promise of bruises.

He straddled my legs, his weight held over the balls of his feet, pushing me against the wall.

Then wiped hair away from my face before leaning into his heels, drawing away one of the strings from his mask.

His hand entered his pocket .

I breathed roughly, watching. I expected a knife. Something small and sharp and menacing. Something to threaten me. Scare me.

It wasn’t a knife.

It was a frothy stem with wispy leaves, as soft and textured as the blue fibers of his carpet. I’d heard of it before. Had found sketches among Thaan’s scrolls. Thaan had worked hard to keep it out of Calder, sending Naiads to eradicate it. I’d never seen a sprig of it up close.

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

The way he asked, he knew I did.

But he waited for my answer anyway. Waited for me to incriminate myself, to admit I’d sung him into a stupor before, that Cain had done so even more than I. I swallowed, my mouth dry from its desperate pleas for air. “What did you put in my drink?”

“A powder,” he said flatly. “For sleep. They developed it in Krava. Then outlawed it just as fast. It’s deadly in large doses, but I only gave you a tiny pinch.

” He cocked his head, stroking a fingertip down my cheek and under my chin, angling my head up.

My eyelids fought to lift. “Don’t worry,” he said, his gaze shifting over my face.

“I won’t let you fall asleep. I just need you docile enough to answer my questions. How did you meet Cain?”

I swallowed thickly, warily meeting his eyes.

Fuck Thaan.

I wouldn’t die for him. I wouldn’t die for Deimos.

After everything we’d been forced to do in the past ten years, I wasn’t above forsaking him.

Selling him out to save my own skin. It hardly mattered if I did.

Thaan could dispose of Deimos. He could take a new form, leave his identity as Cain, and worm his way back into the court as easily as I could shed one dress and don another.

But Cebrinne—I’d die to keep our secrets safe. Keep my sister safe.

I let my skull slide out of his grip as I gazed back at him, mouth firmly closed .

The King’s jaw hardened. “All right,” he said, grabbing the sheer lace of my dress at my chest. His nails were trimmed short, but they cut into my skin as he balled his fist into the fabric, dragging me behind him.

Through a door and down a hall, into his bedroom.

My long skirt twisted around my legs. I drunkenly beat my arms, my feet, my hands, anything to wrench myself out of his grasp.

The world blurred in color and motion, every movement delayed.

The sensation of being lifted came before my eyes registered the floor retreating.

My back slammed into the hard seat of his leather chair before his face sharpened back into view.

My head hung over my shoulder as he turned and left me.

Doors closed, three of them. Snick. Snick.

Snick. I fought to stay awake, fought against the weight behind my eyes.

Emilius returned, a coiled rope in his hand, hovering over me again.

He slapped my face. The snap of it blew across my cheek, laying a bright sting across my skin.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he ordered. “Answer the question.”

I spat. I didn’t aim for his face. But that’s where it landed.

Emilius froze in surprise.

His mouth parted, the edge of his teeth bright under his lip, eyes suddenly wide.

He wiped it away slowly with his own shoulder, neck taut.

When he surfaced from the other side of his sleeve, the roll of hot metal wafted into my nose.

He stood, looking down at me for a long moment.

Then tossed the coils away. “I don’t even think I’ll need rope,” he said, reaching over my head to draw something shining away from the bookshelf above.

A hammer. And a chisel. They belonged to each other, a set crafted as a twin pair, artistic and well-made, the handles of each engraved with a flaring sun.

Maybe it was the sparkling volare in my blood.

Maybe it was the sleeping powder in my belly.

Maybe it was psychological, my mind distancing itself from my body.

Maybe it was the terror that grew within me at seeing him reach for the tools, horror reflecting off every screaming thought in my head like a thousand mirrors. The sound blooming. Amplifying. Each passing second a greater fear.

Or maybe it was simply the ludicrousness of the evening. Of thinking I’d only have to kiss and sing the King into something compliant and submissive, only to find myself in the seat I’d planned for him.

I’m not sure what it was.

But laughter warbled out of my mouth, breathless and dazed.

Emilius pointed the hammer toward the wall, indicating the main threshold we’d entered twenty minutes before.

“The door to my quarters is the thickest in Calder. It’s soundproof.

And it’s bolted shut. I have food in this chamber.

I have water. I have no need to step outside for days.

Resist, and this experience will be slow.

Painful. Agonizingly so. Cooperate, and you’ll be safely dead by morning. How did you meet Cain?”

I tried to think of a lie, but my mind turned like a wheel stuck in mud. Ribs burning, my breath shuddered out of my lungs, the soft wind of it tumbling over his lashes.

Emilius exhaled. His breath blew back over my face, much harsher than mine, laced with the hot metallic scent of building frustration.

He wrapped my fingers almost tenderly over the end of the armrest, shifting my elbow just an inch so my limb lay parallel to the wood.

Then lined the chisel over the side of my arm, the flesh and muscle that wrapped around bone.

The hammer hovered over the flat bell of the chisel.

He sent me a final look. One last offer.

My heart drummed an unbearable rhythm. My chest filled, but not with air.

Panic crowded within me, swelling, lapping, clawing.

The skin behind my neck was cold and clammy, shadowed with the scent of my sweat.

“Your palace is a pig show tonight,” I murmured. “And you dance like a boor .”

He stared at me, disappointed.

Then swung his hammer against the head of the chisel.

The ting of cold iron split through the room.

The smell of it followed.