Page 45 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Selena

T he mattress was bare, sheets folded and stacked at the foot of the bed.

Pheolix set me down beside them, the bed groaning under my weight.

Dust plumed softly around me, the taste of it dense over my tongue.

He turned and locked the door. Lit the single candle by the bed.

Then sidled up to the wall, drawing his knife from his pocket.

Flipping it vacantly in his hand as he stared at the floor.

I pulled my legs onto the bed with me, sucking in a sudden intake of air at the sharp pain in my side.

Pheolix’s eyes flicked to mine. “I should have killed him.”

I shook my head. “I need Emilius alive. There are too many unknowns if he dies.”

Swipe. Pat. Click. The blade spun noisily between his fingers. “What will Thaan do with him?”

“To Emilius?” I sighed. “Probably sing to him first. Ascertain everything the King knows about Naiads and what he doesn’t. Then he’ll addle the King’s mind.”

Pheolix nodded slowly, gazing off again.

Addling was perhaps a fate worse than death, though humans would never know if it befell them. As abhorred as the concept of drones being made in secret. An addled mind couldn’t be incanted . Their actions couldn’t be controlled. But they’d believe their addler’s words with blind devotion .

After tonight, Thaan would be able to convince Emilius he’d never lost his memories. But he wouldn’t be able to make Emilius do things the King didn’t want to. Every drop of sanity in Emilius’s head would evaporate, leaving him unpredictable and dangerous.

No more following him to his chambers to sing things out of him. He'd have to be killed eventually, when his eldest son was of age to take the throne. Then the incanting would return.

A shudder laced through my bones. I trained my eyes on Pheolix, searching for distraction.

“Why won’t you look at me?”

The knife snapped shut. He opened it slowly with his thumb. “I keep thinking,” he said, stopping to creak it closed again, “that I’m sorry.”

“Pheolix,” I chided softly. “Forget what Thaan said. This isn’t your fault—”

“That I laughed.”

I closed my mouth in confusion.

Pheolix’s gray eyes burned softly across the room.

“In the tunnels of Paria. When the bloodworm bit me, and Aegir restarted my heart. I laughed because I woke up to everyone staring, and it was obvious I’d died.

And you looked at me like it mattered. Like you were worried.

Like you cared. It’s been a long time since anyone—” He bit off the end of his sentence.

His knife flicked. Opened and closed. “I didn’t know what to do with that look.

I didn’t think about what it had been like for you, standing there watching.

How helpless you might have felt. So, I laughed. ”

I cleared the dry itch in my throat, though it suddenly singed, raw and tender. I swallowed it down. “You saw Perpetuum?”

Pheolix smiled, still watching the floor.

“They say if none of your loved ones are there, Death is a friend to guide you home. They say he takes a shape that mirrors your soul. Mine was like a little fox. Tricksy and fast. It jumped around me, wove between my legs. Led me back to the living. What was yours? ”

“A wolf,” I murmured.

“A wolf.” Pheolix’s smile faltered, though something softened in his eyes. “Patient and loyal. Death knows you.”

I let my own eyes fall to the floor. I wasn’t sure how patient and loyal I’d been these past few weeks, though I imagined I was wolfish enough. Something that snapped when cornered. Something that bit the things that loved it.

“I always imagined,” Pheolix continued, “that when Death came for my brother, he’d come as a wolf.”

Something ached in the way he said it, a wound covered and forgotten. But not healed. He’d mentioned his brother once. I’d brushed it off at the time, annoyed that Pheolix had surprised me in the courtyard. “You lost your brother?”

His mouth thinned as he slid the knife shut. “I think so.”

I waited. He didn’t say anything else. “Was he a drone, too?”

Pheolix clicked his tongue. “Thaan tried to make him one. He couldn’t survive it, so Thaan pulled him out.”

I shifted my weight, careful of the soreness in my stomach. The mattress croaked softly under me. I licked my lips. “How does one become a drone, Pheolix?”

He glanced at me. His knife clicked open. I’d thought he was showing off the first time I’d seen him play with it. Now I wondered if he drew it for a different reason. He scratched at his cheek with the back of the blade.

“We’re human-born,” he finally said. “According to Thaan, Naiads only began experimenting with human mates in order to create drones. Typically, when planning a human-born Naiad’s first transition, you’d wait as long as possible before they matured.”

Thaan hadn’t done that with us. But it was no surprise that, when faced with the prospect of transitioning two Prizivac Vodes , Thaan had chosen to stunt our potential. I leaned against the wall, patient for him to continue .

He drummed a thumb against the handle of his blade. “With a drone, you’d do the reverse.”

“Transition them early.”

He shook his head. “Only the first part. Breathe for them early. Then leave them in the inbetween.”

My mouth parted on a rough inhale. Then caught, unable to expel the air back from my lungs.

I’d heard of Naiads being stranded inbetween breaths.

Transitions attempted and failed. When Theia wasn’t quite full, when they hadn’t dived deep enough, when their shared oxygen hadn’t been a full breath.

Having to wait the full cycle of the moon to try again was recorded as torturous at best. Lethal at worst.

“How old were you?”

“Nine.”

“Nine,” I echoed breathlessly.

“My brother was eighteen. I think that’s why he couldn’t do it. Thaan started him too late.”

“How long were you there?” I asked, though the thought of any answer made my belly roil. “In the inbetween?”

But I already knew. Thirteen years.

I swallowed the thought away. “What did he do with you while you were there?”

Pheolix studied me for a long moment before frowning at his blade. “You don’t want to know, heiress. It would hurt your heart.”

“No, it wouldn't,” I said, though an ache had already pulsed into my chest. “You say that as though my heart is fragile.”

“No, no,” he sighed under his breath. “I think the opposite. Your heart is one of the strongest I’ve met. But it would still hurt it.”

I rested my chin over my bent knee, not quite sure what to do with that .

Pheolix tapped his blade against his thigh in heavy thought. “These past weeks, I kept waiting for you to ask if I’d ever used it against Thaan. My eclipse.”

“I assume it won’t work on him. He’s never created something that could outmatch him. Overpower him. Things that should affect Thaan don’t. It’s like he’s not whole.”

He nodded in a way that made me wonder if he’d tried once.

In my apartment, I’d have listened to the wind scrape over my windows. The sea below, pummeling against the rocks. The distant call of birds, of guards walking the curtain wall.

Here, underground, the only wind was our breaths. The only beating was our hearts. It was too quiet. Even the tiny flame of the candle burned in silence.

“When was the last time you saw your brother?” I asked.

Pheolix exhaled. “Really saw him? The day after your transition, I suppose. Do you remember it?”

“Yes,” I said quietly. I did.

I remembered waking on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

I’d always wanted to board one just to see what it was like.

I hadn’t expected the tight berths, the low walls, the feeling of sleeping both under and on top of others.

The other sirens hadn’t enjoyed it, either.

But Thaan couldn’t travel alongside his colony any other way.

They’d woken us, Cebrinne and me, to lead us down to the galley on the other side of the ship. Crossing the deck, I’d locked eyes with Pheolix. His hands were tied as he sat in a rowboat, awaiting a fate in the mines.

I’d stopped there, in the middle of the sea-drenched plank boards. And wondered what would become of him.

Then continued to wonder. For ten years.

“We used to dream of escape.” Pheolix smiled at nothing, the flicker of candlelight threading a warm glow around his edges.

“Of freeing him from Thaan and running. Finding our way back to Rivea, where we were born. Or swimming across the world to one of the other continents. Cooking klobása on a beach somewhere, learning a trade, dancing with women too beautiful for us. He’s the one that taught me how to dance.

I’d practice in my room every night in the inbetween.

It was the only thing that took my mind off it. ”

My shoulders slumped. I traced a stitch across the hem of my dress.

“We did, too. Dream of escape. We said we’d run north.

Somewhere where we could watch the Polaris Lights dance across the frozen tundra.

Sometimes we see them in cold Calder winters, little veils of green and violet.

In the north, they’re said to take up the entire sky, and they’ll dance all night. ”

“I’ve seen them as a boy. You’d love them.” He slid his knife open. “You wouldn’t try to find your mother?”

I sighed. “I’d worry Thaan would come looking for us. He knows where her house is. For all I know, he has Naiads in Cypria. He’d probably beat me to her door then wait for me to appear. What about you? Would you try to find your mother?”

“I found her a few years ago.”

“You did?” I sat a little higher. “Where is she?”

The candlelight wavered sadly in his eyes. “Ohen.”

My heart sank. Ohen was once a town close to the mountain border. Caught in the drought that ravaged Rivea some years ago, it had burned to the ground, leaving all of its people dead. “I’m sorry, Pheolix. What was her name?”

“Isme,” he said softly. “What was your mother’s name?”

“Maren.”

I felt his heavy gaze, but he didn’t say a word. Listening to the quiet burn of the wick, a thought occurred to me. I suddenly frowned. “Wait—you dreamt of freeing your brother from Thaan?”

Pheolix rubbed the side of his face. “Yes.”

“Pheolix.” Air became scarce. My eyes widened, my mouth parted. “You’re not vowed to Thaan? ”

“No.”

“You’re free?”

“Technically, yes. I suppose.”

“Why are you here?” I gestured widely around me.

“Why are you here?” he answered calmly.

Of course. Cebrinne.

He sank a fist into his side, standing a bit straighter.

“Thaan took us from our home when we were young. My brother was sixteen, but I was seven. It made sense that Thaan would only ask for a vow from him. He didn’t need one from me.

I had nowhere else to go. I used to wait for him to demand it from me.

Spent years expecting him to. But he never did. ”

“I did the same,” I said. “But then I grew up and realized why. Thaan will always choose to dangle one person over another than to keep them both as puppets. If he hasn’t forced a vow from you by now, he never intended to. Why control your blood when he can control your heart instead?”

The candlelight played with the shadows of his face, hiding in the cleft under his throat.

“I waited for ten years for him to call me back. Kept my head down. Mined during the day. Trained at night. Not every drone can do what I can do. Eclipse a Naiad for hours while I fight him like a human. Naiads don’t train to fight that way.

They don’t need to learn how to throw a punch.

Drones do. That’s why Aegir kept his distance that first day in the Venusian Sea.

” He ran his finger against the open blade in thought.

“For ten years, I trained the hardest, hoping Thaan would call me back. Need me for some purpose that would reunite me with my brother. And he did. He needed someone to protect his two coveted Prizivac Vodes while he sent them to his enemy. So, he called me, and I came.” He swallowed hard.

“But wherever he is, my brother isn’t here. ”

My mind wandered to Cebrinne. To Leihani. “Maybe he did escape,” I said. “Maybe he’s out there somewhere. Happy.”

He glanced at me. “Maybe,” he said after a long moment, though he didn’t sound as though he believed it .

The quiet fell around us again. Too thick. Too heavy.

“Will you be gone in the morning?” I asked.

He folded his knife, storing it back in his pocket. “Probably.”

I shivered, and he pushed off his perch against the wall, motioning for me to stand so he could make the bed. He fit the sheets over the mattress, shook out the blankets, held them away so I could slide in. Halfway under, I met his eyes.

“Would you lie down, too?”

He sighed through his nose and whispered, “You know I can’t.”

“Please?”

His eyes closed at that word, spoken in the candlelight. Then he gave a reluctant nod toward the bed, prompting me to climb in.

I sank onto the mattress, scooting to offer enough space for him to join. After an eternity of silence, he climbed in after me, keeping to the very edge.

The soft glow behind him illuminated his hair, the strands escaping his bun cast in quiet fire.

I suddenly craved his warmth. The hard wall of his body next to mine, the weight of his arms wrapped over me.

“Would you hold me?”

His heart sped. He’d taunted me over that once.

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter.

“Try to get some sleep.”

I didn’t want sleep. Nightmares came when I slept. Sirens who crawled from the water to take me from my home.

“Please?”

His jaw clenched, and he sighed hard enough to send his breath tumbling over my nose. But he scooted closer, collecting me in, winding me into the heat of his body. His chin curved over my temple, his hip pressed firm against my stomach. I breathed the scent of him in. Clean and warm and earthy.

“Pheolix?”

“Yes, heiress?”

“Would you kiss me?”