Page 48 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)
Selena
“ O ur mother isn’t coming, is she?”
Thaan didn’t even answer Cebrinne.
She asked with such cool surety. She’d always hated him. Almost as soon as she’d laid eyes on him, she hadn’t trusted him.
“Get them in the water.”
Deimos took Cebrinne.
The Naiad standing closest took me.
I fought him as we fell. As we hit. As we sank into the dark.
But somewhere under the waves, I realized I knew this Naiad.
I knew the silhouette of his shoulders. The outline of his cheeks. The soft steel in his eyes.
He traced the arch under my chin, tugging my face up. His gaze dropped to my lips, and I watched as his mouth opened in response, transfixed by what he saw. He leaned in, his thumb drifting to the opposite side of my jaw.
Our lips met. The barest whisper of a touch.
And then he was torn away.
My eyes flew open as some part of my mind registered the sound of four heartbeats in a tiny servant’s room below a palace.
I clawed across the bed at him as we ruptured apart. Some fraction of me was still underwater, weightless, my arms and legs buoyant. Dry air choked my lungs, the thin blanket tangled between my legs .
On the floor, Pheolix twisted to look at the Naiad standing over him. Deimos held him down, though he was struggling. Pheolix had locked an arm around Deimos’s leg, tripping him sideways, sending him to the floor as well. I scrambled to the edge of the bed.
A hand wrapped around my throat.
Not a hand—the watery version of one.
It yanked me back like a collared chain, slamming my skull against the wall. Shouting filled the tiny room, Pheolix shoving Deimos to climb over the bed toward me, but Deimos grabbed him by the back of his shirt, yanking him back.
The watery vice lifted me, dragging me up. I kicked as I rose—until my toes barely stood over the mattress.
Pheolix turned, striking Deimos. The crack of his punch made me flinch even as I hung there, and my gaze flickered to the figure in the doorway.
Thaan’s eyes glowed with cold thunder. He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.
“Let her go,” Pheolix growled. He stepped toward me, one single step toward the bed. A breath escaped my mouth, fogged with cold. The chill ran along my skin, raising the fine hair along my arms.
His body blasted to the opposite wall with a watery clap.
In an instant, the cold collapsed.
“You think you might eclipse me?” Thaan’s voice asked in the dark. Our candle had died sometime in the night. Thaan turned to the single oil sconce on the wall, soft light flooding the room.
Pheolix pushed himself up to kneel beside the bed, hands clasped behind his back, tied with an invisible rope. He didn’t move. He held himself strangely, his muscles hardened to stone. His eyes widened, and every vein along the surface of his skin bulged.
“How very odd,” Thaan said as though testing a theory. He glanced at Deimos. “I believe I said to find this room and wait for me. I never told him to mate with her. ”
“We didn’t,” I forced out. My fingers wrapped around his water-hold. Thaan studied me, examining the truth in my words. “Whatever you’re doing to him, stop.”
“I find it hard to believe that you did not,” Thaan answered blandly.
“Give me a knife,” I ground out. “Give me a blade. I’ll swear it on my blood.”
Pheolix gave a strangled, involuntary gasp.
As though suffocating.
Drowning.
“GIVE ME A KNIFE.”
Thaan tilted his head, watching Pheolix with the care a philosopher might have afforded to a newly presented dilemma. Curious yet heavily resigned. “I think the safer choice might be to end him either way.”
“Stop!”
Thaan clicked his tongue, crossing his broad arms. “Let's try this.”
He released Pheolix. The drone’s body crumpled to the floor, gasping and coughing. He looked up at me as he pushed himself back to his knees, hands still bound behind his back.
Thaan’s frown deepened. “It’s very simple, Pheolix. What would you be willing to sacrifice for Selena?”
My eyes darted to the Naiad kneeling in the center of the room. Another of Thaan’s games, a puzzle I didn’t have time to work out. Which answer was he searching for? The one a personal guard would give? Or the answer belonging to something deeper?
Say you’d sacrifice nothing, I silently ordered. I’m not sure why that one felt less dangerous. But instinct cautioned at risking the alternative.
Pheolix lifted his head, gazing at me straight on. His breaths staggered in and out of him, though he worked to calm it, chest heaving a little less with each gulp for air. He swallowed hard.
My eyebrows threaded as I pleaded with him. Say nothing, say nothing, say nothing .
He shook his head, his voice rapt with apology. “There’s nothing,” he breathed, “I wouldn’t give.”
Thaan sighed. “Nothing?”
“I’m sorry, heiress,” Pheolix said. “I’d burn every bone in my body to keep you warm. I’d sacrifice every drop of my blood to keep you safe.”
Flecks of dust floated through the air, twinkling in and out of the strands of lamplight. Fire burned against the backs of my eyes, scorching my throat.
“I thought so.” Thaan turned to me. “Let this be a lesson, Selena. There are consequences to your mistakes. The King’s mind is lost. Our position in court is secure, but you’ve made my role twice as hard.
In the meantime, you let him”—he indicated Pheolix with an indifferent hand—“get too close. You let him forget his place, and now I’ve lost trust in my strongest drone. He’s worthless now.”
Thaan snapped his fingers.
And one of the four hearts beating in the room stopped.
Pheolix dropped to the side, landing face down. And didn’t move.
“Your sister is waiting to return to Venusia,” Thaan said. His hold over my neck loosened, and I forced myself off the wall with a hollow splash. Thaan turned to leave, motioning for me to follow, but I climbed down to the floor, grabbing Pheolix by the shoulder and rolling him over.
Light had left his eyes. He stared blankly ahead, his skin already ashen, lips already pale.
His body, which had always seemed so solid, so hard, was suddenly too soft and slack.
I shoved his shirt up over his chest, flexing my fist, searching for the synapse of water in his blood to channel through my grip the way Aegir had in the Parian caves.
But I couldn’t even make a spark.
Only the Naiad of an ancient bloodline can restart a heart , Xiane murmured into my thoughts. I was a Prizivac Vode . A hive heir. I should have the power.
It had to be there, somewhere in my blood .
My hand shook, my breath ragged. I swiped wet hair from my neck where Thaan’s collar had sat over my skin, the heat of frustrated desperation sticky over my body. Blood filled his unbeating heart. I wrapped my mental hand around it and squeezed.
Squeezed again.
From the doorway, Thaan came to stand over my shoulder. Watching me.
A trickle of iron pooled at the back of my throat from the energy it cost me. I coughed it out, wiping the bright red from my mouth, and kept going.
Squeeze . Wait. Squeeze. Wait.
“I’ve always wondered,” Thaan drawled, “if he was the one to rob you of your potential.”
I ignored him, panting softly as I worked. Neglecting to acknowledge the drain of power in my fingers, the light-headed buzz that fogged in my brain.
“That breath he gave you, the one you gave back. Deimos went underwater as my Oculos , but every other Naiad there was a drone. None of them were supposed to transition you. Look at you now, half the water-caller your sister is.”
I bared my teeth, spinning to look up at him. “What do you want, Thaan?"
His gaze hardened. “I want you to go to your rooms, ready with your sister, and bring Aegir back to the palace. Today.”
“Fine,” I snapped. “What do you want in return for bringing him back?”
Thaan stared at me, long and hard. He raised his chin. Pulled his fingertips together. “If I do that,” he said slowly, “you’ll promise to never speak to Pheolix again.”
My hand fisted into the folds of Pheolix’s shirt. “I promise. ”
Thaan sank to a knee slowly, and it was all I could do to keep from screaming as he rolled his sleeves up, taking his time. Water zapped to life under the palm of his hand.
A moment later, a hard gasp ripped through the room.