Page 57 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Selena

E leven days on horseback. The knife strapped to my calf began to rub my leg raw, but I refused to take it off.

The Riveans had stopped trying to make conversation with me on day three.

I knew simple words in their tongue. Day, night, food, drink, sleep, fire.

If I’d wanted to, I could have trained my ear for more in the time I spent with them.

But my mind was saturated with other things, too absorbed for my usual thirst for learning.

I’d thought that riding out of Calder would lift a weight from my shoulders.

And in some ways, it had, though I couldn’t shake the grit in my teeth when a voice whispered in my mind that I’d abandoned Cebrinne—even if it’s what she’d spent over a year asking for.

I’d thought that sneaking from Thaan’s grasp might help me finally breathe, might loosen the sensation of walking everywhere with a chain fastened around an ankle, a shadow looming over my shoulder.

But each hour I grew closer to the mines, worry spread through my stomach, swirling like silt, muddying my belly in swamps of nausea.

Drones can’t cordae.

Maybe not. But they could fall in love.

I was certain of it.

As certain as I’d been before Pheolix had even kissed me. I just hadn’t realized it until Thaan killed him .

A daily pendulum swung in my head. I missed Cebrinne. I hoped for Pheolix. I missed Pheolix. I hoped for Cebrinne. Miss, hope. Cebrinne, Pheolix. Swing, swing, swing.

When the leader of our troupe rode beside me to point at the fork in the road where our paths separated, the nerves in my belly both dissipated and doubled. I’d reached Winterlight.

I was here.

I was here.

I watched them ride on, rooted next to the weathered sign boasting Winterlight’s name, until their last horse turned through the trees. Then clicked my tongue, slowly making my way toward town. In the center of my lap, my fingers laced nervously through the leather reins.

I knew drones could fall in love.

I just hoped they could forgive as well.

“Pheolix?” the miner asked. His frown deepened as he considered the name, rock-dust stuck to the sweat of his brow in lines of sludge. I wondered if Pheolix would look the same when I found him.

As though the man felt my eyes, he lifted a shoulder, wiping half of his face with his shirt. The grime merely smeared into his ear and neck. “Don’t know that I’ve met a Pheolix.”

I nodded, smiling though my heart deflated. “I’ll keep asking.”

I did.

I combed the entrance to the mines first, asking every man who went in and came out.

“He’s a few years older than me,” I said whenever someone paused to turn the name over in their head.

“Rusty brown hair. Gray eyes. Tattoos down his sides.” But they finally shook their head, offering me luck and apologies as they wandered away.

My search led me away from the mines and into town. Pheolix had spent a decade here. Surely, someone should have recognized his name. I asked the local barmaid, the innkeeper, the countless Calderian rangers who trekked the perimeter of the mountains all the way to the northern gate.

No one knew who Pheolix was.

Sunset found me back in Winterlight, alone in the tavern, a pint of ale untouched on the table before me. Beads of moisture rolled down the misty glass as I watched in silence, my mind every bit as detached as the condensation was to the amber liquid inside.

People passed. Some of them remembered me from hours earlier. They clucked in pity to each other, continuing to their booths.

The barmaid came and asked if I’d like a roasted chicken leg and rosemary bread. I said yes, though my appetite had deserted me. When she set the plate down, I simply stared at that too.

I’d spent the last few months combing over what I might say to Pheolix after I arrived here.

I hadn’t once considered what I’d do if he weren’t.

A dark shape slid into the booth across me, and my gaze lifted to meet theirs. But it was blocked.

By a black hood.

The lower half of the face was female, a jaw and mouth I couldn’t place. My heart skipped. I leaned forward, rooting my fingertips into the scratched and dented wood of the table.

She stared at me with her hidden eyes, a heavy message lurking under her silence .

Then she stood. Without a backwards glance, she walked through the tables. The tavern door swung on hinges as she pushed through. One moment there, then gone.

I hurried out of my booth, tossing fraggs next to my untouched meal and dodging through the crowd of miners enjoying their drinks, blasting out of the door and into the night.

The hooded Naiad was there, waiting for me on the other side.

She turned on her heel, cloak snapping as she made her way across the street to a horse tethered to a post near mine. Without a word, I followed, climbing into the saddle and gathering my reins.

The Naiad struck off toward the northeast side of town.

She never glanced over her shoulder at me.

Never called to ensure I was still behind her.

But she seemed to know when to let me catch up, slowing around street corners and tall trees where I might have lagged.

When she took the final turn toward the mines, I sped through the village outskirts to keep up.

We rode toward the mountains in silence, back to the man-made cave I’d visited just hours before.

Winds shifted, the air cool and damp. I pulled my cloak tighter over my shoulders at the first drop of rain, a cold trickle down my cheek.

The mountains didn’t care that it was summer.

That to the south, Calder was thick with warmth.

I thought of Cebrinne. She’d be in Leihani by now, toasty under the island sun.

But here, wind whisked my clothes and hair, snatching any heat my body might have offered. The leaves of nearby trees fluttered against the drizzle. Clouds blotted the light of the moon, rendering the rain invisible unless I passed ripples in puddles in the road.

Near the mouth of the mines, the Naiad dismounted. The hustle and motion of miners earlier that day had abated. A single guard stood at the cavern entrance, one of the King’s soldiers.

The Naiad pointed at him .

I studied the guard. The Naiad wore a hood like Pheolix. If she was a drone, she couldn’t incant humans. “You want me to sing?”

She didn’t answer. But intuition nudged that meant yes. I stepped forward, opening my mouth, and she stopped me with a hand on my arm. Then held out her opposite palm expectantly, her chin tucked low.

Payment.

My stomach wrung itself through a nervous string of twine.

The possibility that this was a trap taunted me. I’d had every intention of entering town and covertly seeking out Pheolix, stealing him away into the night. But as the day wore on, my search grew more vocal, more public. Everyone in town knew I was a traveler searching for a man named Pheolix.

I squared my shoulders. “Where is he?”

The drone cocked her head toward the mines.

“Swear on your blood.”

She stared at me for a long moment. Rain fell onto her hood, planting wet dots in the fabric. Slowly, she drew a knife, laying the edge against her palm, and dragged it back an inch.

“The Naiad Pheolix is in the mines,” she said.

I didn’t recognize her voice, but it was enough to hear her words. Trap, no trap—this was my chance. There was little choice for me unless I never wanted to see him again. I leaned over my saddle, digging through my leather pouch until I found one of my two remaining purses.

“How much?” I asked.

The Naiad leaned over my shoulder, gazing inside my saddlebag. She lifted the purse. My jaw hardened as she tucked it into her cloak, then cocked her head toward the guard once more.

I sighed, stepping forward to sing.

His shoulders firmed, his back straightened, his muscles ceased any movement.

The drone nodded, stepping from the shadows.

I followed her, passing the living statue through the cavern mouth.

We stopped only so the drone could pull the torch from its iron fixture, leaving our vacous guard in the dark.

Crushed rock ground under my shoes. Dust clouded our feet.

The chiseled tunnel ahead was squat. Wide but short, ending not far from the top of my head.

Carts sat against the walls, lined with stone grain and chunks of mineral, a highway abandoned until sunrise.

Scars ran the length of the cave, pockmarks shaped with a hammer’s swing.

The torchlight bounced as we walked, climbing around corners like some joyful demon of fire skipping ahead to show us the way. Air began to thin. Sound took its place, each step a haunting echo that reverberated across the hollow passage like an endless howl.

The further we journeyed, the more anxious I grew. Pheolix was in here. But no other living soul was. The mines lay entirely deserted. If no one in town knew his name, and if the mines were bare at night, why was he here?

Our passage angled down into stairs, and it occurred to me that we’d left the main tunnel, no longer walking where miners walked. We’d entered something else. Carbon and sulfur hung in the void, the taste of them gritty across my tongue.

I held my breath to subdue the urge to cough when we reached the bottom, as though I’d swallowed so much dust my lungs couldn’t fully empty.

The thin air felt heavy somehow, sending a wave of light-headed fog through my mind.

Ahead lay eight doors, dark holes in the rock, staggered so you couldn’t see the others when standing inside.

Welded with bolts of iron. Seven of them were open.

One of them was closed.

I glanced at the top of them, searching for ancient scripture that might trap me inside. But the carving was the same scarred rock as the rest of the mine.

The drone held a hand out to me, a skeleton key trapped between her thin fingers. She waited for me to take it. Then wedged the torch into the empty iron cage between the two nearest doors and turned away, disappearing back into the dark.

My breath ghosted from my mouth, a soft chime in the otherwise quiet belly of the mountain. Ahead, I narrowed in on the rhythmic thump of a beating heart. A beat I recognized. A beat I hadn’t heard in over a year.

I stepped forward. Fit the key into the iron hole.

And turned it.