Page 64 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Selena

F ingertips cascaded down my forearm, lacing between my knuckles. Hours had passed, but neither of us had moved, our skin bare and dusted with goosebumps where our bodies didn’t touch. The cavern was dim, night lurking just beyond the edges of the mountainside.

Pheolix didn’t notice I’d woken. He lifted my hand into the air, pulling it close and studying my nails like he’d never seen something so fascinating as the moons of my cuticles. His thumb grazed over them, and he uncurled my fingers to trace the lifeline in my palm all the way into my wrist.

He stopped at every freckle, every thin vein.

As though the imperfections in my skin were painted with a magic brush.

Up my arm and across my shoulder, slowing as he followed the arch of my neck.

His hand stroked across my jaw, heat oozing from his touch, and his thumb drifted across the hollow between my mouth and chin.

A smile hovered in the bow of his lip like a ghost lurking in the shadowed corners when he noticed my eyes were open.

“How does it feel,” he asked, "to be officially cordae -less?”

I’d thought about it briefly before drifting off.

Naiads were said to feel their bonds attach as they mated, an invisible cord attaching one to the other.

A tether that always pulled them in the direction of their mate.

Some corda-cruors throughout history had been separated by miles.

By continents. And they’d always had that cord to find each other.

Although I’d known it wouldn’t come, I suppose some part of me subconsciously waited to see if it would.

Just in case Pheolix was wrong. But the fresh scent of the corda-cruor didn’t hang in the air, and I couldn’t decide if the hopeless enamor that burned through me now was any more or less than what a human might feel.

Still, I smiled at him. Found the side of his face with my hand and let my fingertips drift through his russet hair, twisting at the ends. “You are my cordae , Pheolix.”

He cupped the corner of his jaw in a hand, propping himself over his elbow. The shadow of his smile deepened.

I let my hand whisper down his chest, tracing the tattooed lines down his abdomen. Thirteen of them, one for each year he’d spent in the inbetween. “How are you luckier than the other drones?”

He glanced down, observing the trail of my fingers. “What do you mean?”

“You said you were luckier than them. They lost themselves and you didn’t.”

Pheolix chewed the corner of his lip. He caught my roaming hand in his, then pulled them together to rest over my navel.

“Most of them watched their families die,” he said, his voice a rough murmur beside my ear.

“I’d been taken from my mother, but I knew she’d escaped.

I knew she was alive. I didn’t have to struggle with the idea that she’d been killed.

And I had my brother. We weren’t supposed to see each other, but Thaan was away for years at a time.

When he was young, my brother stayed as a guard for the dungeon under the mine.

” Pheolix scoffed, the sound half chuckle and half sigh.

“He snuck in to visit me every night. Told me stories in Rivean. Taught me to dance. The rest of the drones in the inbetween would sit at their bars and listen, but he wasn’t their brother.

They all lost themselves eventually. I managed to hold on because of him.

That’s what saved me; my confinement wasn’t solitary.

When he couldn’t visit, I’d pretend he did.

I’d sit and talk to him for hours. Holding on to my humanity by a thread. ”

The earthen scent of rain prickled my senses. Pheolix caught it in the same moment .

Our eyes met, both of us thinking the same thing.

Rain again.

I brushed hair away from my eyes. “But your brother wasn’t with you in the mines after the night you…” I paused, unwilling to blame him for my capture. “After the night we met.”

“No, he was in Calder by then. With Thaan.”

“How did you make it through those ten years?”

He swallowed, flicking his luminous eyes to mine. “You.”

I gave a small start. “Me?”

Pheolix rubbed the side of his chin. His mouth parted, but he didn’t immediately speak, lashes lowering as his gaze dropped to the edges of my face.

He tucked the lock of hair I’d impatiently swept aside behind my ear.

“After graduating from the inbetween, drones aren't allowed to speak to each other. We’d wake. Train with our fists. Mine under the mountain. Train again. Eat. And go to our rooms. Without a single word. The guards left buckets for us. Soap and toothbrushes. We’d wash the day off, and the rest of them would fall asleep.

I stayed up, pretending to talk to the girl I’d stolen.

Fighting against losing my mind by sharing conversations with you. ”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “What did you tell me?”

He sighed softly. “At first, apologies. I was sorry I’d had a hand in your abduction, but I wasn’t sorry for what I did.

For breathing for you so that Thaan couldn’t.

I might have stopped there, but you were so easy to talk to.

” He laughed shyly. “I found myself telling you everything. Anything I could think of. Stories about my mother and brother. About growing up in Rivea. About the inbetween.”

His voice trailed away, his mind drifting elsewhere.

To words spoken into the dark to a girl who wasn’t there.

I shifted my weight, turning to fully face him, calling his attention back.

“Thaan can't dive underwater,” I said. “But he was in Deimos’s mind when he breathed for Ceba. Her first transition was violent and cruel. And she was never the same after. ”

His brows tightened, his throat constricting at the mention of their names.

“But,” I said, smoothing my fingers across the shallow groove of his collarbone, “I’ve thought many times about the fact that my first transition was different from hers.

That you were gentle and kind because you knew I was scared.

That you took a punishment in order to give that to me, even if I didn’t understand what that punishment was.

I could have easily been like Ceba, struggling to feel something for the rest of my life.

” My voice broke, even though my throat hadn’t closed, and my eyes remained dry.

“But I’m not, Pheolix. If I saved you from losing your mind, it's only because you saved me first.”

Something in his eyes wavered, as though the words were a balm to a wound left open for a decade. I leaned in, letting my lips close against his. Drinking him in with a slow, soft kiss.

The sun set. Shadows fell, and rain fell with them. The chirping of birds outside quieted, animals bedding down in their nests for the night.

It was muffled at first, the patter of it broken by the bed of soil and pine needles outside. But it gradually fell harder, tapping against leaves and stone, the hymn of the sky as it bathes the world. Pheolix slid his hand up my stomach, lancing the hard peak of my nipple with a thumb.

Flames immediately stirred deep in my belly, but he chuckled at the husky look I sent him. “Would you dance with me in the rain?”

A laugh escaped my mouth. “Naked?”

“Naked.”

I raised a brow.

His mouth quirked in a dark smile.

“Fine. Help me up.”

Pheolix pulled me to my feet then kissed me where I stood, deep and unrushed. The sun was down; night was here. We didn’t have time for such things as slow kisses and frolicking in the dark. But he raised my hand over my head, spinning me in a wide turn just to pull me against his chest .

We didn’t wander far from the cave into the dark. And it may have been ill-advised to drench ourselves in the cool mountain air for only the sake that we could, our bodies clothed in nothing but the rain. But we did it anyway.

It was the dance I’d thought I’d asked him to share in the midst of the Starlit Bloom Masquerade when the music was slow and I’d been brimming with anger. I laid my head over his shoulder. We spun under the rain.

He tucked his chin over my brow. I’d have liked to stay longer, tasting the rain on his skin. But he peeled away after only a few minutes, reluctance heavy in his eyes.

“We should go,” I whispered.

Pheolix nodded, gathering my hair away from my neck and twisting it over my shoulder.

He followed me back in, our soft laughter bouncing off the cavern walls as we searched for our torn clothes and pulled them on.

Buttons and frayed thread peppered the dirt floor.

We left them there, shaking out our cloaks and fastening them onto each other.

Pheolix fixed my hood before we left, setting it low over my eyes.

Just a few hours until we found the lake.

Found escape .

We set off, once again hand in hand, sweeping over the stone hills and valleys. A grove of Ashwood trees lay ahead, wet leaves shaking in the moonlight.

“Where’s your sister?” Pheolix asked.

I glanced away. “I can’t tell you. But we had a plan. We laid tracks. She’s safe.” I hoped.

Pheolix nodded. “Maybe someday.”

“No,” I said, eyes on the trees as we passed. “I swore a blood vow that I’d never tell a soul. To protect her.” My eyes shifted to him. “Once we’re settled. Once it's safe. I want to find your brother. ”

His mouth parted. “When I said I’d lost him,” he murmured, “I didn’t mean that I don’t know where he is.”

“What?” I stopped, turning toward Pheolix. “Where is he?”

But Pheolix didn’t answer.

Cold air fogged over my mouth. A chill lanced down my spine. A sweep of frost permeated the nearby trees, so thick and crystallic they glittered.

My connection to the water in the air vanished.

Pheolix crossed in front of my body, backing me into the nearest stone slab as we searched for the direction it came from. Which way to run. But I knew somehow, through instinct or experience or a solid education in my own ill-luck, there was no way to run.

They stepped out from the trees and rocks, surrounding us from every angle. Their hoods off, that prickle fired down my spiculae as I met their eyes, one after another. Pheolix pressed me flat against the rock, an arm held out to the side to cage me in.

One of them stepped forward.

The drone threw a punch. Pheolix ducked, straightening before the other Naiad’s arm fully stretched, and struck him in the throat.

He went down with a choke, and two more took his place.

Pheolix let one of them attempt a swing, waiting for the Naiad’s arm to extend and locking his own arm around it. I flinched at the crack that followed. The Naiad didn’t make a sound.

Twisting, Pheolix threw him into the other one. Then turned in time to grab the fist of a fourth in midair, halting the drone. Pheolix kicked that one square in the balls.

A female dashed into my side. I shoved her off, but she fought with the same brand of precision Pheolix did, snapping my arms together behind my back and forcing me to the ground with a violent wrench up against my wrists.

She fit a cold boot into the back of my neck.

Then suddenly her weight vanished, crashed into the stone by Pheolix’s body.

She crumpled away, but he’d already surged back to fight with more of them .

Nine Naiads lay strewn over the ground around us. Dead.

A thin cord cracked.

It whizzed under my ear, a soft vibration through the air.

Pheolix jerked, shoulders caving forward.

And looked down at an arrow in the side of his abdomen.

A shriek erupted from low in my lungs as I reached for him. Even in the dark, the powdery surface of the shaft gleamed, both pearlescent and dull—someone had tipped it in ash.

I knew that ash. It was caustic against skin. It burned lungs when inhaled.

But it was lethal in the blood.

The smell of burnt flesh bloomed, the sound a thick sizzle.

Pheolix dropped to his knees.