Page 66 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Cebrinne

W hen you get there, let yourself be picky. Don’t just settle for the first pair of island eyes you see.

My mouth twitched as I remembered my final parting with my sister. How I’d done the one thing she’d forbidden.

I’d tried to take her suggestion. The island men were so different here from the lords in Calder.

Rather than antlers on their walls or titles after their names, their bodies boasted their mettle.

Strong and decorated with tattoos for every badge of honor the island bestowed them.

They worked hard. They laughed hard. They poured love into everything they did, from fishing and gardening to the simplest of tasks, counting stars or telling sweeping stories around a fire.

The sheer depth of love for everything had been foreign at first. Almost taboo. Like I’d wandered into a place I didn’t belong. Didn’t deserve.

The village doctor, Akamai, had let me stay in her little house.

At first, the islanders waited for me to board a ship home.

When a month passed and I still hadn’t, the men began to dawdle when they passed her veranda, offering to leave her the day’s catch and asking if she needed aid repairing her underground oven.

“You better choose one soon,” she chuckled one night, unfolding crispy fish from a banana leaf. “My stores are full, and my house is cleaner than it’s been in years. I have nothing to do during the day but watch the water beat its head against the rocks. Soon, I’ll be beating my head there, too. ”

I smiled, halfway through a basket the old woman had shown me how to weave, and my gaze lifted to the center of the market.

A slew of island men dispersed, birds taking flight at a loud noise.

The man in the center met my eyes, knowing I’d caught him looking. He flashed a slow smile.

I think, maybe, that’s what drew my attention. Amongst an island of people curious about me, Ano smiled when everyone else pretended to look away. He smiled at me as though he’d claimed me the day he found me. As though I were already his. A part of his island.

A thing to be loved.

Sunset in Leihani splashed the world in measureless pinks and oranges. The horizon sank into the far reaches of time, the sky and sea amaranthine. A full moon rose in the east. The sleepy sun hung in the west. The sand and palms flushed with a luminous glow.

Good luck followed when the full moon shared the sky with the father sun, Ano had said.

I crossed my fingers he was right. He watched the silver orb rise over the water with me, our heads crowned with circlets of lobelia flowers woven by his sister, Palunu.

We were married by torch fire.

The island cheered.

Ano picked me up before I even took a step, hauling me over his shoulder like a hunter’s bounty, and even the sailors watching from their ship decks laughed, their pipes in their mouths and their arms crossed with humor. Ano carried me up the embankment to his little house.

I’d long since traded my cotton for bark, my shoes for bare toes. Pins hadn’t seen the roots of my hair for weeks. The only thing that styled my blue-black strands now was the wind, twisting and pulling whenever it stroked itself across my brow.

Ano dropped me to my feet at the top stair of his veranda. His mother used to live with him in this house, but she’d moved to Palunu’s little hut when his sister announced she was with child. They passed us on the pathway on their way back, along with the rest of the islanders.

“Wait,” Palunu called, running up the stairs and shoving her brother away from me. She brushed a fine grain of sand from my jaw, smoothing my hair behind my ears in such a Selena-like motion, I swallowed a sudden thickness in my throat.

“There,” she said, winking at me. “Now. If he’s horrible, please forgive him. He's an idiot. He has no idea what to do.”

“Goodnight, Palunu,” Ano said, taking hold of her arm and guiding her down the steps.

She flapped out of his grasp, laughing. “Be gentle with his feelings, Alana. He’s very fragile. He cries easily.”

Ano sent her into the arms of her husband Naheso. Then waved her off like an offensive smell in the air.

“He’s also afraid of the dark,” she leaned across Naheso’s chest to call at me. “He jumps at the sound of the wind. If your night is truly terrible—” Naheso turned her around, marching her down the trail. She angled her face over his shoulder. “You’re always welcome to sleep at my house!”

I watched them go, a tight pinch swirling in my chest. They’d taken me in, an island of people. Given me a home. Had dressed my body. Had taught me to weave and garden and carve wood. Had bloomed curiosity into friendship. Had lovingly offered me one of their own to marry.

They’d shown me welcome in every moment I’d spent here .

It would all end by morning.

Ano swept my hair away from my neck, dropping a kiss behind my shoulder, a sparkle in his volcanic eyes. Then he ducked under his door flap, leaving me to listen to the crickets sing.

My hand lowered to my side.

It had only taken four scales to secure the blood betrayal to my hip. At a distance, it was invisible. Even close, the bronze in my scales might have only been a birthmark. I drew the drop away, letting my scales recede into my flesh.

I’d considered at length which day I’d take it—Deimos’s parting gift to me. I could have used it that very first day. Introduced myself, explained how I’d appeared in the middle of the water with no trace of how I’d arrived.

I could have saved it for my final day. Stretched my life by twenty-four hours, soaking every last bit of island air before my lungs gave their final heave.

But in the moments I found myself staring into Ano’s eyes, I’d realized my answer. It had evolved in my head as slowly as the moon decided to wax and wane, but once it took shape, it shone as bright as Theia among the stars.

Tonight, I will cordae . Tonight, I will cordae free.

I popped Thaan’s blood onto my tongue, swallowing with a handful of fresh water from the bucket at my feet.

The weight of my vow lifted almost as soon as the gulp hit my stomach, a burden on my shoulders that had hardened since I left Calder and would only grow heavier in the days that followed.

My vocal cords strengthened, a soothing caress down my throat.

A fire that had burned me for months on end quietly extinguished.

I flexed my fingers and smiled. Then followed Ano under the door flap .

He waited for me inside, arms crossed as he leaned into the wall. His head lifted. The smallest crack parted his lips like I’d startled him, though it wasn’t quite surprise that widened his dark eyes.

“You’re glowing,” he murmured.

I’m not sure that was true, but the words lit a small ember of warmth in me anyway. I made my way to him, feet silent over the wood floor. “Ano.”

His mouth dropped. His brows rose.

“I only have a day,” I said. Theia burn me, words came out like rust, but they tasted like wine, smooth and sweet, even if they were dry and scratchy.

Ano straightened from the wall, his wide hands engulfing my shoulders. Even if I had come to the island with a belly full of words, I’d never been a talker. Ano was .

But he was silent now, waiting for what I might say next with a hope and hunger that threatened to break the numbness inside me.

“After tonight,” I said slowly, “everything will change. I need you to know what to expect.”

A small knot between his brows. “Are you leaving?”

I shook my head. “I’ll stay here until the day I die.” His fingers relaxed a fraction, but my eyes slid away. “But I know what day that is. I know several things that will happen.”

He moved. I couldn’t decide how. Couldn’t decide if he’d suddenly tensed or relaxed. If that crease in his forehead suddenly loosened or deepened, if the shadow that hovered under the apple in his throat was more rigid or soft.

I forced a calm breath from my lungs. “Theia sent me here.”

“Theia,” he said, testing the Calderian word on his palate. “ Mihauna .”

“Yes.” I closed my eyes. “She sent me to find a husband and bear a child. Just one. A daughter.”

A thick brow raised. I let him take his time absorbing that, aware the evening between us was unfolding more strangely than he'd expected. I’d been in Leihani for three months, and I’d never said a word. Then suddenly, I claimed I was sent from the island’s favorite goddess.

“I thought you were about to say you escaped someone,” he said, tilting his head. “That someone is looking for you.”

“Someone is.”

He leaned forward from the wall only to readjust his shoulders and rest against it again. “Another man?”

The words oozed a heat I didn’t recognize, though they made my skin tingle. “Yes, but not one that’s in love with me. One who wants the magic in my blood.”

Another long pause. He rubbed a thumb into his lip. “Magic in your blood.”

I lifted my chin, just slightly. “There’s a curse on your people, Ano. A shield of protection. Someone born on your island and someone like me… we weren’t meant to marry. That curse will only lift until I take a husband. After tonight, your island will hate me.”

He frowned, doubt pinching his brows. “Show me.”

I blinked. “Show you what?”

“Show me there’s magic in your blood.”

I sank my weight into my heels, considering the demand. It was more than fair, I suppose, given what I’d told him. What I planned to tell him next. “Come with me.”

Ano followed me back out under the night sky, to the sound of crickets and swaying leaves. We stole down to the water. Sidra’s water. Water I’d been so careful not to touch.

A hand hovering over the receding wave, I pushed the water gently away, leaving a half-circle of sand where the tide had shifted the moment before, no bigger than the breadth of his veranda.

That might have been enough. A glance in his direction indicated it was, his body erect and his eyes sober.

But I held out a hand to him. “Let’s go. ”

Hesitation stretched his smile into only one side of his handsome face. “Go where?”

I laughed softly, and the sound cracked his smile through the other side. “To the bottom of the ocean.”

The sea was dark. Silent.

The walls of water breathed with the pull of the tide, misting us with cool air.

Ano’s gaze tilted toward the sky the deeper we walked, watching the stars shrink from sight.

We passed a bed of coral, our feet avoiding starfish and urchins.

Crabs scuttled through as we crossed over rocks.

When we’d traveled deep enough to hear a whale bray, Ano turned to look at me in shock, the sound so loud it rattled inside my chest.

He was only a faint outline bathed in silver under the far-away moon. “How long could you hold this for?” he asked, reaching to stroke the wall of water.

I shrugged. “All night. All tomorrow. By the next morning, I’d probably be tired.”

“You could sink ships,” he breathed, still gazing up.

My mouth twitched. I glanced at his large hand, still wrapped in mine. “Ano.”

His attention shifted to mine.

“I only have my voice for a day,” I said. “I need you to know what’s coming. I need you to be prepared, so that after I’m gone, you can understand her. ”

Mother moon, I could see he was trying hard to understand. He ran a hand through his long hair. “Our daughter.”

I nodded.

“Understand what, exactly?”

“That she will be like me. The island will hate her. And you have to let them.”

He stared at me in the center of the dark Juile Sea. “I’m not letting anyone hate my child.”

I straightened, studying the silver hue across his cheeks.

“I’m not saying you cannot love her. Someday, our daughter will be a woman, and the moon has chosen her to fight a monster.

The Fates know her name. You can’t change her path.

And I won’t be here to guide her. She won’t find her way if she’s had an easy life.

If she loves people so easily, the way the islanders do.

She needs to learn how to make choices on her own.

To trust herself. To determine who is a friend and who is an enemy.

It will all begin here, on this island."

He exhaled, unsure.

I reached for his hand. "Love her in your home. But outside of it, let her learn to fight monsters.”