Page 68 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Selena

A s long as it remains lit, the gateway is open. As long as it’s lit, I’m there.

The candle hadn’t lit.

It sat on my windowsill, untouched since Cebrinne gave it to me, a thin layer of dust across its surface.

Sitting on the floor across the room, I’d watched it for hours.

Though if I were being honest, I’d been watching it for weeks.

In the early morning of the day, the quiet afternoons, the dark nights, I’d find myself staring at it, unsure when I’d started.

It was supposed to light yesterday. Three years exactly from when she’d boarded a ship to Leihani.

It hadn’t.

The last few months had been filled with dread at seeing it light. Knowing it meant Cebrinne had left this world for the banks of Perpetuum. But the longer it remained unlit, the more panic squeezed its fist around my throat, oxygen scarce under the reach of my lungs.

Pheolix’s arm rested over my thigh, a comfortable weight anchoring me in a room that felt too flighty and thin. Shadows hinted under his eyes, mementos of the weeks Thaan spent in his head.

It hadn’t happened right away. Nor in the first few months after Pheolix vowed to serve as Thaan’s Oculos . But slowly, I’d begun to notice the small things it stole from him. The tiniest bits. Invisible. Like drips of water lost from a bucket.

But lost all the same .

The glossy shine in his hair had lost its luster. The skin under his nails seemed too pale. Sometimes he shuffled when he walked, as though hiding a pain from my prying eyes, and I wasn’t sure if it was his balance or his strength that wavered.

It burned me inside to watch.

But the fire of that anger grew hotter when Thaan controlled him. Somehow, when Thaan was in him, the color in his skin returned, the quickness in his reflexes recovering as though it had never been compromised.

I’d learned how to recognize when Thaan was in his mind. The mischief would flee from his eyes, that softness and patience he harbored for me would grow hard and disdainful.

But Thaan was gone for now, whittling the last few days of Cebrinne’s freedom on a search for her across land and seas. I suppose it spoke volumes of his ego that he believed she was somewhere far from reach. Not the tiny island a mere three days’ sail away.

Usually, he took Pheolix with him. Having always used the persona of Cain, Thaan had forced Pheolix to use his name, a decision I assumed was made to punish me.

Three years of everyone from palace servants to the royal family believing he was newly in charge, brought in to replace Deimos.

But Thaan had left him here at the palace for this final search, likely to keep an eye on me.

As though I’d make a run for it and abandon him.

Pheolix nudged me. I suppose he thought I was watching the storm clouds roll in from the south. He didn’t know the significance of the candle, only that Cebrinne had given it to me. Rain drops tapped the window, blurring the picture of the sky.

The scent of it followed. Sharp, soothing petrichor mingling with the salt of the sea .

From the corner of my eye, Pheolix’s mouth twitched. I closed my eyes, breathing in, calming the voice in my head that turned over all the possible reasons Cebrinne’s candle hadn’t lit.

She’d been killed on the ship she’d boarded.

She was hidden away somewhere, captured by Thaan.

She’d escaped her vows and was living her life. Free.

That one was somehow the worst. That one filled me with a hope contaminated by the kiss of desperation. That one was the trap my heart loved to wander into, the spiral I’d tumbled through since yesterday came and went, with no one to pull me out because no one knew where she was in the first place.

The Fate of Time vows to heal all wounds, but I’ve never heard an emptier promise. Time is nothing if not a petty thief. A liar.

Time didn't heal. If anything, Time only stole more of Cebrinne away, forcing me to venture further and further from the last moment I had with her.

Each day forward stripped a tiny piece of her from my past. Each day, it grew harder for me to hear her voice, smell her hair.

Each day, the image of her became less clear in my head.

I didn’t know which was worse—knowing that I grieved her while she was still alive, or that, as soon as that candle flared to life, she’d be dead.

All I knew was that guilt climbed me like a poison vine, filling my cracks with noxious roots and whispering in my ear. Reminding me that I was still here. And she was gone.

Crouching forward enough to stand, Pheolix reached for my hand.

I let him pull me up, knowing what he was planning. Together we wandered out onto the balcony without a word.

It was the middle of the day, but the sky was dark enough to claim it was dusk. Lightning rumbled somewhere over the horizon. Even here, at the cliffs of Laurier Palace, the Juile Sea beat against the red rocks and roared. A similar song played in my chest, pulling it tight like a string.

We stepped out into the heavy rain, saturating our clothes and hair in an instant.

I lifted my head to the sky, eyes closed, and let it wash me away. Pheolix grasped my hand. Took my waist. Pulled me in.

We danced in silence until the sun shooed the clouds, soaked to the bone.

When the skies finally calmed, I turned to follow him back inside. To shed our clothes among all the fears in my head, muffling them under the steadfast weight of Pheolix’s body, letting myself wander instead into the silver of his eyes or the rasp of his voice.

But the candle in the window stopped me there in the center of the balcony. It shone through the glass, a soft halo surrounding its wick.

Burning.