Page 49 of Of Song and Scepter

My hands itch to touch her, to comfort her. To brush that fear away. Instead, I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Has she always been like… this?”

“You’re going to have to elaborate, before I put words in your mouth that shouldn’t be there.”

“Persistent?”

Enna’s laughter bursts across her face like the morning sun, brilliant against a once-gray sky. “Clingy?”

I chuckle, drinking in the sight of her. “I wasn’t going to say it.”

“She and I, we… grew up together. She practically ra—she’s the closest thing I have to a sister.”

“You have no siblings?”

“My parents were not a happy match.” As quickly as it appeared, her smile fades, and I miss it already.

“We have that in common, then,” I say.

She nods. “I saw your father’s statue in the hallway. You look like him.”

My throat tightens. “Do they miss you while you’re so far away?”

“My father was a sick, twisted siren, and now he is dead.” She shrugs, as if relaying the state of the weather. “I never knew my mother.”

“And that’s when you joined the royal court service?”

“Something like that,” she says.

“It’s a whole other world down there in the deep, I can’t imagine. What do you miss the most?”

I’m asking too many questions. I should stop this silliness now. Should place a barrier, should retreat. Lean away at least. But I can’t do any of that; I’m drunk on her words, eager for another glimpse into the world she came from.

“I miss the darkness. And the cold.”

I shudder at the thought of a life without the sun. Ugh.

“I can’t sleep here. Your kingdom is too bright, too hot. Even when I close my eyes, I can see the light. Nothing is dark here. And it’s all warm. Like swimming in piss water.”

I laugh. “We’re always swimming in piss water.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Yes. But at least the piss water down there is recognizable for what it is. You swim through it, and you know.”

“Isn’t that worse? To know? I rather like not knowing.” A complete lie. I’m obsessed with unpuzzling her.

She frowns again. The skin of her brow puckers into a tightV.

“No,” she says finally. “Because if it’s dredgebeast piss, then you have a heads up.”

“Are there many dredgebeasts?”

“Only in the Drink.”

“And you’ve swum in their piss.”

She nods. “Many times. I’m glad I did. Gave me enough warning to stop the bastards.”

I close my eyes, greeted suddenly by the beasts depicted in the throne room mural. Their lithe, strong bodies covered in spines, with four broad paddle fins, each the size of a boulder. Their large, snapping teeth; I imagine a small black-tailed form weaving through them. A throbbing ache pulses in my head, and suddenly I cannot see straight.

“Tell me you didn’t fight it,” I growl.