A Sea of Wrath and Scoria, page 45
My knees pierced the surface of the snow.
And I wasn’t sure if the wind’s voice was the scream that filled my ears.
Or if it was mine.
79
Maren
Fire became my bones.
Lava became my veins.
Embers, my eyes. Ashes my lungs.
And the agony of my own fury cut straight to my bones.
The sky ripped into two. Dark clouds billowed and oozed overhead. A flash of light bolted from one side of the horizon to the other, following the fire of a screaming nerve deep within my flesh.
Kazimir didn’t even look at Kye as his sword fell from his hands. As he dropped to a knee. The Rivean thrusted a boot against Kye’s shoulder, shoving him away to reclaim the use of his blade. As though he were nothing.
There were suddenly hundreds of them. Armored uniforms of bright red, swarming the base of the summit where we stood. And I couldn’t see Kye under them anymore. They walked over the top of him as easily as a mat, welcoming themselves to our doorstep.
But I felt the snow clench its teeth under my knees. And the sky burned as it fell, stars raining like comets, each one born of my fire.
The world shuddered. The mountain shifted. Rock split.
The cordae.
It broke. It broke. It broke.
And something in me cried out his name, searching for his voice in the dark, for thoughts that I could send to him, and thoughts that could be answered. But there were none.
Arms came around me, warm bodies dropping close, words in my ears.
I couldn’t hear them.
I couldn’t hear anything but the blaze of my own soul, screaming into a void as cavernous as the ocean’s fury.
Something exploded against my back. Something I had summoned. Sharp heat and smoke swallowed me in an instant.
Hands tugged me upward, pulling me to my feet.
The world imploded, ground suddenly falling under my weight.
RUN, a voice shouted over the wind, and I couldn’t decide if it struck me inside my mind or out. But I was suddenly running, dragged by a thorny patch of arms and hands as wave after wave of pain flattened over me like the tide over the hard sand. And each one brought a blast of molten earth behind me. Another surge of liquid fire, raining over our heads and sizzling into the snow.
I was yanked along. And my feet couldn’t keep up, tripping, stumbling, falling. A hole burned into my center, scorching and growing, deeper and deeper, leaving a black and empty nothing as it devoured more and more and more.
They shoved me up again.
Oxygen crumbled into dust before my lungs pulled it in.
And I kept calling out his name in my head. But he didn’t answer.
Grab him, Nori’s voice sliced through like a knife. Through the canyon!
Selena was suddenly close, a desperate plea in my ear. “Maren, you have to stop! Maren!”
But I didn’t know how to stop. I didn’t even know how I’d started. I was lost in the eye of a storm with no beginning and no end, shrieking a name at the top of my lungs against the tempest of time, with no promise of ever receiving an answer other than the cold, hollow, empty air echoing my calls back to me.
Another blast sent heavy heat waves licking across my skin, ash tumbling through my hair.
Olinne’s face came into view, and suddenly I was shoved underwater. The crack in the earth followed us there, a bright and burning chasm opening under our feet. She hauled me to the surface, both hands around my wrist. “Swim!” she yelled. “Swim, or we’ll all be buried under the force of you.”
So I swam, even though I did not understand how. Things came into focus. Broken trees, jagged rock, shards of ice and leaves. All underwater. Was I Naiad or was I human? I couldn’t tell.
They towed me along the surface, Selena clasping my shoulders. “Stop, Maren! Maren, stop!”
I tried to.
I tried to stop.
But all I could do was scream from the pain of the burning fracture of my core.
We reached the other side, through the ash and smoke, I climbed ashore and gazed back as the Naiads called away the river they’d formed, trapping the Riveans behind us. The crimson soldiers screamed as they ran. Into the trees. Off the cliffs. Over the side of the ravine.
Desperate to escape the glow of living obsidian as it reached its hands for them. And buried them under it.
It broke.
The fire falling from the sky thinned, sparks flickering into silvery-gray flakes.
“We can’t stay here,” Selena said to Nori, who placed her hands over my shoulders.
“She’s back with us,” Nori’s voice cracked. “Give her a minute.”
Aitne found my hand. A cut marred her cheek, her eyes bright and red. I realized burns had eaten through my silk dress. The young healer wheeled me around slowly, and my gaze followed the trajectory of her turn to where they’d laid Kye in the snow.
They watched as I loosed a ragged sob, padding through the drift to sink down beside him. Golden eyes open and unseeing. A dark stain across the chest of his armor, a wound left in leather and skin. My shoulder met the cold earth, my hip as well. I curled under his arm and into his side, turning his chin with my fingers to face me. Then burrowed my face in his neck.
Mint and rain.
It broke.
Distant shouts crossed the canyon, terrified and panicked. We ignored them. The Naiads of my colony gathered tight, circling me as I grasped at the fur over his shoulders.
And wept.
80
Maren
“Your arms, My Queen.”
Aitne’s soft voice rocked me out of the depths. Still holding Kye’s arm across my chest, I opened my eyes, staring numbly at the faint lines that had emerged from my skin. Patterned tallies, crossing, uncrossing, zig-zagging from my fingers to my shoulders.
“Her legs, too,” I heard Olinne say.
“Maren.” Selena knelt in the snow at my head, leaning in to tuck a lock behind my ear. Someone gasped quietly at the reveal of my bare neck, and I thought I caught the word gills on the wind. I looked up at Selena through a blurred lens, blinking away the haze. “We can’t stay here. We have to leave. You must stand.”
“Give her a minute,” Nori said again, hoarse as though she’d been screaming.
Selena smoothed sweat-licked hair off the back of my neck. “We don’t have time,” she said thickly.
“I don’t understand.” Olinne’s voice cracked. “They were newly cordaed. Her blood should have protected him from dark fates these first few years. In Leihani, we couldn’t touch him when he dove in the water after her. That’s how we knew they were bonded.”
My mouth thinned. I turned my head, delving my face over Kye’s chest, and felt my own slowly caving in. Mouth, throat, lungs tight, oxygen sent me into exile, and for once I didn’t care.
“I don’t understand, either,” I heard Nori say.
“The Fates marked Nikolaos for dead,” Selena murmured.
My eyes cracked. The world swam around me in hues of white and red, but I wiped my cheeks. Wiped the blood trailing from my nose. And pushed myself to sit upright where I, along with the other Naiads, gazed at Selena in aching confusion.
“Thaan forced your hand in revealing your Naiad tail,” Selena said softly. Apologetically. “A human cannot see a Naiad. It is law. Whether or not you cordaed to Nikolaos, your blood came for his.”
A stunned silence followed.
“I did this?” I asked, breathless.
“No,” Selena whispered. “The Fates did. The candle of your cordae’s life had already been waxed and set. Thaan simply lit the wick with your blood.”
My fingers tightened around Kye’s sleeve, her words falling from strings around my head. Your blood came for his, your blood came for his, your blood came for his. Nori and Olinne had always—always—warned me against bringing a human to meet them. It had been one of their first and sternest rules. And even after I’d left them, intuition had taken the place of their warnings. Instinct voicing the dangers of revealing myself to Kye. Even my own contract had forbidden it, Thaan protecting his assets by ensuring I wouldn’t deviate from my vows.
But I’d fulfilled my oaths. And Thaan had locked me in a glass box. And I’d tried to fight the need for oxygen. But I’d run out.
Their heads turned toward me as the sound of ragged, rippling torture escaped my lungs.
“Stop this.” Olinne sounded on the verge of tears. “We can discuss it later.”
But Nori’s voice had hardened. “When did this happen?”
Selena’s eyes remained on mine. “Thirteen days ago.”
“And you didn’t think to tell us?”
My mentor, my mother’s sister, opened her mouth. Her chin gave a small shake. “I could not. I was the messenger. I couldn’t breathe a word until now.”
Nori growled, “The messenger for who? Thaan?”
Selena shook her head. “Theia. The Triad calls you, Maren. You must stand.”
I swallowed thickly, angling myself just enough to catch the stares of the other Naiads. Because surely those words meant something to them. But they watched her with a doubtfulness equal to mine. My fingers stroked Kye’s soft curls. “What?”
Ocean eyes pulled close, somber and sad. But serious. “The Triad calls you. You’re the third. Remember the story I taught you? Xeno, Corvus, and Androma? The lover, the blood, the warrior?”
A chaotic breath vacillated from my chest, in and out and in again. I smeared ash and dirt and blood across my cheek, dashing tears away to gaze furiously at her, my hand never leaving Kye. “Yes?”
“Twenty-five years ago, your mother lit a Moirai candle and sent a prayer to Theia. To rid the world of Thaan. Because he’d grown too strong, his ambitions too dark. And Theia answered.”
I shook my head, blinking profusely now. The screams had stopped along with the wind, but heat still pulsed over us from across the ravine, magma crawling to the center of the canyon, pushing down trees like a snake’s belly over weeds.
I knew we’d have to leave soon. Have to turn back the way we’d came, find the Calderian army, deliver Kye to them. The Rivean unit that had found us hadn’t made up the enemy’s entire force. And we’d have to face that too.
I understood all of that. But I stared blankly at Selena, unsure what she was trying to explain to me, or why she had to explain it now.
“Three lives lost. One creature of Darkness destroyed. The crossing of the Sea of Stars. Your mother asked Theia for a child of the moon. She left Calder for Leihani knowing she’d someday bear you. Her blood. And she knew she’d die because she abandoned her vows. She knew you’d take a corda-cruor, and he’d die as well, marked for death in battle. She even knew who he was. She went to see him as a baby before she left. Before you were even born. Theia gave her all of it. Every instruction. Every detail.”
“I don’t understand,” I breathed, pushing straighter to face her, still holding onto Kye.
Selena took my free hand, our knees touching as we sat in the snow. “Three were chosen. Your mother, willing to die. Your lover, slain in battle. And you. The warrior. You are the child of the moon, Maren.”
The Stone of Safiro hung from my neck, a small weight against my skin, and something curled into my chest at her words. The first small twinkle of warmth in hours.
Selena held my stare. “I’m Theia’s messenger. And this is her message. You have three days. Three days to rid Theia’s seas of a creature of Darkness. To cross the Sea of Stars. To find the Gates of Perpetuum. Doing so will end this life. Your current life. But if you succeed, you’ll come back. Here. To this mountain. With a power to rival Thaan of Safiro.”
I glanced at their faces. Beautiful. Streaked with dirt and sweat and ash. Some of them, blood. “And if I fail?”
“Then you are lost. I’ll have Nikolaos taken to Pirou. Hadrian is there, he can bring your husband home. Your mother will remain where she is, her ashes buried on the islands.” Selena bit back a quivering breath, her voice faltering. Weakening. “But if you fail, you will be lost.”
I stood, gazing down at her, Kye’s hand firmly clenched in my fingers. And the strength that had abandoned her words entered mine. “And if I succeed?”
Selena stood too. Stood and took my shoulders and didn’t try to catch the tracks that carved through the filthy layer over her cheeks. “Then you will re-enter life. And return here. To this day. Maybe even this hour. And you’ll bring Ceba and Nikolaos back with you.”
“She lit a Morai candle? A flame of the Fates? And left Maren three days to cross the Sea of Stars?” Nori shook her head. “Do you even know where to find a creature of Darkness? They exist in myth. I’ve lived my life in the waters of the Juile Sea and I’ve never seen one.”
“The Juile Sea is not dark,” Selena said, still watching me. “It is bright. And we don’t need to know where to find one. Maren knows.”
I did?
My mouth cracked open. Then closed.
“She does?” asked Olinne, turning her head to look inquiringly at me.
Selena nodded. “Theia said you’d encounter one. Have you, Maren? Encountered a creature of Darkness?”
I took my time answering, lacing my fingers with Kye’s, running my thumb across his knuckles. “Yes. In the Brána Do Podsvetia.”
Nori shook her head. “That’s weeks from here.”
I barely heard her. I knew a way to shorten weeks into days. To slow time to the span of a single grain of sand, turn that grain in my fingers, and reset it along the beach.
And I’d gladly meet that thing again. Spearing hooks. Long legs. A ribcage that walked, bone-thin and fast. And pincers that snapped in my ears. Click, click, click, click, click.
I’d meet it. I’d fight it. It had come so close to killing me before. I knew it might again. Might feast on my flesh. Or abandon me to the throes of decompression sickness, with no Kye this time to pull me out. But the risks didn’t matter.
Selena reached for me again. “You must be sure. It must be your choice.”
My voice became stone. “It is my choice.”
Kye’s fight was my fight. And his demons were my demons. And I’d spent eternity ensuring our enemies knew their names. I’d tear the world apart to reclaim Kye from Perpetuum. Gates be damned. Guardians be damned. Sun and moon and Darkness be damned.
I’ll come for you.
Acknowlegements
To my husband Reese, thank you, once again, for everything. Thank you for making me coffee when you woke up to me furiously typing away at 4:30 a.m. Thank you for cleaning the house and cooking dinner on the nights I couldn’t. And for not batting an eye at the messy floor and the frozen pizza on the nights you couldn’t, either. Thank you for all the celebrations, big and small. Thank you for the continued support of my interrogative line of questioning (What would you do if your hands were tied behind your back and you walked into a room to find me kissing another guy? No babe—you can’t punch him, your hands are tied). I love you so much and am so grateful you’re my partner in all of this.
To my parents, Sandy and Doug. Thank you for buying multiple copies of A Sea of Song and Sirens. Thank you for reading my sword fighting scene and telling me all the ways it was crap. Thank you for letting me use your guillotine cutter and plastic sealer for the books and merch I send overseas. You’re the best parents ever and I love you.
To my sister, Cait, thank you for assuming the role of my team manager with such ferocity. I love that I can count on you in every way, message you any time of day, come to you when I need an answer to any problem, and you’re absolutely on it. Also, thank you for the inspiration leading to Kye calling himself an ogre—quite possibly my favorite part of this book.
To my other siblings, Athena, McKayla, and Stefano, and to my besties, Clarissa Chrismer, Vallerie Webb, and Tyana Shiles, thank you for hyping me up constantly and low-key threatening me over when ASOWAS will be ready to read. I love you guys! You’re amazing and I can’t believe I’m so lucky to have you.
To Kamryn—I love you.
To my developmental editor Jessica Flannery, oh my gosh. Thank you so much. Your feedback truly helped shape this story, but honestly, you did so much more than just that. For all the long conversations regarding plot and pacing and character arcs and faeries vs dragons and where Romantasy is headed next and time travel and aliens and baking bread and women’s health and how fucking hard it is to be a mom AND write. I don’t know if I could have done this without you. You talked me off a ledge several times when I was unhinged and hating a scene and I hope you know how much I truly appreciate it. Thank you, friend.
To my alpha reader, Yasmin Dyer, who restarted this manuscript how many times?? Four? because I kept yanking it back to rewrite, thank you for just diving in again without a second thought. For helping me up my banter game within these pages. For taking the time to read ASOWAS even though it was your busiest season of the year at work. I can’t wait for you to take your leap at all of this and to support you the way you’ve done for me.
To my amazing beta readers: Caitlin, Tara, Autumn, Celina, and Sami, thank you for your sharp eyes and helpful notes. For finding areas that needed a little more weight. For zoning in on pesky tiny plot holes (Maren’s hair was just braided, why is it now down and free?) and for messaging me in the middle of the night with the single word sobbing. Your feedback is so valued and truly made all the difference in cooking up this novel with all the necessary ingredients.
An extra shout-out to Sami Ro: thank you for being Maren’s voice in the audiobook versions of The Naiads of Juile. So often you sent me a message or left me a note that truly illustrated the level of enthusiasm you hold for this project and left me marveling at your love for it. Thank you for that. Thank you for making it as much of your baby as it is mine. And for everything in between. And all the funny Instagram reels. Let’s be honest, they make up a significant amount of our friendship.
