Vouri watched as I approached. I leaned in, trying to warn her with my eyes.Go. Leave. Run.
Keep your voice low,Thaan ordered.Repeat after me. The plan has changed.
“The plan has changed.”
Thaan’s away. Meet me in my apartment. Take the servants’ passage.
“Thaan’s away. Meet me in my apartment. Take the servants’ passage.”
She gave a slow nod. My stomach flipped, the pit of it roiling with sick.
Return to your rooms, Cebrinne.
I’d reach them before her if she was taking the servants’ passage. My feet led me away. Out the corridor and over the sky bridge to the west.
Coward,I shot at him.
Am I?Thaan scoffed.Who posed as a lone Naiad? Who hid in my office, gathering evidence to attack me? Who entered my house under false pretenses?
You did the same, sending me to Aegir.
A cold chuckle.That is war, Cebrinne. The losing side will always accuse the winning side of cowardice to conceal that they are simply less cunning. That they let themselves be fooled. You lost. And you’re too weak to confess it. Open the door.
I stepped into the cold of my apartment.Vouri is young. She wasn’t part of your fight with Aegir’s grandfather.
She’s one of them. Andcordaed. If Aegir never sires an heir, she will someday give birth to one.
I closed the door. Had I not been under Thaan’s control, I might have jumped in surprise. A face stared back at me from inside. A tall frame, a twisted scar, a pair of hungry eyes.
A knife waited in Deimos’s hand, almost as long as his forearm. He waited for me to step inside, ear poised for the sound of steps behind me.
For the next Naiad to walk through the door.
Don’t,I said. All my complicated feelings for Aegir fell away. Suddenly, all I could imagine was the look in his eyes as I told him his sister was dead.
That I’d led her to her death.
Not just the look in Aegir’s eyes. Selena’s, too. We’d had a hand in Thaan’s war for the past ten years. We’d torn apart homes and families with every drop of ink written in the missives and maps we delivered to him, all while promising ourselves we’d had no choice.
This was different, wasn’t it?
Did I have a choice?
Thaan.
He didn’t respond with words. But I felt him return. Felt that solid fog in my thoughts, muddying and constricting.
Let Vouri go home,I said.
I’m not sure she’ll have a home to go to.
He waited for the pieces to fall into place. For me to realize that wherever Thaan was, he wasn’t at the palace. For me to drop into strained silence, listening for the presence of my sister’s heartbeat. For her lungs, for any scent or sound of life coming from our bedroom, our apartment, the entire fucking floor of the tower I stood in.
It was only me and Deimos.
Where’s Selena?I snarled.
He left my mind. Stepped out like a shadow carrying away the night, weightless but cruel.
