Inside, I viciously tore at my own walls.
Thaan turned his head toward Kye and sang.
Part III
THE COLONY
49
Maren
I’d never watched another Naiad sing to a human before. Thaan’s song sank into Kye faster than any of my songs to humans ever had. His haunting melody stopped Kye’s advance the very instant it began. Kye halted, a statue in the hallway, hand still seized over his shoulder.
I should have tried harder to find shield weed before we ventured over the mountains. I hadn’t seen any since the market in Vranna. Since Demyan had laid me flat with his hands around my neck and the guards carted Kye off with hands bound. A wiser Naiad would have bought a bundle of it. But I hadn’t been wise that day.
“Close the door,” Thaan ordered.
Kye swiveled, hand on the knob, and I watched as the only window anyone might have had to witness the situation unfolding before me snapped shut. The wind from it flapped the skirts of my dress, carrying the scent of him—chemical burn interlaced with rain and mint.
“Stand here,” Thaan said, moving away and indicating the vacant floor before my feet. Kye obeyed, landing before me. Thaan raised his brows, impatient. “Do you love her?”
“Yes,” Kye said. I stared at him, unable to turn my head. Pupils dilated; the black of his eyes set a queasy fire in the pit of my stomach.
“Do you love him?”
“Yes,” my mouth said.
“Well, now that that’s sorted…” Thaan massaged his jaw with an idle hand, observing the two of us with a look that turned my bones to water. He flicked a finger in my direction. “Remove her dress.”
A flash of horror ripped through one side of me and out the other.
Stop,I said to Thaan.You’ve made your point.
He didn’t answer me.
Kye leaned in, grasping my skirts, undoing buttons, shuffling them down my hips.
I remembered the way I’d loosened my hold on avacousDiara to find she remained aware whileincanted. No recognition flashed in Kye’s eyes, not a hint of coherency. But I knew he was in there now. Watching as his own body betrayed him.
Cold air puckered my skin, leaving a valley of raised pores along my arms and chest. I stood wearing simple linen undergarments, a phantom trapped inside a shell.
Thaan tapped his fingers together. “Kiss her.” Kye pressed a soft kiss into my mouth, stubble there and gone in an instant. Thaan laughed. “Not like that, you degenerate little insect.”
For a moment, no one moved. Then I realized a sliver of gold had returned to Kye’s eyes. The chemical scent thinned; the structure of his shoulders loosened. He inhaled as he sank forward, fingers soft as they delved into my hair, his mouth wrapping around mine. Warm and firm and suffocatinglyperfect, his skin moved against me with soft precision, each stitch of muscle a slowsaltareacross my lips.
“Don’t be rude, Maren, kiss him back,” Thaan instructed. My body dropped into the familiar curve of Kye’s chest and neck. I rose to my toes, seeking to balance our difference in height, arms tugging his face to mine. “Keep going, we’ll see youcordaedyet,” Thaan’s voice said somewhere behind my back.
The walls around me shuddered under my fists. I kicked and punched. Backed away to throw myself at them, my shoulder and hip throbbing with the rattle of whiplash. Disgusted, enraged, I screamed into the void of my own mind.
My kiss deepened into Kye’s mouth. His hands wrapped around my waist and drifted to the backs of my thighs, guiding them apart, and I bounded slowly upward, aiding him as he lifted me into the air. My legs twined around his hips. He sighed, nose burrowing into the side of my neck, and my head dropped backward, throat wide and exposed as he gently nibbled along my skin.
Kye walked me to the bed, and Thaan stepped out of our way as though we couldn’t see him. As though he and Cain weren’t in the room, watching our every move. Our act was fluid and well-practiced, a spectacle we’d rehearsed a handful of times before, if not more in our heads. My hands didn’t need my mind’s direction to delve across Kye’s chest, shucking his shirt from his powerful body. And his didn’t either, hooking my bralette between his fingers and prying the linen free. Our motion was as natural as the breath that filled and emptied our lungs.
And I pummeled my walls, pain lanced across my knuckles.
I was no stranger to shame. It had been a constant visitor throughout my life. An easy dweller inside my head, sitting across the fire on my veranda or beside me in the garden whenever an islander whisperedwitch’s daughterordemonbehind my back. Shame had trespassed my borders long ago,infringing my mind with claws and thistles and roots that ran the length of my bones. A parasitic worm in my heart. I’d played host to it many times, though I’d pretended I was too strong to notice. I was as familiar with itinsidemy body as I was the glare that I’d cast out.
But this was a level of debasement I’d never known.
