Sidra slid into the water, gracefully arching her back as she sank below the surface. She stayed for a few moments before she returned, lifting out of the pool, her lashes beaded with tiny drops.
“What happened?” I asked, watching the Naiad stand.
Sidra sighed through her nose, leaning forward into herself, her pride deflating into the water. “Our daughter, Leibra. She fell in love.” She went to the stairs, waiting for me to follow, waving the water from the silken fabric of her swath and back into the pool. I did the same.
“Leibra resisted her father’s efforts. She always defied him, and it frustrated him to no end, though I think Thaan secretly loved her all the more for it. Like the rest of the females, the thought of owning the minds of men to use as instruments in a Naiad war never sat well with her. But a sailor fell from his ship one day on his way to Nahli into a school of sharks, and she pulled him from the depths and brought him back to thesurface, saving his life.” Piercing eyes flicked to me. “Something you might be familiar with.”
I watched her, revealing nothing, until she turned and continued. “We knew the islanders well, but we had never really trusted the sailors who came and went from Nahli enough to forge any friendships. But the man Leibra rescued was beautiful to her, and as she passed him to the reaching arms of his crew, she decided to follow his ship to the docks.
“Theycordaedand spent the week together on the island, sealing their fates together, and when it came time for his ship to set sail, she left us to go with him. Thaan and I watched our legacy drift away, leaving her people and her heritage.Cordaeingwith a human is a dangerous thing, for aPrizivac Vode.”
She paused, gently grasping my braid and running her fingers along it, zapping the moisture I hadn’t bothered to extract. The action was so motherly, sofamiliarthat I froze, stunned. If Sidra noticed, she said nothing.
Our feet padded softly on the cool floor, the only sound other than our lungs and hearts. From behind her, I watched the curve of the Queen’s arm as she fiddled with the blue stone hanging from her chest.
“The ship returned three weeks later,” Sidra said slowly, not bothering to turn and face me as we passed the rooms of her Naiad subjects. “With Leibra’s body strapped below their prow.”
I stopped dead.
Sidra stopped too. She sighed, eyes trickling over the ceiling in the ballroom where the Naiads dined, one hand braced against the wall. “They killed her, and her newcorda-cruor. You may know that sailors believe sirens to be lucky. They think a siren as their figurehead will calm the anger of the seas. They do not know that aViderecontrols the whims of the sea, and the typeof luck they hoped for never reached them. Her death brought them only ill fortune.”
“I'm sorry,” I murmured. I’d never quite mastered condolences. My hands felt heavy at my sides, a sensation I became aware of as I suddenly didn't know what to do with them. Ignoring that I hovered awkwardly in the passage, Sidra reached to press a hand to my cheek.
“We sank the ship,” she said softly, almost regretfully. Her palm smooth and soft against my skin, her dagger eyes held a wound long since cut open and never healed. “We pulled it apart from the keel, drinking in their screams, and when we dragged them below the sea, we did not use song or breath to quell their fear. We drowned them with our hands, every one of them. It was enough for me then, to simply fade into the waves and nurse my broken heart. But something changed in Thaan.
“He begged me for another child, and I refused. I didn't trust him to raise another heir for the sake of tending to the ocean. Of creating life to create life. We were all consumed with our hate, every one of us, but his ire delved deeper than skin and blood. He scorched his soul with his fury, and I could no longer give him what he asked of me.”
Turning the corner, Sidra began to climb the twin staircases, her long, delicate fingers sliding up the wall as she ascended.
“He became desperate, for what I still do not understand. He wanted the Venusian Sea, he wanted the island of Nahli, he wanted the minds of men to claim both and a bloodline to lend legend to his name. But he couldn't quite grasp any of it entirely. So, he did what no living soul should do. He sank into the depths where light does not touch the world and struck a deal with Darkness.”
My heart stopped.
To think the name ofPouli, or of Caecus, as Calderians called him, was abhorred. To say Darkness’s name out loud and invain, a damnation. But to seek the third god out and strike a deal with him…
I’d signed my blood to a siren who had sold his soul to Darkness.
My breath grew tight, my skin sickeningly warm, a strange buzzing in my ears. “What did Thaan ask of him?”
At the top of the stairs, Sidra surveyed the dining ballroom, grand and empty. Her hand coasted down the wall, and I finally recognized what the carved patterns were. Tally marks. Thousands of them. Millions.
“Several things. The ability to shift his shape, I suspect. The fracture of ourcorda-cruor, I know for certain.”
She slipped under the open archway, leaving me open-mouthed on the landing. Incredulously, I stepped under the archway after her.
“Naiads must die for theircorda-cruorto break.”
“It is true, and it is untrue,” Sidra said, gliding down the passage of cool stone. The spiky plants lined either side the same way sconces framed the corridors of Laurier Palace. “In all of existence, there is no other pair of Naiads that I have ever known, to have had theircordabroken while they both draw breath. He struck a bargain with the third spirit, Caecus, while I sat in this room, tending to the sick.”
She turned suddenly, meeting my eyes with a penetrating gaze, rooting me to the spot. “I felt it break,” the Queen said. “It snapped like a tendon in my flesh, and I was brought to my knees with the agony of it.
“Right away, I understood what had happened. I didn’t know how or why, but I knew he had broken the sacred tether between our souls.” Pausing outside an open entryway, she tilted her head. “I lost control. I had never done so before, and I’ve never since. A rage consumed me under the thrill of pain, and I submitted to it. Most of my female Naiads were safe, hidden inthis colony. But the males were on Nahli, where I believed Thaan to be as well. And that’s where the force of my anger unraveled. The island cracked and shifted all the way down to the sea floor, opening chasms in the crust of the world.
“There have always been volcanoes surrounding Nahli, but that day, the mountains broke open and liquid fire rained. The world shredded under the mercy of my pain, my fury, and I was too far gone to stop. I was magma given life; I was brimstone set aflame. I buried the island, entombing the people who I’d long since considered my subjects, my friends. I killed the male Naiads of our colony who were on the surface with the islanders, and when I realized what I had done, it was too late. I rose to the waves, helplessly watching alongside my females as the magma rolled and hardened, their owncordaeslost to them. Thaan found us there, and I thought he’d be angry at what I’d done. But he watched the island melt and burn with deadened eyes, with all the feeling of a corpse. I looked at him, and knew my mate was gone. The Naiad I once loved no longer resided in his body. He was something else, and he would never come back to me.”
“You’re Nahli,” I said, the myth surrounding Neris Island coming to life as Sidra’s story unfolded.
Sidra inhaled, pausing for a moment as she opened her mouth. “And Inaina, yes. The tale was woven into two women, but they were both me. A wife betrayed by her husband, a fire-spirit longing for her child.”
