I didn’t answer. It had been a long time since I’d thought about the legend of Nahli and Inaina.She promised if men walked her island, she would drown them. If women walked their island, she would bury them under molten rock. And if a child were to set foot on her beach, she would steal it and raise it as her own.
Kye had almost drowned on the banks of Neris Island, I remembered with a shudder.
Waving a soft hand through another entrance, Sidra waited as I stepped through first. The chamber was massive, the floor receding into water only a few steps in. Ahead, shallow pools were cradled in the stone, various sizes and depths, joined at the edges to allow movement from one to another. A kingdom of sea life spread across the bottom. Coral in every shade and hue, sponges, snails, fish in schools, zigzagging through the water. Three Naiads glanced at us as we entered, closing their hands and bowing their chins at their queen.
“This is our nursery,” Sidra said. “We prefer to keep creatures in the sea, but those that need special care are brought here.”
I surveyed the room. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but I couldn’t pull myself from Sidra’s story to appreciate it. Apprehension flickered at the burning question in my chest, but I forced myself to ask anyway. “What did Thaan give to Darknessin return?”
Sidra’s silver eyes drifted back to the tunnel, and she gestured for me to come as she stepped out. “To Darkness? Caecus will only give you power for that which makes you weak. In his arrogance, Thaan gave up the one thing that might have saved him. The one thing we share, as Naiads, with the other souls of the world. He gave his humanity.”
The queen tilted her head, as if taking time to formulate her thoughts before putting them into spoken word.
“I do not fully know the repercussions of such a trade. I would guess he became cold and unfeeling. That it became easier for him to use other Naiads and humans for his own games. I would also assume it stripped him of his ability to love, to create life. But I do not know for certain. We were punished by Theia.”
Studying the tallies scored across the walls as we walked, my eyes flickered sidelong to Sidra. Theia—Mihauna—Goddess of the Moon, Mother of the Sea, Ruler of the Afterworld ofPerpetuum, had come down from her throne in the sky to serve her own sense of justice.
Sidra raised her chin, catching my gaze with silent confirmation. “You were quite young when I taught you the Triad. The Power of Three. Everything worth anything will happen in threes, and the gods are no different. Aalto the Sun, Theia the Moon, Caecus the Dark. Long ago, eons before my time, Theia entrusted Naiads with the power to bond to the land, the sea, and the creatures within. And we had broken that trust, Thaan and I. We destroyed a civilization with our hate. She separated us like children, and to ensure we never met again, she stripped us bare.”
Sidra drew her sleek white hair over one shoulder. Three pale lines marked the hollow under her ears, like a triple-clawed hand had slashed her skin and left it to scar. “From me, she took the ability to use my lungs, giving me gills instead. I can leave the water here, in the humidity of the colony, where the air is thick with warmth and moisture. With pools of water in almost every room if I need a dip. But I can never leave the sea. I cannot rise above the surface for more than a minute, and it burns when I breathe any oxygen under the sun.”
“And from Thaan?” I asked, gazing at her gills.
“From Thaan, Theia took his tail. She couldn’t take everything, I suppose. Not his abilities, nor whatever he had gained from his bargain with Caecus. Theia’s powers are beautiful and terrible, but even she cannot change a body enough to mend a broken soul. I cannot enter the land, and Thaan cannot enter the sea.”
The passage climbed, steep and narrow, and I trudged after Sidra in heavy thought. Thaan couldn’t enter water. Did Selena know?
“She placed my crystal, the Breath of Safiro, in the center of Nahli, under a sheet of ice,” Sidra said, interrupting mythoughts. My attention flitted to the queen, who regarded me with slow contemplation. “Where she put his, I do not know.”
My steps slowed. “His crystal?”
Sidra nodded. “The Scale of Safiro. Thaan knows its location, though like me, he cannot reach it himself. We needed our stones to heal what we had lost, though I worry I’m too far gone to regain my lungs now. I’ve worn this crystal since the day you emerged from the volcano, and I still choke on the oxygen above.
“Only one Naiad could break the ice and claim the stone. A Child of the Moon. I had thought, when your mother came, that it was her.”
59
Maren
“You knew my mother?” I asked, breathless. I’d wondered, that last day on Neris Island, if Nori and Olinne had known her. If they’d let her take the blame for missing sailors.
But I’d never considered the Queen of the Juile Sea had as well.
“I knew her, yes.” Sidra angled herself away, resuming her pace, unaware or unbothered by my disbelief. “The day I erupted from the sea within, three fishing boats escaped the volcano. They landed on Leihani, the island on which you were born, and so your people began. But we had been friends, the Naiads of Safiro and the people of Nahli. So as Theia had separated Thaan from myself, she separated the islanders from Naiads. She blessed the people there, or perhaps cursed them, with an unnatural distrust of any Naiad.
“We tried to visit in those first years. To rebuild what I had destroyed. It didn’t matter that we emerged in human form, our tails hidden under our skin. The islanders of Leihani instinctively knew what we werewithoutknowing what wewere. That we had the power to take their minds, to seduce the thoughts from their head. They drove us away without thought or reason. They threatened and attacked us if we stayed too long. So, we remained in the sea, watching from afar, waiting for a Child of the Moon.
“The females of the colony grew restless. They couldn’tcordawith male Naiads, there were none left unless they wanted to swim to another colony, and even then, it is forbidden that they should mate with an enemy. The islanders wouldn’t allow them on the shore, and although we could haveincantedthem to us, the colony had little interest in betraying the island people a second time. We left them alone, but ourDomuswas slowly dying, which I imagine was what Theia intended. But we found a way to remain. The femalescordaedwith each other, and after their bonds were made, they surfaced to follow merchant ships, singing men into oblivion and stealing them under the water, killing them for their seed.”
She sighed, licking her lips and opening her mouth, pondering something for a few moments before continuing. “It was never my intention to rebuild ourDomusin such a way. But you will find them—matriarchal colonies, ruled by a queen, female Naiadscordaedto one another. You don’t find that so much with the male Naiads. I’m sure that somewhere, such a colony exists, but I’ve never heard of one. Matriarchal colonies are usually found in lakes and rivers, smaller in size than ours.” She offered a small shrug. “When a Naiad iscordaedto one being but mates with another, a sort of…revulsion takes over. We needed the men, the sailors, but at the same time, their touch repulsed us. Our hate for men grew, perhaps more wild at times than our desperation to stay alive.”
“Did you as well? Steal sailors from your shores?” I asked, failing to keep the disgust from my tone.
“No. I refused,” Sidra said flatly. “And do not think me honorable for never doing so. I was desperate as any of my Naiads, and I might have, but mycorda-cruorwith Thaan was broken. As aVidere, it would have only served the colony for me tocordawith anotherPrizivac Vode, and though I looked for one in those first few hundred years, no otherViderewas willing to give their male offspring to me. I can’t blame them after the mess I had caused. After my failure with my formercorda-cruor.”
“So Thaan was the last Naiad king of the Safiro Sea?”
Sidra drew herself to her full height. “There are no Naiad kings, child. There are Monarchs, there areVideres, there arePrizivac Vodes. And then there are queens, the highest station a Naiad can achieve. Be careful not to make that mistake again. Even with a maleVidere, you might cause offense if he thought you were comparing his throne to that of a human’s.”
