Thaan glanced at Cain. “Lock that door. Go the long way around and get the boy.”
A handsbreadth away from Selena’s office door, Cain obeyed, turning the latch and crossing the floor to vanish into his own apartment.
My heart crumpled into a terrified mass of wings and feathers, a tiny bird suddenly batting against the windows of my body, searching for an escape. I transitioned back to human, watching Thaan back away, staring at me as he waited, and without the strong tread of my tail, my mouth dipped below the water.
The thought of Kye alone in this room with Thaan drove any semblance of composure from my body. Angry at being forced tokick, my ankle throbbed as I threw my chin above the surface. The air seemed warmer than the last time I’d come up for breath, the oxygen thinner. “He can’t be incanted,” I huffed, my words spraying seawater and dripping acid. One last attempt at convincing Thaan that Kye wasn’t worth his time. “Anything he sees, he will remember.”
“We’ll see,” Thaan said. “You’ve lied enough that I second guess everything you say.”
“If you hurt him, I will kill you.” I fell under the surface again, forcing myself back up. “I’ll kill you slowly and painfully. I’ll open your veins and empty you of your life drop by drop. I'll carve your ribs from your back and splay them wide like wings of bone.”
Thaan flicked his eyes to mine. “Do not try and play macabre with me, Maren, it really doesn’t suit you.”
“I will burn this palace to the ground just to make sure you’re dead, and when Caecus comes for your ashes, I’ll tell him there were none, so that you may spend eternity searching for a way to score up with Darkness just so you can cross the Sea of Stars to Perpetuum.”
Thaan frowned slightly. His mouth thinned, then pursed. “Odd.”
I glared at him through the glass, unwilling to take his bait.
“Your blood owes its loyalty to me. You shouldn’t be able to threaten my life.”
My mouth opened, my jaw hovering in the air. “I have before.”
“You’ve said when you are queen, I’ll be the first you order to die. You’ve never said the wordsI’ll kill you.”
We stared at each other, the soft splashing from my kicks the only thing left to hear as my breath left my body. My heart rolled to a stop, my hands both spread across the glass.
“Maren?” Selena asked again, louder. We knew she’d heard every word between us, but neither of us bothered to answer her.Thaan rubbed his mouth slowly with a hand. He shifted, walking toward me again, eyes now traveling over me in a way that sent a shiver streaking down my spinal column.
My throat closed. I suddenly wished I could snatch the words back. But there they hung, somewhere beyond the glass wall that separated us. Out of my reach. It hadn’t mattered that I’d entered the palace with my own mental fortress stacked tall and proud. In less than a day, in mere hours, Thaan had tunneled under my walls and discovered I’d thwarted my own vow. My own blood. There was no way to pretend he hadn’t heard my threat. Nothing left to do but dig in myself.
I lowered my chin. “Well, I will. If you hurt him, I will kill you. I promise.”
“I understand.” He stopped a few feet away. “Maren of Leihani, I call to your blood.”
I waited for my skin to harden into a shell, just in case I hadn't really become Queen of the Juile Sea. For the pain of his voice inside my head to reverberate through my mind. For my body to move in all the ways I didn’t tell it to. But there was no way to pretend that he could do that, either.
Thaan gave a single, cold laugh. “My Queen,” he said. “I hope you’re comfortable here. You’ve just changed the entire game. I no longer need you to bond to the boy. I no longer need Calder. The only thing I need now—“ He pulled in close, both hands on the glass. The sun lifted from the eastern horizon. Silky strands of light fell through the window, tumbling across the water. “Is a single drop of your blo—”
Thaan’s voice extinguished in midair as his eyes fell to the bottom of my glass box. Where something blue now sparkled in the sunlight.
66
Kye
"She’s this way,” Thaan’s little scribe said.
Arms crossed, shoulder blades and foot planted against the wall, I shot him a heated stare. “Whois?”
We both knew who the fuck he referred to. I’d been waiting for Maren for three days. Waiting to rage and scold and vent and check every inch of her to make sure she’d returned in one piece. I’d thought I’d seen her climb from the cliffs an hour ago, just before the sun came up. And I’d intended to meet her halfway to my tower, bounding down the stairs two at a time and burning with anger and relief. But I’d walked the entire route from my rooms to the rocks overlooking the sea and hadn’t found her.
I’d gone back. Tried a different direction. Then another. And then found myself here, nothing to do but wait and spin my wedding band in endless circles around my finger, the flames of my anger spent. Smothered by the same ruinous worry that had banished anything resembling calm thoughts from my sun-damned body while scanning theBrána Do Podsvetia.
Cain pointed sharply at my baldric. “Leave that here.”
I gnashed my teeth together, unbuckling the sword and sheathe from my back, tossing it away from myself without looking at it. It hit Selena’s wall with a dull thud, but I was already following Cain down the main corridor.
I’d never studied the man before. I’d never really had the chance to. Thaan’s little silent shadow. His master had always commanded a room with those creepy fucking eyes and his bored, haughty stature. People avoided Thaan because he made their skin writhe, but no one ever gave Cain a second glance.
