Is my sister safe?
Stay right where you are.
Deimos tucked himself tightly behind the door, knife firm in his grip.
Thaan!I snarled.Is she safe?
Step, step, step, step, step. Down the tower stairs.
Thaan!
Deimos turned his head toward the sound, listening. Waiting.
What do you want? I’ll give you whatever it is—what do you want? Thaan!
I couldn’t walk, but my breath rasped in and out. Heat crawled over my skin, the clammy, cold heat that only came from suffocating terror.
THAAN.
A brief pause suspended time. The steps outside the apartment slowed. Deimos’s eyes shifted to me.
I suppose there’s one thing,Thaan drawled.
What?
Your voice.
“My voice?” My hand rose to my throat subconsciously, feeling the soft vibration of the words through my skin.
I’d expected him to ask for something darker. Something more sinister, more callous, more inhuman.
I could live without my voice.
I’d happily live without it, if it meant keeping Selena safe. I’d thank the moon and stars each night that I’d had the chance to give it away.
It took no further thought, no moment of hesitation to decide. I walked across the room, holding out my hand for Deimos’s knife. The Naiad watched as I repeated what he’d just done, slicing a bright line through my hand.
“I swear on my blood,” I said quietly. Across miles and miles, sand and beach and sea, I could feel Thaan in my head, listening. “You have my voice.”
When the flash of light warmed the gash in my hand, it also warmed my throat.Burnedmy throat. Deeper than the cut I’d just made through the dermal layer of my palm. The blaze almost choked me, roasting through muscle and cord, leaving my eyes to water in the wake of the flames.
The steps drew nearer. Just outside the dancing crane statue beyond my door. They stopped.
Someone knocked.
Eyes on the floor, I stretched my arm. Defeated. And tried to hand Deimos his knife.
But he didn’t take it from me.
Thaan’s voice returned to my thoughts.
Keep it.
47
Selena
Aegir heaved a wave of water over Thaan. Over all of us.
