He laughed.
The sound of it was warm and friendly, as though we were only playing. A challenge lay within it, an invitation to a game. It forced me to pause, taking in his features with a bit more care. The rusty stubble along his jaw, gold where the setting sun struck it. The curve of a teasing smile, the cleft in the center somehow square. A hollow V at the base of his throat, a vein disappearing somewhere under his cloak.
I shoved him again, my fingertips wet, and this time he let me.
“You.” I didn’t have words for what he was. He bought himself a step away, crossing his arms and looking at me as if he could see through hisridiculous hood, and my hands curled into fists. I banged both on his chest, knocking him off balance by an inch. He caught himself gracefully with his heel and laughed again.
I shoved a third time, a sudden red light overtaking my vision. But this time, he was ready, and my strike was much like trying to knock a wall down with a spoon.
“Why didn’t you go for the heart, heiress?” he asked. I was surprised he could even speak through the moon-forsaken foolish grin plastered across his face.
The rapid rise and fall of my chest was only too obvious. “Leave me alone, you blackguard ass of a siren,” I spat, my voice full of ragged wind.
“LadySelena,” he admonished, aghast.
I threw my middle finger at him, scarlet heat blooming over my cheeks at how pitiful my attempts to hurt him seemed to be. Then made to march away, but he caught my wrist. “Don’t run away next time. Stop my heart.”
“Nexttime?” I huffed, outraged. “If there’s a next time, I’ll stop your heart as soon as I realize who you are, and I won’t quit until it’s evident that it will never beat again.”
He grinned. “Splendid.”
I shook him off. “How old are you?”
“I don’t know. Thirty-something, probably.”
A scoff rolled out of my mouth. “Did you never grow up, or did your mother never teach you manners?”
“Both.” He mimicked me, lacing his arms over his chest as a raindrop splashed into his lower lip. He licked it away. “Life is too short to grow up, and Thaan separated me and my brother from our mother when I was seven.”
My jaw had already cocked, a razor-sharp retort primed and ready, but it died on the spot. “That explains a lot,” I snapped, though the words didn’t have the bite I’d intended. Unwittingly, my mind bounded far away. Tosulfuric lakes in the mountains. Tiny Naiad colonies. Names of families I’d written down on paper.
A sickening twist wrenched in my gut. He wouldn’t have been one ofmyvictims. But he was one of them all the same.
“I’m late,” I said, stepping around him. “I need to grab a meal for Ceba.”
“Want me to walk with you?”
“Not particularly.”
He shrugged. “That’s fair. I’ll just walk behind you, then. Admire the back of you.”
I sent a lethal stare his way. He threaded his fingers behind his neck, leisurely stretching his spine, a dark smile under his hood lifting out of shadow.
“Fine,” I snapped. “Walk with me. But don’t touch me. And don’t call me heiress.”
He sauntered up to my side, falling into step with me. “What should I call you? Heart-stopper?”
Something in my chest sparked, a small flutter that I quickly smashed. “Selena.”
“Hmmm. I prefer heiress.”
“Why?” I scoffed. “I’ll never inherit anything. Might as well be an average Naiad.”
“Average Naiads are boring.” He pulled his knife from his pocket, twirling it in his palm. “You’re anything but average.”
“And what should I call you? You’re further from average than I am.”
He tossed his knife to the opposite hand. “There are hundreds of drones, you just haven’t met most of us. But there’s probably only enough hive heirs alive to count on both our hands.”
