We’d planned our path weeks ago, but the events of the early morning were years in the making.
Most of our supplies were common. But the silverspire was the only flower to call the moon’s attention. It bloomed during a solar eclipse, but not before reaching seven years of age.
We’d convinced Thaan to let us search the north for Naiads, the ones that migrated between hot springs in the Sylus Mountains. Then traversed the slopes ourselves, intent on finding a lustrous floral shine between rock and earth.
Discovering the moon-damned flower had been the simple part.
Handing Thaan a list of known locations where Naiad families sought refuge in the sulfurous heat sent raw bile up the back of my throat.
And then we’d had to change the trajectory of the moon. Hours of fighting the tide, sending it just a little east, just a little south, measuring the stars in our spyglass at night to calculate the rotations in the vast sky.
One inch too many, and we’d lose years.
“You’re quiet,” Selena murmured, eyes ahead on the dawning sunlight.
“It’s early,” I said, listening to the scrape of our boots over rock and rough heather. “I'm not fully awake.”
We’d stolen, lied, threatened, promised, and coerced. Selena carried guilt over our methods. I didn’t. Guilt was a five-letter word I cared little about. Too human. Too small. An emotional reaction to failing your own sorry expectations. Self-imposed and bitter.
Guilt was the psychological trick society played to keep you in line. To keep you honest. A punishment of your own device, an addiction everyone seemed to seek, whether or not they’d actually done any harm.
Yes, I’d hated myself for giving Thaan the little Naiad colonies. But not because he’d left for two months with a troupe of his secret soldiers, seizing the youngest ones and leaving the old and weak to die off.
I’d hated myself for offering him a tool with which to broaden his reach and bolster his numbers. Because in the last ten years, since the night Selena and I had been taken, the one thing that helped me close my eyes and seek rest at night was the knowledge that someday, somehow, I’d kill him.
“Are you nervous?”
I ejected a puff of air. “No.”
The scent of salt on the wind lifted both our faces. We stared together at the moon, low over the horizon, eerily dark. The sun’s rays wrapped around it—a lover embracing a black hole in the sky.
As a child, I’d believed Aalto was enamored with Theia. As an adult, I knew the gods weren’t interested enough to even consider loving us mortals, let alone each other.
“It’s all right to admit you are.”
“I’m not.”
“Itisyour freedom,” she said, sitting on a veined red boulder to unlace a boot.
I sat beside her in a huff, probing the inside of my belly for the presence of fear. But there was none.
Just smooth, liquid, molten hate.
“I’m not nervous.”
Selena nodded. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Her lashes fluttered. “Well. I am.”
“Don’t be. If Theia can’t give me an answer, I’ll just take care of him tomorrow with the knife under my pillow, let my blood boil me from the inside out, and be done with him forever.”
Exhausted of such jokes, she cut a sharp glare at me in the dim morning light. I smirked, holding her glare until she clicked her tongue and focused on her hands instead. My smile faltered.
I wasn't sure if it was a joke anymore. When you sign your soul away to a thing you hate, you carve a piece of yourself away. And something roots in the place your soul used to be. Something wrought and polluted and numb. Years pass, and the hole only grows. Until you discover you’re more vicious than living. More monster than mortal.
I was a black cloud of rottennothing, forever blooming in the dark.
Selena waited for me to mock the glare she aimed at the horizon, and when I ignored it instead, she shoved to her feet. “You’ll do no such thing, Ceba, and just for saying that, you’re buying me a pound of peppermint toffee.”
“I suppose I can afford it if I die tomorrow.”
