“I do.” He stretched his neck, gazing nonchalantly at the sky. Gray, like his eyes. “Looks like it might rain. Seems to rain a lot when you’re around. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the rain follows you.”
“It’s spring.”
“Mmmm.” He closed his eyes, the shadow of a smile over his lips. “I almost forgot what spring looked like. What it smelled like.”
The weight of his palm cut warmth into my skin where everything else lay cool. Something squirmed in my belly, a small flare in my center, leaving me restless. I folded my shoulder and arm over my lap, out of the way of his side. “No spring in the mountains?”
“There is.” He shrugged. “The days are shorter, though. Even in summer, they’re short. We’d rise in the dark, head to the caves, and return to the dark once more.”
“Sounds like the perfect place for you.”
He chuckled softly but didn’t answer. I dared a sideways glance at him and found him watching the waves, a wrinkle of regret in the corner of his eyes.
“Why were you sent to the mines?”
He turned, arching his neck to look at me. The stubble along his jaw coveted more brown than the warm hue of his hair. I had a sudden curiosity over what it would feel like under the pad of my thumb.
“You know why,” he said softly.
Mouth closed, my jaw worked, testing different theories before they left my tongue. “Because of me.”
“Because I disobeyed a direct order regarding you.”
“Breathing for me?”
Pheolix sighed. “I wasn’t supposed to do it. Thaan had entered Deimos’s mind. He’d wanted to do it himself.”
“So why did you?”
“I don’t know.” His mouth twitched as he considered his answer. Then released a breathless laugh. “Impulse. I hadn’t planned it beforehand. We’d targeted young Naiads before, but I’d always been one of the extra bodies nearby in case things go wrong. I just happened to be the closest one to you when it came time to take you into the water, and all of a sudden, I didn’t want any of them to touch you. I think I just...” He grazed his jaw with his opposite hand, scrubbing his chin in thought. “I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I was powerless to stop it. It was the easiest way to show Thaan he didn’t own me, I guess.”
His words from that day reverberated softly through my skull.
Jealous at being played at your own game, Thaan?
Something about his answer tightened the coils in my belly. A quiet cinch I hadn’t expected.
A game. He'd wanted Thaan to know Thaan didn't own him. So, I became a game.
I wrapped my hand around his thumb, sliding it off my leg. Pheolix watched, letting me.
“Are we abandoning our little quest for the stones?” he asked, pulling his hood low over his eyes. Whatever quiet, soft moment we’d shared left us both as we clambered to our feet.
I shook my head. Then hoisted myself up, climbing over the rock lip above. The palace grounds yawned into view, grass just beyond my fingers. “There’s nowe. And I don’t know.”
Stones, ambush, freedom. In the last few weeks, ever since we’d called to Theia, our plans had unraveled. Cebrinne had ripped the rug from under my feet, not in a single, solid jerk, but thread by thread, inch by inch. I felt like I didn’t know anything.
“What are they for?”
“What is what for?”
“The stones.”
I slowed, glancing around us. Guards patrolled nearby, along the curtain wall and across the fields, but they didn’t make me as nervous as the birds. Finches, crows, owls, eagles. Rumors skipped between the palace Naiads that Thaan could shift into anything. A sound, a shadow, an overhead cloud. But I’d only seen him become things that were living, usually innocuous little birds. I didn’t trust anything from a raptor to a dove.
“Lower your voice,” I hissed.
Pheolix smirked, but he dropped into a hushed tone anyway. “I scanned for birds the moment we surfaced.” He leaned in, his warmth drifting across me. “Have you never paid attention when he shifts into a bird? His heartbeat is too loud and slow to pass for anything with natural wings and feathers.”
