I motioned for her to turn back around, then nestled a veined leaf mask over her freckled nose. Not a perfect match to her dress, but in the dark, no one would notice. “It doesn’t hurt for your brother to think you’re beautiful.”
She rolled her eyes, though a soft blush dusted her cheek below the edge of her mask. “Are you and Selena all right?”
I swallowed. Pressed my teeth together. Forced myself to step beyond the sting of Selena’s words, each of them still sinking into my skin like spoken barbs.
If you break my heart, you may not have it back. I won’t stay here in Calder and wait to meet her. I won’t help her. I won’t protect her. I won’t give her Theia’s message.
“No,” I finally said.
She nodded slowly, meeting my eyes in the mirror. “Siblings can be hard. But they come around.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Nodded back and secured the delicate strings of my swan mask under the twisted knot of my own locks. The dark navy feathers almost matched my blue-black hair, and though things like royal balls were frivolous and unnecessary, I let myself float into the disguise of it.
“Ready?” Vouri asked.
A door closed in Thaan’s rooms.
Our eyes locked in silence. My muscles tightened, each one on high alert at the thought of Thaan opening our door and finding Vouri here. The secretary Naiad who had no ties to us, who had joined his administration only after he’d sent us to Aegir.
But the sound of footfalls pumped leisurely from the other side of the wall, unhurried, and a second door closed within his rooms. I exhaled slowly. There was nothing unusual about two young, female heartbeats in my apartment. But it would be foolish to linger here. I gave her a single, quick nod. “Let’s go.”
We took the sky bridge to the east, the route that would have led us to the ballroom, not even bothering to hide in the servants’ passage. We didn’t need to, dressed as we were. Rain drizzled over the large windows, blurring the shine of the moon outside.
Vouri seemed comfortable with our mutual silence. Usually, I would be, too. Usually, I’d prefer it. Demand it. Glower at anyone who interrupted it.
If you do this, I’ll never forgive you.
I’ll never forgive you. I’ll never forgive you. I’ll never forgive you.
“You don’t have to return to Calder, Vouri,” I said, gaze hovering over the dark ocean in the distance. “I’m not staying, so I can’t expect you to.”
Her mouth twisted to the side. “Is that why Selena’s upset?”
You just want to give up.
I sighed. “Among other reasons.”
A couple passed us, their garb a gold embroidery that verged on vulgar, their masks each a pointed beak. We waited as the click of their heels faded away, drowned under the soft pang of rain against the windows. Overlapping voices buzzed from below, interlaced with the strings of a harp. Ambient music. The festivities, the dancing, gambling, and raucous drinking hadn’t yet begun. Selena loved those things. She was probably fizzling with the itch to start.
“Do you know how my parents died?” Vouri asked.
The question took me by surprise, plucking my thoughts away from imagining Selena laughing somewhere below. I glanced at the Naiad over my shoulder. “No, I don’t.”
“It was similar to how my grandmother was killed. Thaan sent a horde of drones through Venusian waters, undetectable to aVidere. But he also sent a small handful of his other sirens. My grandfather sensed them immediately, but he was along the western edge of our sea. Hours away.
“My mother was close by. She was aPrizivac Vode, a cousin of Ursa’s, born in Paria. She stumbled on two of them, and they pretended to flee. Not knowing they were drones, she followed. And ran into an ambush.”
At the winding crystal staircase, Vouri stopped walking. I stopped, too, turning back to face her. Her gaze had withered, and she focused on the shadows along the far edge of the palace towers outside, where the torchlight draped across giant panes of glass.
“She was no threat against two dozen drones. They would have eclipsed her in mere seconds, incapacitating her the moment they came close. They dragged her on land and killed her. Then—” She made a motion with her chin. A small jerk; a tiny flinch. “Then tore her body apart and left her strewn across the beach for us to find. He could have just killed her and left. But he wanted to provoke Venusia into a war. He wanted to enrage my father, wanted to lure him from the safety of the colony.”
My chest deflated quietly. I’d wondered at the distrust she’d harbored for Pheolix. At the way she and Aegir had looked at him at first, the refusal to use Pheolix’s name. How difficult had it been for them, allowing one of Thaan’s drones inside their colony, arranging to work alongside him?
“How long ago was this?”
Vouri offered a short shrug. “Thirty years. I was a baby; Aegir was a child. I don’t remember it. My father caught them a few days later with our Naiad legion, and only then did he realize Thaan had attacked with drones. Naiads don’t train to fight the way humans do. We don’t need our bare hands to kill. But an army of drones fighting an army of Naiads—we were like peasants among soldiers. My brother was the only survivor. He escaped, made his way back to Venusia. But my grandfather lost hiscordaeand his son. He spent the next three decades dying of a broken heart.”
She ran her fingers across her cheek and up the bridge of her nose, snaking them under her mask. I waited to scent the hot metal of anger. It didn’t come, though I suppose that didn’t shock me. The loss of my freedom was still fresh enough to burn. I remembered a life before it. A poor but happy one, on a small, sandstone island built over the sea. Vouri had grown up with this truth, never really experiencing the loss within it.
