I let my own eyes fall to the floor. I wasn’t sure how patient and loyal I’d been these past few weeks, though I imagined I was wolfish enough. Something that snapped when cornered. Something that bit the things that loved it.
“I always imagined,” Pheolix continued, “that when Death came for my brother, he’d come as a wolf.”
Something ached in the way he said it, a wound covered and forgotten. But not healed. He’d mentioned his brother once. I’d brushed it off at the time, annoyed that Pheolix had surprised me in the courtyard. “You lost your brother?”
His mouth thinned as he slid the knife shut. “I think so.”
I waited. He didn’t say anything else. “Was he a drone, too?”
Pheolix clicked his tongue. “Thaan tried to make him one. He couldn’t survive it, so Thaan pulled him out.”
I shifted my weight, careful of the soreness in my stomach. The mattress croaked softly under me. I licked my lips. “How does one become a drone, Pheolix?”
He glanced at me. His knife clicked open. I’d thought he was showing off the first time I’d seen him play with it. Now I wondered if he drew it for a different reason. He scratched at his cheek with the back of the blade.
“We’re human-born,” he finally said. “According to Thaan, Naiads only began experimenting with human mates in order to create drones. Typically, when planning a human-born Naiad’s first transition, you’d wait as long as possible before they matured.”
Thaan hadn’t done that with us. But it was no surprise that, when faced with the prospect of transitioning twoPrizivac Vodes, Thaan had chosen to stunt our potential. I leaned against the wall, patient for him to continue.
He drummed a thumb against the handle of his blade. “With a drone, you’d do the reverse.”
“Transition them early.”
He shook his head. “Only the first part. Breathe for them early. Then leave them in the inbetween.”
My mouth parted on a rough inhale. Then caught, unable to expel the air back from my lungs.
I’d heard of Naiads being stranded inbetween breaths. Transitions attempted and failed. When Theia wasn’t quite full, when they hadn’t dived deep enough, when their shared oxygen hadn’t been a full breath. Having to wait the full cycle of the moon to try again was recorded as torturous at best. Lethal at worst.
“How old were you?”
“Nine.”
“Nine,” I echoed breathlessly.
“My brother was eighteen. I think that’s why he couldn’t do it. Thaan started him too late.”
“How long were you there?” I asked, though the thought of any answer made my belly roil. “In the inbetween?”
But I already knew. Thirteen years.
I swallowed the thought away. “What did he do with you while you were there?”
Pheolix studied me for a long moment before frowning at his blade. “You don’t want to know, heiress. It would hurt your heart.”
“No, it wouldn't,” I said, though an ache had already pulsed into my chest. “You say that as though my heart is fragile.”
“No, no,” he sighed under his breath. “I think the opposite. Your heart is one of the strongest I’ve met. But it would still hurt it.”
I rested my chin over my bent knee, not quite sure what to do with that.
Pheolix tapped his blade against his thigh in heavy thought. “These past weeks, I kept waiting for you to ask if I’d ever used it against Thaan. My eclipse.”
“I assume it won’t work on him. He’s never created something that could outmatch him. Overpower him. Things that should affect Thaan don’t. It’s like he’s not whole.”
He nodded in a way that made me wonder if he’d tried once.
In my apartment, I’d have listened to the wind scrape over my windows. The sea below, pummeling against the rocks. The distant call of birds, of guards walking the curtain wall.