Page 37 of Of Songs and Silence

That’s not something I will allow to happen, even if it means taking out the warriors I’ve worked beside for half my life. I want a new regime as badly as they do, but not at the expense of her life.

Nothing is worth that to me.

Napo pushes me toward the bed and I don’t argue, even though it takes everything in me not to open the door to Kala’s room and drag her onto the mattress next to me.

Again, I recognize that I should be feeling some relief at my new assignment. The calling would have been almost unbearable if I had been forced to sleep in the barracks. As her guard, at least there will be only one wall that separates us instead of an entire palace.

Which will be a mixed bag, if she can’t keep her seas-damned thoughts to herself. It will be funny when I have worked so hard to survive only to be driven to insanity by one harmlessnot-quite-mayima.

Still, the benefits should outweigh the risks.Should. But something in King Cepheus’ calculating gaze stops me from feeling even the barest hint of relief.

What game is he playing? Does he know the truth about the rebellion, or my connection to his heir? Does he suspect it?

I was raised in the palace, as all Warrior children are, trained under the commanders here while my parents were stationed far enough away that they were at no risk of making me soft. Not that it would have been much of a risk, considering they are both Warriors themselves, through and through.

So, I am intimately familiar with the barbarity of our king, the way he always knows more than he lets on. I grew up under his watchful gaze, saw the punishments he doled out just because he could.

Kala’s shields are weak, compared to most Mayima her age, and the king’s powers of perception are strong, even without breaking the mind barrier. Even now, I can hear her thoughts on the other side of the door, questioning everything around her with the insatiable kind of curiosity that will get her killed here. So it wouldn’t be a stretch that she let something slip.

I slam my shields more firmly into place, though every part of me rebels at the separation. We can’t afford mistakes right now, though. Not when the king has motives I can’t guess at.

The only comfort I have is that he has no need to play games with us. Even if he garnered more than she meant for him to, he may have just dismissed it as the silly crush of a young girl.

We can hope, anyway. Because if he knows the truth…I shake my head, dismissing the thought as quickly as it came.

If he knew the truth, he would already have destroyed us both.

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

MELODI

There is a second door in my chambers.

Even if Cepheus hadn’t said that Ari was staying next door, I would have known who was on the other side. I can feel his presence through the walls.

I lean against the door, absently playing with a piece of seaweed left over from my journey here. Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve separated it into several pieces. My fingers go through the motions of twisting and braiding memorials for the bodies we passed in cages outside.

I think again of the girl who is still alive, wondering how much longer until she shares their fate. I picture the defeat in her eyes, the stillness of her limbs.

Then I make one for her too.

I stay near the door for longer than I should. It’s silent on the other side. No movement to track, no thoughts that I can hear. So I focus on my room, at least in part to keep from going mad.

Each glimmering wall is just as glamorous as the rest of the palace. Woven rugs made of kelp and algae line the floors, feeling as plush beneath my bare feet as the fur ones back home.

A giant clamshell rests against the center wall. The iridescent mother of pearl headboard refracts the light from the shimmering lanterns, casting the room in a soft, hazy glow. The oversized sponge mattress and pillows practically beg me to climb into them, whispering false promises of the sleep I know I won’t find.

At least, not alone.

There is a vanity with various shells and jewels. A closet full of the most extravagant gowns I’ve seen since being pulled into the water.

Are they intended for me? Or did this room belong to someone else? My mother, perhaps?

Along the walls are gilded shelves with books made from what appears to be blubber and some sort of refined seaweed. I flip through them. Some are full of Mayiman history, others appear to be adventures or love stories. Most of them are in the common tongue, but a few are much older, written in an ancient, pictorial language.

With nothing else to do, I choose one about the lore of the Great Sea Dragon. There is no name on the first page, no hint of who it belongs to, or where it came from, but the pages are more worn than the others, several of them marked or dogeared.

I scan through the first few chapters, greedily soaking up the information. I hadn’t even realized that dragons still existed, let alone that they were linked to the royal families.

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