Chapter 83

  Family dinner was a painful affair for Ael, who kept the Great Dragon’s secret for the entirety of it. The boys were practically bouncing, so happy to have their mother. They chatted about everything, barely seeming to breathe. Epelda looked on with a grin, reaching over to stroke the egg that now sat in Nereida’s p.

  “I can’t wait to meet this little one,” Epelda signed, and Ael found herself wondering if it was her daughter or the dragon. She nearly choked on her beans.

  Nereida took the boys below to tuck them in, though Alejo whined about being forced below. He wanted to go back to his bed, back to the usual. Ael understood his frustration, and she knelt before him. Alejo’s little face hardened when she approached, and she felt her stomach clench. She was not his favourite person, that was certain.

  “We will be in safer waters soon, little one,” she promised. “But someone tried to hurt your big sister because she is different.”

  “Oh… like… me and Egaz are different from each other?”

  “More like how your mommy and Dymion are different,” she expined. She wondered what differences he saw with his brother. Egaz was a little copy of his brother, as if they were sculpted by the same cy. “But we worry they might hurt you or Egaz or both. So we have to keep you below.”

  “I don’t like it,” he sighed, a dramatic stomp added at the end of his words. “Why can’t people just be kind?”

  “I wish I knew, small man. But your safety is the most important thing to your mommy, to me, so you must stay below, okay?”

  “Even more importanter than the gods?” Egaz asked. She opened her mouth, closed it and opened it again, but no sound came out. She had no idea how to answer his question. Egaz looked to Epelda, and then back again at Ael. “Nevermind, step-mama. It's okay to not know.” His smile was sad and he suddenly looked far away, an expression far too old on the boy’s tiny, innocent face. She felt her stomach clench. Did he know? How? Epelda was scrutinizing Egaz as if she had never truly seen him before. It was a cold, calcuting look that had no pce on Epelda’s face.

  Nereida took the boys away, leaving Ael alone with Epelda and Jules.

  “Mother,” Epelda signed, her movements precise and sharp. “Why did Egaz look so sad?” Ael looked into her daughter’s eyes and saw a stranger looking back. Her eyes seemed to be paler now, cold, calcuting. “Has he had a vision?” Jules, who was still learning the hand-nguage, looked at Ael with wide eyes at the word “vision”. It was one he apparently knew. The Admiral looked at the cabin boy with sharp eyes, willing the boy not to ask, willing him to be quiet. He caught her expression and nodded, stepping back meekly.

  “I couldn’t say,” Ael replied, finally turning her eyes to not-Epelda. “He’s five, or nearly so, do they need a reason to be upset?”

  “I didn’t know that sirens can be Star-Readers,” Not-Epelda signed with a shrug. “That’s all.” Her hard expression melted away and she turned toward her beau. The two of them headed out, leaving Ael confused and angry. She stormed to her cabin to gain some quiet to think. Where she didn’t have to wonder what Epelda, Not-Epelda and Jules were doing.

  She had rearranged three of her cabinets by the time Nereida returned from bed-time routine, and was well on her way to sorting through a fourth. She had piles of things to discard beside her, broken figurines for the map, old letters from before she had met Nereida, her court papers marking her as not guilty, three broken quills and two empty vials with their cork stoppers lodged inside beyond human reach.

  “Love…” Nereida began softly, looking at the chaos. Ael did not need to look up from her piles to know that concern danced on Nereida’s face. She didn’t want to see it. “What’s wrong?”

  “You were right,” Ael replied, closing her grip on another quill. This one had been slightly damaged at the tip, but when she opened her hand she found she had snapped it in half. She tossed it carelessly into one of the discard piles.

  “About?”

  “Epelda. The Great Dragon. All of it.” She tore an old bit of parchment, enjoying the destruction for destruction’s sake.

  Nereida was silent. Only the ocean seemed to be making sound.

  “There’s more,” Ael continued, knowing that keeping things from her wife was a bad pn. She stood, went over to her wife, and took her in her arms. Nereida was stiff, fighting the anger and grief that coursed through her body.

  “Tell me,” she hissed. And so Ael did; told her of the punishment that the Great Dragon had levied on their daughter’s assaint, on the attacker she had previously granted mercy to.

  “That’s why,” Nereida managed. “The songs are so muted because his story spread. They FEAR us. Fear her.”

  “With good reason, love.”

  “We did this.” Nereida sank to her knees now, an exhaustion on her face that looked like it seeped into her very bones. Perhaps it did, as Ael certainly felt bone-tired.

  Ael helped her wife to the bed. Nereida put up no fight, no protest, at being sat on the bed like an exhausted child.

  “We did this,” Ael agreed after tucking the covers in around her wife. “But we will find her what she needs, we will set our daughter free. And then our family is safe. The rest of you are sirens. And you’re already the Ocean’s chosen, the Scion.”

  “Bassi’s not safe,” Nereida replied, her tone broken and sad. “Whoever sets free the fourth sleeper gets burned by their brother. It’s not going to be you, love…. If that whole thing comes true…” She closed her eyes, her lower lip trembling. Ael kissed her head softly.

  “Basiano won’t hurt you, love. Not on purpose.” She climbed in beside her wife, holding her tightly over the covers. Nereida’s breathing was slowly returning to normal. Soon, Nereida fell asleep, emotionally and physically exhausted. Ael wanted to join her wife in the escape that sleep offered, but she had something to do first.

  Ael knocked on Basiano’s door, the softest knock she could manage, since she did not hear the baby crying. She had no desire to be the reason the tiny terror woke. A tired-looking prince answered the door.

  “Admiral,” he greeted. “Come in, mind the baby, she likes to be on the floor.” He opened the door. His cabin was much tidier now that the boys were not with him constantly. He had a bnket spread on the floor, and his infant daughter was stretched out on the floor waving her tiny fists happily. “Are you here as my sister-in-w, as the Admiral of the ship or some other kind of visit that I don’t have the energy to conceive of.”

  “All of that,” she replied. She motioned to the bed. “Might I sit? There is… there is much to tell you.” He nodded, and for a moment she imagined that he had sprouted grey hair at his temples just for talking to her. But the whimsy passed, and she was left with the exhausted prince and his youngest child. She wondered how many he had at home, how he could have left children to come find his sister.

  She took a breath.

  “You need to know what has been happening.”

  “I thought you didn’t tell stories,” he said, an amused expression creeping onto his face.

  “These are truths, not stories. And… I will, for the important things. So that you know what is at stake.” The amusement faded from his expression as she spoke. “We have been waking gods.” There was a moment of silence as he contempted her words.

  “You aren’t pulling my leg, are you? This is not some eborate prank.”

  “No.”

  “On purpose?” He sounded almost pained. Ael closed her eyes, wishing she could shield him from this without withholding how much danger his sister was in.

  “My involvement was… less than willing the first time. The second, I walked into it, but did not know what was happening until it was too te. But once I was at their altars, Basiano, we made the choice to continue.”

  “We?” His eyes narrowed dangerously, and she could feel the change in the room’s temperature.

  “Ner too.”

  “And what has the price been for such magic?” he asked, turning away from her to scoop up his daughter from the floor. The baby made a squawking sound, clearly unhappy at her sudden change in position. He kept his back to Ael as he patted the child’s back.

  “Ner killed a great cat for the first… Epelda’s maimed fingers were the second.”

  “Two gods?”

  “So far.”

  Silence stretched between them. She wondered if she should go. The ocean crashed against the ship, her roar gentle tonight. Slowly the temperature in the room returned to normal, and the unpleasant heat of his magic faded from her skin.

  “There is nothing to be done to stop either of you, is there?” The prince’s voice was quiet, almost sad.

  “No. I… I can’t leave this half done. Not any more. Not when… not when the gods, when freed, need to settle into a human body until they can rebuild their bodies.”

  “Is that what happened to the mountain?” He took a step away from her, still keeping his back to her.

  “Yes.”

  “And who, Grand Admiral Kyverna, pyed host to a god?”

  “Dymion.”

  Basiano began to pace the small room. Ael tucked her feet up onto the bed so that he would not stomp on her with his rge feet.

  “You said two gods.” He clutched his daughter against his chest protectively.

  “She’s in no danger. The Ocean already cimed her Scion.” She hadn’t meant to let that bit slip, but the worry on his face hit hard. She only realized her mistake when the blood drained from his face.

  “Nerry.”

  “She’s still herself. Just as I am me.”

  “Who?” His tone was hard, as he stared at her. His face was set in anger, but he was not shouting or ranting. He seemed more like a pot on the simmer.

  “Epelda.” Her voice broke as she spoke her daughter’s name. She would not cry. Not before the brother-in-w. She would not.

  But his face crumpled, the hostility disappearing in a fsh, leaving only grief and pity. He sat beside her, shuffling the baby to his left arm, before he wrapped his right arm around her. She leaned into the sideways embrace. She had gone soft but she could not summon the energy to care.

  “Who else knows?”

  “Just Nerry.” She paused, made a face. “And, I suspect, Egaz. He… is perceptive. Or something.” She looked up at Basiano, slowly removing herself from his embrace with a grateful little smile. “I don’t know much about any of the…” she wiggled her fingers, and Basiano chuckled. “But… maybe you do. Are sirens Star-gazers?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” he replied, his amusement fading. “From that which I was taught, only those of the Stars, the Sun, the Sky, the Moon and the Shadows can see the future in the stars, and the Moon-Touched are the strongest of it. It is said that the Moon taught her son Shadow to See.” He paused a beat, then focused a fierce, fiery expression on her. “Why?”

  “Egaz knows things.”

  “He said the ocean told him.” Basiano replied softly. “And I’ve seen him manipute water. He stood beside Nereida to hold the water at bay. And the boys’ father was a mutt, moon and sun blooded.” Ael flinched. Basiano didn’t know! But he read something in her expression, and grief crashed into him along with his epiphany. “Oh, Nerry….” He took a breath, slow and steady, pain clear on his face. He was usually so reserved, but he had no walls erected today. Ael’s face burned with embarrassment. She had thought, given how close the siblings were, that Nereida had already told Basiano that she didn't know who Egaz’s father was. But then again, she had wept so, so hard that night. It may have been her first time admitting it out loud.

  “I need to be alone,” Basiano said after a moment. “Would you take my daughter for a walk for a little while?”

  “Yes.” Ael took the little tot in her arms. She was dainty and delicate, with bright eyes and wisps of bluish hair. “I’m sorry, Basiano.”

  “Don’t be,” he replied. “Just… leave. My anger is not at you, but if you stay…” he let the thought hang, and she decided to heed him. The tiny terror in her arms, Ael headed down to the crew quarters, hoping to avoid any more painful conversations.

  Her hopes were immediately dashed. Jules came trotting up to her, his face full of youthful determination and foolish bravery. He looked ready to fight a war on his own. The baby squawked as Ael transferred her from one arm to the other, freeing her right hand.

  “May I have a word, Admiral?” His tone was careful, respectful and full of concern. Ael bit back a snarky retort.

  “You may.”

  “Is she like Dymion was?” He rushed to his point, not dilly dallying. She could respect that. His breathing was fast, his fists were clenched. He was angry or afraid or more likely both.

  “Yes, d. I’m sorry.” She did not honey-coat her words. His face crumpled only for a moment before he nodded, a sharp, quick gesture. He squared his shoulders.

  “What are your orders, Admiral?” His voice had the barest tremble, but she ignored it; let the boy have his dignity.

  “On this subject, I have none. Listen to your own conscience.” He nodded again, before he gave a quick, sharp salute and bolted down the corridor. She grimaced at his back, not liking her sudden urge to protect and comfort him. Dragons saggy tits she was going soft!