When Elara watched her mother being dragged away by the Highguards of the Serpent Order, it was the first time the young Naiadini had ever thought what it would be to take a life.
Terrified, but filled with a poison, not from the Setalah in which she hid, but from something that had rushed so violently into her veins that it almost crushed her heart in its hands, Elara wondered what it would be to grab at the ankle of the closest guard and pull him into the water. She saw him clearly—the rot slowly crawling under his skin, black tributaries of putrid blood creeping through his body, the pain in his eyes like the sweetest torture—and she had yearned for it, like she'd desired nothing before in her short life.
Of course, logic had destroyed desire on that tide. She was, after all, but a girl, and he a man—a strong one at that—and she knew the chances of her besting him before he could pluck her from the dark waters to face the same fate as her mother was impossible.
She should have pulled this Juda into her waters when she'd had the chance.
How was it that she was always squandering the opportunity to avenge her mother when it presented itself to her?
Because you are weak and selfish and unfit to carry the legacy of your foremothers, Naiadini.
So sure, she had been. So certain of her ability to carry out the task at hand.
No. Determined. That was it. So determined to bring her own form of justice to Mica Koh-Miralus that she had not once considered that she would fail. Why would she? She knew how he worked. She knew what he liked to do to the girls in his bathing chamber. And, she knew the water was hers to command, not his, not Ban-Keren's. Hers.
And now she was here, in a strange house, still in the mid echelon, when she should have been in Grimefell, and what was worse, she was at the mercy of a Highguard of the Serpent Order, as if her life had come full circle.
So, you didn't think you would fail, huh? Look at you now, Naiadini. Look at where your vengeance has led you.
Dazed, she looked at the room under lids so heavy she could barely stand to keep them open. Pulses of pain were pushing outwards from the point of impact on the back of her skull, engulfing her head in tiny screams of agony.
From what she could see without having to move her head—for the pain of that made her want to whimper—the house was orderly and spacious enough, but the air was dead, as if nobody lived here or even cared for it when they did. The room in which she'd lived with her mother had been small and cramped and cluttered, but she'd treasured that space and could touch a hand to everything they owned and understood its meaning and worth. They'd shared the kitchen and the dunny with others in the dwelling, but it had been fine. They had love for each other and for their foremothers and that had been enough to fill that room far more than any treasure could.
This place was cold and lifeless, as if someone had just walked out one day, closed the door and never returned.
"Here, drink this."
A sharp tang of warm spiced wine and velam root hit her senses as Juda held a cup to her lips, which she refused, her hand weak as she pushed at his wrist.
"It'll help dullen the pain," he insisted, scowling. He scowled a lot, she noticed. A permanent angry slash across his forehead. A storm brewing in his eyes.
"And dullen me too, I suppose?"
"If I wanted you to pass out, I'd have let you fall in the scullery and left you on the cold floor to bleed out some more." He sighed. "Please."
Elara took the cup from him. She could do it herself. She didn't need babying by this man.
"You're not used to saying that word, are you?" she said, cradling the cup in both hands but still not drinking from it. 'Please. It looks like it chokes you to say it."
"Maybe it just chokes me to say it to you."
She shot him a thin smile. It was barely all she could muster. "Good then, I'm glad of it. Say it a few more times and let's see if you choke yourself to death."
Juda rolled his eyes, retrieving a bowl and cloth from a table close by. "Your gratitude is astonishing. Truly."
She took a sip. The another. It tasted surprisingly good, the spiced heat spreading over her tongue and down her throat.
"What did you expect? That I would get down on my knees and show you the same gratitude Clova Dell's girls do?" she said, watching him approach, cloth in hand. "What's that for?"
"An ointment to help heal the wound. How do you know about Clova Dell?"
"By the dead gods, everyone in the slums knows about the novice called Juda who's bagged himself a special place in the beds and the hearts of Clova's whores. You've made quite the impression it seems. Drouzka. You should have been more discreet."
"And you should mind your own business," he snapped. "Now, lean over a little so I can take a look at it."
She twisted sharply to glare at him when he touched her head, a move too quick, too sudden, and regretted it instantly when the haze crept into her vision. Exhaling slow, she took another sip—more this time—and closed her eyes as it burned on the way down.
The warmth crept into her chest, along her collarbone, the top of her spine.
The novice's fingers were surprisingly gentle as he draped the length of her hair over her left shoulder, tilting her head so he could get a better look. Moving a few loose damp locks out of the way, he paused and Elara stiffened, knowing instinctively what he'd found.
The skin sealants that covered her Naiad respiratory organs never lasted long in the water. She never wore them when gliding through the Setalah's depths, but she'd worn them this moontide and knew her painstaking application had been a waste of time. Gingerly, she reached up behind her ear and smoothed her thumb over the puckered edges.
"What is that?" Juda said. Had he leaned closer? She was sure she could feel his breath warm but shallow upon her neck.
"You should mind your own business," she shot back. "Are you going to get to it or not?"
The curse he uttered under his breath was terse and sharp-edged, but his fingers remained soft as he parted her hair at the scalp, holding it out of the way with one hand as he used the other to dab the cloth against the wound. Elara hissed and dug her fingers into the cushioned chair. The laceration stung like a fucker at first, but after a while she felt the area around the cut start to tingle, the pain soothed by whatever it was he was using.
"Is it bad?" she said.
"It's not so bad now," he replied. "This will help. It knits the wound back together. By morntide, you should barely be able to see it. I can't promise the headache will be gone though. Bogan Zeal's potions are not that miraculous."
Elara flinched. "How does a novice have dealings with Bogan Zeal? He doesn't do business with the Order. Not since the Druvari Sect denounced him as a charlatan and an occultist. He's too worried he'll end up hanging from the black gates with his guts as a noose."
"And worry he might," Juda replied, his voice gruff. "The Druvari priests don't want him saving anyone from Grimefell. It's a waste of good medicine, they say." He dabbed at the wound again. "He wouldn't do business with Highguards, but he's not above taking coin from the nobles. He's choosy, but not that choosy, and not all nobles will go whispering to the King. They like their secrets as much as anyone."
Elara's ears pricked and she found herself glancing around the room again, this time, with many questions crowding a head that was already full of too much to think about. "You're not a noble. This might be a noble's house, but you're not one." She wasn't sure how she knew that, a sense maybe that Juda no more belonged here than she did.
Juda dropped the cloth back into the bowl, and let go of her hair, although she noted how his thumb brushed dangerously close to the skin behind her ear.
"I'm not, no," he said. "And this is not my house. I live in the novice quarters or wherever the Order tell me to live. But I lived here once, although sometimes I can barely remember it. It seems a long time ago now."
"If you're not a noble, how did you come to live in a noble's house? Were you somebody's pet?" She'd heard of such things, rich nobles taking on a boy or a girl—usually the boys were preferable—buying them up from the streets of Grimefell, scrubbing them clean and bringing them to live in luxury until they tired of them. Sculptures from Carraterra, wild violets from Tevari, beautiful boys with faces like works of art. It was all the same to the nobles. If they could possess it, they would.
Juda's face darkened, his mouth curling with distaste and Elara felt a momentary pang of regret. He'd told her something of himself, and she'd used it to goad him. She couldn't deny it thrilled her a little to do such a thing—like poking at a dragerine bearto see how long it would take to swipe with one giant taloned paw and attempt to claw half your face off.
"I'm nobody's pet, witch. I lived here with my guardian. He took me in when my mother was shipped to the dead fields."
She saw his pain. Felt the tinges of anger creeping in as if it sought to plunge the room into darkness. It was the same pain and anger she'd felt in the old Naiad temple and it was one of the reasons she could never just dismiss his claim of desiring revenge upon the King out of hand. Whatever lies he might have told her, there had been truth in there somewhere. She'd felt it because she saw the same in herself.
"Why would he do that? And how did you mother come to know a noble so well that he'd take her orphaned brat as his ward?"
Juda slammed the bowl down on the table. Fury pulled on his chest and whitened his knuckles.
Careful, Naiadini, poke this one too much and you'd fair better with the feral wrath of a dragerine bear.
Elara knew she should be careful now. Her mouth had gotten her into enough trouble in her time. She never could quite resist the lure of pissing someone off with an insult or an unwanted observation. It seemed to satisfy the Naiad inside her, the one that liked to hold Highguards under the water and watch the light fade from their eyes.
"Think that she was no better than one of Clova Dell's girls? Is that what you imply?"
Goodness, how the steel in his tone sliced close to her flesh and heated her bones.
"I imply nothing," she said, innocently. "I'm merely asking how you came to be here. You might have been born in Grimefell, but it's clear you've not been one of us for many moons. You're a novice of the Serpent Order who was raised by a noble. I don't understand what you are."
"And do you think I do?" he said, banging his fist down on the table top. "Do you think I have any fucking idea what I am now? I was a slum-rat who watched his mother get dragged away by the same Order I am now a part of. I was a slum-rat whose throat all the soft-cocked noble heirs would love to slit open just so I didn't continue to infect the King's Guard with my obvious inferiority. I don't belong with them; I didn't belong with my guardian and I stopped belonging to the slums a long time ago. Some tides I wake and I can barely remember my mother's real name. Some tides I wake and can barely remember my own. I have pretended to be someone else for so long, I don't know who or what I am anymore. And then, I remember him. King Aldolus Ban-Keren. I remember him and then I know what I am. I am vengeance, I am hate, and I am death, and nothing more."
Elara wanted to speak, she wanted to say something. Had it been any other time, any other person, and she would have. She wouldn't have been able to stop herself. She'd have lashed him with some barbed jibe, something that cut deep, but instead, she found that she couldn't. Instead, she looked at him with eyes anew—still laced with an undercurrent of suspicion, for that was how she viewed everyone—but as if she had just looked into the mirror and found Juda staring back at her.
When she said nothing, Juda's rage seemed to diminish, the anger that had risen red in his cheeks fading along with the rise and fall of his chest. Picking up the bowl, he scraped at the edge with his thumbnail, examining it as if he'd pushed a wooden splinter into his flesh.
"Finish the wine," he muttered, heading towards the scullery door. "It'll help keep the pain at bay."
Elara stared into the bottom of the cup, a strange unease twisting a knot in her stomach. She never usually regretted her sharp tongue. It had kept her alive just as much as it had caused her trouble over the course of her life. She could think quick, talk smart.
She raised the cup to her lips and drained it dry.
Elara knew he was watching her, just as she had known how much he'd wanted to take a closer look at what she kept hidden under the skin sealant. The sense of it, the sense of him, was unsettlingly strong.
Juda stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, staring at her. The anger was gone, but she had a feeling it was never far away, almost as if he kept it nestled close to the surface, just as she did with the Naiad in her.
"My guardian was an old friend of my mother's. I thought he was my father once. After she was taken away, I went searching for him with only one thought in my head and that was to kill him. All I wanted to do was end the man who'd abandoned her and the child he never wanted. I was wrong. About him. About all of it."
Elara hadn't expected this. He'd already given so much of himself already, she didn't think he'd confess anything else, especially not to her. Not now.
Walking back into the room, he spoke while not looking at her, unbuckling his leather vest, the one all the Highguards wore over their tunics. When he took it off, he exhaled, almost as if removing it allowed him to breathe—really breathe—for the first time. How many layers did this one use to protect himself, she wondered? How many layers would she need to remove to discover the real Juda underneath it all?
"He vowed to take me as his ward. His final oath to his old friend, if you like. So, I went from being a thief in Grimefell to being a noble's son. Although I never could quite shake off the urge to thieve whenever I could." He gave a grim smile. "The nobles are careless. They believe no one will dare take what is theirs. I led my guardian a merry dance with all my antics, let's put it that way."
"Is that why your guardian sponsored your admittance to the Order? To stop your love of stealing that which wasn't yours?"
Juda looked at her then, the guard raised once more. It was such a sudden thing, that it jolted her to see it, and she knew. She knew.
"By my foremothers," she whispered, the shock of it making her head spin. "He knows, doesn't he? He knows your plan to kill Ban-Keren and is a part of it."
She should have remembered how fast he could move, how nimble he was on his feet, from their fight in the underground cave, but for a moment, as his guard was raised, she had let hers fall and he was upon her before she could will her body to move. With his hand at her throat, he pushed her back onto the chair, using his body to pin her down as she braced her hands against his chest. In his eyes she saw not just the anger again, but a panic she understood too well. It was the same panic she felt for her friends, the same panic she had felt when Koh-Miralus had told her of his plans for the wife who had abandoned and humiliated him.
Juda was afraid for his guardian, and sought to protect the man who had come to protect him as if he was his own.
"What my guardian knows or does not know is not your concern, witch. You need not trouble yourself with him, do you understand me?"
She swam in his fury then, in the shadows that seeped through his veins, that anchored his enraged heart inside his chest and crashed like waves against the palm of her hand. It gave vigour once again to her tired body, her exhausted soul. Whatever pain was left came a poor second place to the thrill she felt.
"I said, do you understand?"
The Naiad surfaced, all sharp teeth and desire, and she could not stop it, for there was only one thing the Naiad loved almost as much as they loved the water, and that was darkness.
Their blood yearned for it. Like the calling of the tide. Like the incessant thrum of the ocean upon their skin.
"Oh, I understand, novice," she said. "I understand only too well. You might not know what you are anymore, but I see it now. I can feel it. I confess: I was wrong about you. I thought the Order had crushed your heart to pieces, but fuck, does it thrive." She moved her hand, so she could hold all his fury in her palm, splaying her fingers against his firm chest. "You can try to hide it all you like behind that mask of yours, but I see it and I know what you are."
"Yeah? And what is that?"
Elara smiled as she slid her hand down his chest, over his taut stomach and gripped him between his thighs. He was already as hard as she had expected him to be.
"Mine," she breathed. "You are mine, Juda."