Maris Calderon's Arc

Chapter 14 of 14

Maris announced a feast for that night. He would not question the girl before the council. He would not sour Rath's first night home. But he had seen Iris touch her chest and flinch, and he could not let it rest. So he clapped his son on the shoulder, praised the union loud enough for the crowned sirens to hear, and told the town a table would be laid. Then, quietly, he asked Iris to meet him in his study before the meal. She came alone. The study sat off the main hall, a low chamber of jagged rock. A lavish table waited beyond the door, already loaded with mussels, eel, and glowing orbs of swamp fruit. Iris stood small in the doorway. She had learned to make herself small. Maris knew the trick because he had used it himself, years on shore, hiding what he was. "You hid pain when the council bowed," Maris said. "I saw it. Don't tell me it was nothing." Iris held still. "You welcomed me. Now you want a reason to take it back." "No." Maris kept his voice even. "I want to know what came into my kingdom with you. Rath is my son. I protect my blood." Her jaw tightened. For a long moment she said nothing. Then she pressed her hand flat against her hip, over the fabric there. "Show me," Maris said. She pulled the cloth aside. On her hip, dark lines curled across her skin. Barbed shapes, tangled cords, small symbols burned at the edges. The mark seemed to pulse faintly green. Maris had seen marks like it before, long ago, on sirens who had crossed the old blood-workers of the deep. A binding curse. "Three generations," Iris said. "My family carries it. I don't. I break it." Maris crouched to study the lines. The pattern was a leash. It bound the wearer to whoever held its other end. He touched the air above her skin, not the mark itself. The cold came off it like water off ice. "Does Rath know?" he asked. "He knows I carry something." She let the cloth fall back. "He doesn't know it followed us here." Maris stood. The thing was old and it was hungry, and it had entered Miredeep on the prince's mate. He had wanted the truth without accusing her. Now he had it. He could not un-know it. "You did not lie to me," Maris said. "You will not lie to me again. We break it together, before it reaches my son." Iris looked up, surprise cracking her guard, the same look she had worn when the council bowed. "You don't fear it." "I fear what it wants," Maris said. "Not you." He opened the door to the feast. The mark's cold still clung to his hand. Somewhere beneath the curse lay the hand that had made it, and Maris meant to find whose.