Page 58 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

“I’m trying to figure that out,” Nira’s said. “I’ve already taken her blood.”

Bottles clinked and shifted somewhere on the table. The sound became clear, but I still couldn’t open my eyes.

“I’ve got it.” Nira’s voice sharpened with certainty. “It’s the venom from a serragator.” Liquid swished in a container. “See the blue blood on this slab of glass? If I put a drop of it on top, it turns black.”

Silence. Boots stopped thumping.

“What does that mean?” Theron’s voice came closer to my right.

He was here? He was actually here? But why? How does he know Nira?

If Theron was royalty, why didn’t Nira speak to him with a more respectful tone? No “yes, sir.” No shift in her voice.

“It means someone coated the boarox horn before the fight. The queen wanted her weakened so the boarox could kill her easily. But she didn’t anticipate the boarox bowing to her after it smelled her blood.”

Is that what the boarox did? Bow to me?

Something scraped. A chair or a stool maybe. Theron sitting.

“I don’t understand.” He sounded farther away, or maybe I was drifting.

Bottles shifted. Clack and tink. Her hands never stopped moving. “I don’t either. But there is something special about her. I knew it the second I saw her.” A pause. “Theron, you need to stop doing the queen’s bidding.”

“I have no choice.” The words came out bitter, pushed through gritted teeth.

“Everyone has a choice.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “If your father—”

“He was poisoned, wasn’t he?”

A fist connected with a table or the wall. Not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough to show anger.

“You were with him when he died,” Theron said. “The queen said it was heart failure. But you know the truth, don’t you?” The voice grew louder. “Did she use the same venom?”

His father? The king? Nira was there when he was killed? I still couldn’t make out who she was to him. Not a lover, for sure. But what did I know of his type?

“Lower your voice, Theron. You were a child. Don’t assume what you do not know.”

“What truth are you hiding from me?” His voice softened.

“When you leave this palace to do her bidding, don’t come back. Live your life in the sea.”

“Then what would become of you?”

A long silence. I could imagine him giving her a dagger stare, and Nira narrowing her eyes at him.

“I don’t care.” Her voice was quiet and final. “I’ve lived long enough.”

The darkness pulled at me again. A warm cloth moved along my arm, careful around the injury. She had cut the sleeve back to reach it and nothing more. But what concerned me most was the familiar weight against my hip—the dagger untouched, the pearls still tucked beneath the suit.

A servant who commanded guards. A woman Theron listened to. A woman who spoke of his father as though she’d stood beside him when he died. Who are you, Nira?

The door opened. Different footsteps this time, the kind that expected obedience from everyone in the room.

“What do you want, Pierre?” Theron spat.

Not prince Pierre. Just Pierre.

“The girl. Is she still alive?” He said it the way someone might note the weather.