The Siren Depths by Martha Wells

just wasn’t there. “You’ve been lying to me about this for days. Why should I believe you now?”
    In the next heartbeat Jade had crossed the space between them and grabbed his shoulders. Her claws pricked his skin through the silky material of his shirt and her face was a tight combination of hurt and fury. “You want me to hurt you so you can hate me? Would that make this easier?”
    Moon didn’t flinch. “Nothing could make this easier.”
    It was only the heartfelt truth, and Jade’s expression turned stricken. She released him and moved away, staring down at the floor as if it had the answers. After a long moment, she said, quietly, “I promise you, you will be back here as First Consort before the month changes.”
    Even as she said it, the overwhelming sense that it wouldn’t happen overcame him. She might believe she was telling the truth, but he knew it wouldn’t come to pass. He said, “When does Tempest mean to leave?”
    Jade’s spines flattened. She looked up, brows lowered. “Tomorrow morning, if the rain’s stopped.”
    “I’ll be there,” Moon said, and walked past her and out of the room.
    He slept in Stone’s empty bower that night. The blankets in the bed still retained a wisp of Stone’s scent, and it made Moon remember that first trip across the mountains and the plains to the old Indigo Cloud colony, when anything had seemed possible.
    * * *
    When Moon woke, he thought at first it was an ordinary day. While the garden platforms were drying out, he and Jade had had a tentative plan to go flying through the suspended forest with Chime, Balm, and some of the other warriors, if the rain held off. Rain, he thought, and remembered.
    He lay still, listening, filtering out the faint sounds of movement and voices from elsewhere in the tree, the falling water from the nearest fountains. He couldn’t hear drops drumming on the trunk or branches. If it was raining, it was too light to be heard. Which meant they would be leaving today.
    Good, he told himself, knowing from experience that dragging out his departure would just make it that much worse.
    But there were things he had to do first. He dragged himself out of Stone’s bed and dropped to the floor, his head aching and his muscles tense and sore. He felt as tired as if he hadn’t slept at all. He had seen groundlings suffer morning-after illnesses from too much drink or drugs; he hadn’t known you could suffer the same result from too much emotion.
    He stumbled out of Stone’s bower and down the passage into the common area, only to discover he had an audience. Balm and Chime sat beside the hearth basin. From the blankets tumbled on the floor, they had slept here. Balm was staring at the heating stones, distracted and unhappy, pulling at a lock of her hair. Chime was huddled blearily beside her, and didn’t look as if he had slept particularly well, either.
    They looked up as Moon stopped in the doorway. Balm started to speak, but before she could, Chime surged to his feet and said, “I didn’t know. We didn’t know.”
    Moon nodded. It hardly seemed to matter now. “Where’s the new consort?”
    Chime hesitated, but Balm pointed to the passage across the way. “Just down there, the third bower along.”
    Moon stepped past them and went down the passage.
    One of the mentors must have renewed the shell-lights down in this unused section, because it was brighter than Moon remembered. He stopped in the doorway of the third bower. The young consort was awake and sitting on a mat near the hearth basin, wearing the same dark-colored robe he had worn yesterday, without the concealing hood. His arms were folded and his shoulders hunched, though the room itself was warm enough. It was a good-sized bower but bare, empty except for a pile of folded blankets beneath the hanging bed and a small collection of packs and bags shoved against the wall. The place had the signs of a hasty cleaning, with a few stray dead leaves and damp spots left