Page 50 of A Storm in Every Heart (Enchanted Legacies #2)

I lie awake for hours staring at the ceiling of my luxurious guest room. Lyra left quite some time ago, but I can’t seem to get her words or her vicious scowl out of my head.

Lady Lyra Von Bargen is clearly much more calculating than I would have thought from our first meeting, but it’s not even her I’m worried about. She didn’t really threaten me, she just stated what she believes to be a fact; as far as Lyra knows, sirens are cursed to kill any man who loves them.

I wish I could dispute it. I wish I knew for certain that she was wrong, but I’m not sure. Of course I’ve heard the legends about sirens, but I assumed they were just that—legends. I’ve never felt any desire to turn any man into my slave. I’ve never wanted to drown anyone.

Except, that’s not true.

I thought about drowning just the other day, the moment I realized that Prince Kastian was engaged to someone else. But, was I thinking about drowning him or her? I’m not sure, and I’m equally unsure if the difference matters.

And what about Papa? I can’t ignore the brutal way my father died. What if he hadn’t wanted to drown that day eight years ago? What if he was somehow compelled, and what if my mere existence is enough to doom Prince Kastian to the same fate?

I don’t know what to believe, and it’s the uncertainty that’s killing me.

I grit my teeth and kick the covers away from my body, throwing them to the floor in a heap. I can’t keep lying here doing nothing. I’m going to lose my mind.

I stand and cross to the window, pressing my forehead to the cold glass. The palace grounds fan out in front of me—sprawling gardens, the ocean in the distance, and the occasional flare of torchlight as a patrolling guard passes beneath the window.

My gaze catches on the horizon, on the ocean in the distance, and suddenly I can’t be here anymore. I feel like I’m suffocating. I need to go outside. I need to move, to breathe.

With trembling hands, I snatch my quilt back off the floor and wrap it around my shoulders. Then, moving with a purpose I don’t quite understand, I open the door and slip out into the corridor.

The hallway is dark, the sconces guttering low. I creep past the other guest suites, careful not to make too much noise.

The entire castle is asleep, and the corridors are even quieter than they were when I met Kastian mere hours ago. I pass no one as I hurry toward the hallway outside the dining room, then past the open balcony and toward the stairs.

I let my fingers trail along the banister as I descend the staircase, steadying myself against the swirl of vertigo. Reaching the bottom, I let myself out a side door into the gardens.

The sky is still dark, but the moon is full, and the silvery light is enough to see by as I wander through the palace garden. Eventually, my feet carry me to an ornate metal fence on the very edge of the palace grounds.

I walk along the fence, and it doesn’t take long before I come across a gate beyond which a rocky trail disappears into waving dunes. Far off, the vast expanse of the ocean stretches out, its waves crashing rhythmically against the jagged shoreline.

As I stand frozen, one hand on the gate, a ghostly wail rings through the night louder even than the sound of the distant crashing waves.

Suddenly I know exactly where I’m going.

I grip the cool metal of the gate, swinging it open with a creak, and step onto the path, feeling the salty breeze brush against my skin as I make my way toward the inviting sound of the sea.

I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve never even wanted to, but I could swear the idea has gripped me like a compulsion, and now I know I won’t be able to think of anything else until I’ve at least tried.

I pick my way over the rocks and dunes to the patch of sand below. When I reach the small beach and pull my slippers off and drop them on the ground along with my blanket, letting my feet dig into the sand and the ocean air nip at my skin.

Heart pounding with anticipation, I walk toward the shoreline.

The moonlight on the water combined with the rolling waves is hypnotic. Inviting.

Pausing for just a heartbeat, I watch the gentle waves roll in, their white frothy edges curling and retreating. Then, with a deep breath, I step forward, allowing the chilly tide to sweep over my toes.

The reaction is immediate.

The moment my feet break the surface, something electric jolts through me—an uncoiling, a remembering.

I don't feel pain, exactly, but there’s a sensation—a prickling that starts at my toes and races up my calves, as though a thousand invisible needles are stitching something new into my bones. For a breathless instant, the world blurs: stars above, black water below, and my body caught between.

I stare, transfixed, as my toes elongate and press together, the nails thinning and fusing into a single, glistening membrane. Tiny silver scales bloom up from my ankles, intricate as embroidery, catching the pale glow with each movement. It’s beautiful and horrifying all at once.

I flex my new webbed toes, and the sensation is so strange, so fundamentally not-me, that I’m seized with vertigo. I sway as the transformation crawls higher, up the line of my shin, scales rippling, as if they have a consciousness of their own and are eager to claim more territory.

“Enough,” I gasp, jerking backward.

Like a fog has lifted from my mind, reality slams into me. I wrench my foot from the water with a violence that’s almost comical, only I misjudge my balance and land hard on my ass in the sand, limbs tangled and heart hammering.

For several minutes, I sit and stare at my feet, watching the imprints of scales fade away. My heartbeat pounds against my ribs, beating an anxious chant.

Oh my gods.

There’s such a stark difference between knowing what I am and knowing with absolute certainty that there’s something intrinsically different about me than anyone I’ve ever known. The knowledge that I could walk into the water right now and never come back is too huge a concept to even consider.

I sit in silence for a long time watching the rolling waves. Minutes pass—hours maybe—until finally I hear a distant ghostly sound.

I’ve heard the sirens before, during long voyages on The Adella when our ship had to pass through dangerous waters. I remember my father and his crew stuffing their ears with cotton or locking themselves below deck to resist the hypnotic cries.

Perhaps it’s simply because I’m one of them, but the song doesn’t sound compelling to me. Neither does it sound frightening. It’s a distant chorus of unearthly voices, rising and falling in complicated harmony, swelling with longing so sharp it makes my teeth ache.

I listen as the ethereal song grows steadily nearer until the air around me shudders, and I’m not surprised when the first dark shapes begin to appear in the water, illuminated by the shaft of moonlight.

One by one, a dozen ghostly heads rise out of the water, their faces turned toward the shore. The moon casts their silhouettes in shades of gunmetal and pearl, their eyes reflective as mirrors.

They’re watching me. All of them, like they’re one single mind spread across a dozen bodies. Their eyes are searching, but they hold no curiosity. There’s hunger there, and wariness, and something else: recognition.

I consider running. Turning and bolting up the dunes, maybe locking myself in my room and pretending this never happened. But the song holds me in place, the melody threading through my veins, pulsing alongside my heart. Fear and fascination wage war inside my ribcage.

I don’t move.

From the farthest cluster of silent, staring faces, a single figure breaks away from the others. She swims with impossible speed, her arms slicing the water in smooth, deliberate strokes, her body undulating almost like a squid.

The other sirens scatter, giving her a wide berth, as if she’s the only one with the right to break away from the herd.

The siren swims until she’s no more than twenty feet away, visible only by her moon-pale skin reflecting against the blackness of the water. As she nears the shore, her head breaks the surface and her features sharpen. I stare, open mouthed.

The siren’s hair is long and matted with seaweed and salt. Her black, glassy eyes are too large for her face and her lips are thin blue ribbons outlining viciously sharp teeth. Her skin looks thin and seems to be stretched over the bones of her face, making her look emaciated and deadly.

Fear grips me, and once again I feel the urge to flee. This time, I scramble backwards, nearly rising to my feet.

Without warning, the siren stands, water cascading off her naked skin in rivulets.

Before my eyes, her pearlescent scaled skin recedes.

The sharp bones of her face disappear beneath supple flesh, and her seaweed-like hair shifts into long, flowing blonde waves.

On her head, she wears a crown of coral and pearls, like an oceanic queen.

She walks toward me and there’s something wild, almost catlike in the way she moves. It’s frightening and yet familiar; I see echoes of myself in her. Her eyes are violet like mine, her face is heart-shaped and symmetrical, and her figure is full and curvy. At a distance, she could be me.

She takes a step onto the sand, then hesitates. Then, she crosses the beach between us and silently kneels on the sand in front of me. Close, but still just out of reach, her arms resting lightly on her knees.

The silence between us stretches taut as a bowstring.

I want to speak, but my mouth is dry and the words die in my throat.

Would the siren even understand me if I spoke?

I’ve never worried about being understood before, as the continent of Ellender is enchanted with universal language, but suddenly I’m uncertain if that enchantment would extend to creatures of the sea.

I open my mouth, unsure what to say. What comes out is a breathless, garbled question: “How did you know I was here?”

The siren flexes her jaw and clears her throat, as if she’s not used to speaking. She clears her throat. “We always know when one of us enters the water. We can feel every part of the sea…can’t you feel it?”

“No.” I shake my head automatically, but even as I do, I realize that perhaps she’s right. I can feel…something, I think. I can’t see all the sirens in the distance, but I know they’re there, watching us.

The siren frowns at me, and again, it takes a moment for her to form the words, but when she does speak it’s clearer than before. “You’ll feel it once you’ve returned to the water.”

My eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve come to welcome you back,” the siren says.

I shake my head. “No. I don’t want to go into the sea. I was just…curious.”

She looks troubled. “But dear, the water is where you belong.”

I recoil slightly. “Dear” is a far too familiar thing to be called from this strange, beautiful monster.

“No, it isn’t. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here.” The words come out brittle, hollow in my chest. I stagger to my feet, brushing sand off my legs with hands that can’t decide whether they want to tremble or clench into fists.

With a grace I’ll never possess, the siren gets to her feet and stands directly in front of me.

She’s taller than I am by a head, and even in the uncertain moonlight, I can see the faint lines around her mouth, the pale webbing of scars at her wrists and throat.

She’s impossibly beautiful, but I’m sure that she’s far older than she looks.

Certainly older than me—maybe by decades or maybe by centuries.

“We don’t belong on land, Odessa,” she says almost kindly.

I stiffen. “How do you know my name?”

She ignores my question, continuing as if I didn’t speak. “You don’t belong here and you never did. You can pretend, but the sea will take you back. Sooner or later, it always does.”

“It can’t take me back if I never lived there to begin with.”

She cocks her head. “I don’t understand. You belong in the sea.”

“No.”

“Why?” she asks, seeming earnest.

“I’m not like you, I have a life here. Family… and people who matter to me.”

She tilts her head, her expression unreadable. “Your family is in the water. You have people here who matter to you now, but they won’t last forever.”

“What does that mean?” I demand.

“No one here will ever truly understand you. Sooner or later you’ll find a way to destroy anyone you care for on land. Some of us do it with teeth,” she adds, flexing her webbed fingers, “and some with songs so beautiful they rot the heart from inside.”

It’s the closest thing to a warning I’ve ever been given, and it cuts deep.

I press my hands to my chest, like I might hold the words inside and keep them from spreading. “But what if I don’t want to be like you? What if I want to stay here?”

She regards me with something like pity, glancing down at my legs, and my still-fading scales.

“If you stay on land, you’ll never be whole.

Not really. You’ll be—” She searches for the word.

“Lonely. Always. It’s that loneliness that will drive you to destroy anyone who might try to compete with your love for your true home and family.

Or, you can join us. You’ll never be alone again…

but you’ll have to let everything else go. ”

The wind picks up, salt and sharp and full of secrets. I shiver, blanket clutched around my shoulders, and realize the other sirens have vanished from the sea, only this one left, as if the rest of them have already written me off as a lost cause.

Still, I feel the need to make myself clear. “I’m not going with you.”

She tilts her head at me and she almost looks sad. “That’s your choice, but if you want to stay on land, then you must never return to the water.”

“Why?”

“In the water, we are as one. One mind, one…intention. There’s no room in the ocean for a siren who will not join the pack, except as the queen…and there’s already a queen. So, if you ever return, you must join the pack, or I’ll have to kill you myself.”

The siren turns and walks back toward the water and I almost turn away too, but then the words spill out of me, raw and childish. “Wait.”

She hovers on the edge of the rising tide. For a second she looks almost hopeful. “Yes?”

“You said we destroy anyone we love…is that from experience? Did you ever love anyone?”

For a long time, she doesn’t answer. The waves crash, the moon drifts, and I wait. When the silence finally breaks, her voice is tiny.

“Yes. And I broke him in the end. It’s what we do.” Her gaze hardens. “You can try to outrun it, but it’s already inside you. The only thing left is to decide who you’re willing to hurt.”