Page 4 of Cursed (Court of Isles #1)

Chapter 4

Storytime was over.

Silas’s recounting of history seemed to take something out of him, and as he continued on, nudging his horse deeper and deeper into the blackness ahead, every fiber in my being screamed for me to turn tail and head for the light. The actual sunlight.

I watched the Hunter’s broad, muscular back moving in time with the animal on which he rode, thinking it wasn’t at all unreasonable that men of his stature and skills would have the ability to murder Fae Queens en masse.

Silas was powerful. Sheathed in shadow. Mysterious and strong and deadly.

But I could also sense what it had cost Silas to admit to the faults and failures of his kind. Did he carry the weight of what his forefathers had done? Was he here now, trying to cure a curse as a way to make amends for the loss of those incredible queens ?

There were layers and layers to Silas, and I knew I could dig at those layers with a lethal pickaxe and never scratch the surface. Until he let me.

I got the impression Silas didn’t let a lot of people in. A part of me felt like Silas had given me a precious gift—a peek into the window of his spirit, and I didn’t take it for granted, no matter how short a glimpse it was.

I wanted to thank him, to let him know that I wasn’t afraid of him—even if I should be. Any reply I might have given, however, was put on pause when we heard an aching sound echoing in the distance.

“Someone’s in trouble,” I said to Silas. “We need to help.”

Silas shook his head. His eyes were granite. His body was granite. His voice was granite.

Everything about this man had gone hard and stony. There was no warmth, no light, none of the humanity I’d sensed on that altar back in Manhattan. Despite all the warnings from Millie, I still believed this man to be capable of things like emotion and love, even against my better judgment. But right now, he was a locked chamber with no warmth at all.

“It’s likely a trap,” Silas said. “Do not fall for it.”

“But—”

“I’m asking you to trust me.”

“I do trust you,” I said. “I’ve proven that. I’m here, aren’t I? ”

Silence from him.

I matched his gaze. “Do you trust me ?”

Those hard eyes watched me uneasily.

When Silas didn’t reply, I couldn’t be sure if his silence was a nod of affirmation or a polite way to say no, but I didn’t care. Someone was injured, and every instinct in me told me that my help was required.

“The whole reason I wanted to be a doctor was to help people,” I told Silas. “If I can’t do that, what’s the point?”

“Alessia, be reasonable.”

I was already gone, my horse turned toward the cries of pain. We plunged together into The Forest, following the lyrical, mournful melody of a creature in distress. It might be a trap, but maybe it wasn’t, and that chance propelled me onward.

My horse skidded to a stop as we came to a small clearing. The trees formed a circle around a watering hole. The patch of azure felt out of place in the middle of this darkness, as if the sun’s lights were still glinting off the surface of the water despite the shadows crawling around us.

A pile of rocks sat around the watering hole in a makeshift border. On the rocks was a beautiful creature—a mermaid, if I believed in that sort of thing.

I blinked.

Apparently, I now believed in that sort of thing, because I was definitely staring at a mermaid. Long tail of luminescent scales. A woman’s figure above the waist, naked. Endless hair that shimmered like it had been infused with mercury.

“Stop,” Silas said, slightly out of breath. “Do not approach.”

“It’s a mermaid,” I whispered, half to myself, half to him. “She’s bleeding.”

I could see the gash on her forehead, blood pouring onto the rocks. The amount that had pooled there, the way her cries were weakening, told me she wasn’t in good shape.

“It could be a siren,” Silas said. “They are mermaids who have turned to evil.”

“She’s hurt. I need to help her.”

“If it’s a siren, then this is a trap. She’ll eat you alive,” he said. “She will not hesitate to murder you the second you get close.”

I was already dismounting from my horse. “Thank you for your opinion,” I informed my Hunter. “Now you can stop giving it. I’ve made my decision.”

“Alessia. Please.”

“You can support me or you can leave,” I said. “Those are your options.”

Silas looked worried, fearful, and frankly, exasperated. Without another word, he dismounted. He stood, his hulking presence beside me, and waited, his head ever so slightly inclined toward me in a bow, as if in deference to my choice.

I approached the woman slowly. When Silas rested a hand on my shoulder, several paces away from the mermaid, I whipped around, a scowl on my face—ready to send him packing and tell him what I thought of this display in toxic masculinity. I had a real feminist speech prepared, but when I saw the look on his face, the whole spiel died on my lips.

Silas’s jaw was set. His eyes hard. His body stiff and unforgiving.

But he simply extended a hand. In his palm sat a dagger. Embedded into the dagger’s handle were gems the same color of sapphire as the gems in my circlet ring, and he was extending it toward me as a token of unity. Its blade was sharp, catching the light, and I wondered if it had killed before.

“Just in case,” Silas muttered roughly. “It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

I nodded. I was hopeful, not stupid. I took the dagger, and the moment my fingers closed around the handle, I felt a shudder go through my body. It wracked me from head to toe, causing me to tremble beneath the ensuing rush of power.

“Is this magic?” I asked Silas, my words a notch above silent .

“No.” He tipped my chin upward with two fingers, forcing eye contact. “But you are.”

I stood there, feeling that initial surge of power spread through my body. It did not dissipate but settled as if it had found its way home. Like this magic belonged to me.

When I pulled myself away from Silas’s gaze, it was like something between us snapped, a rubber band breaking and causing a twang of pain between us. As if we weren’t supposed to part.

A breathy cry rang out behind me.

“Help,” the mermaid gasped.

I approached the creature slowly.

“My name is Alessia,” I told her. “I’m a doctor.”

“Human,” she gasped, her bare ribs heaving with effort. “You smell like a human.”

“I am,” I said. “Or I thought I was until just recently. What happened to you?”

“You can’t help me, human ,” she said. “Leave me be.”

“She’s your only chance,” Silas spoke from behind me.

This wasn’t the first time Silas had uttered those words. I was sensing an unwelcome theme here: Silas was placing a lot of hope in me. I wasn’t sure it was a smart decision.

“Let her help you, or we’ll leave you to die in peace.” Silas’s voice remained wary and spiteful. “Choose now.”

“Try, then.” A smile curved the mermaid’s lips into a skeptical look, like she didn’t believe it possible. “You may try, human. ”

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Melodia.”

“Melodia, what happened?” I moved closer. “It looks like you hurt your head.”

“The waters in The Forest are changing,” Melodia said. “It’s not like it used to be.”

I looked up at Silas. We didn’t need to say the words “the curse” for me to know that’s what he was thinking.

“The evil waters tried to take me, to drag me down.” Melodia laid her gorgeous head against the rocks. “I fought back.”

“Who’s they?”

“The curse,” she said. “Its fingernails scraped against me, tugged at my hair, but I escaped.”

“You need stitches,” I said. “You’re losing a lot of blood.”

“If you believe you can fix me,” she said, “you must do it quickly.”

“I’ve got a first aid kit.” Silas sounded resistant. “In the saddlebags. I won’t leave you to get it.”

I hauled myself to my feet and went to retrieve the satchel myself. I hurried back, feeling a breath of relief to find familiar tools. A needle and thread would have to do for now.

I knelt beside the mermaid who had gone all but comatose in my brief absence. Better for her. What was to come would be painful, and she didn’t need to be awake for it.

“If she was touched by the curse...” Silas said above her silent body.

We both knew what he had implied. Stitches wouldn’t help anything.

I knelt, brought the mermaid’s head onto my lap. I instructed Silas to hold her steady, just in case. He seemed reluctant to touch her, but he did as I asked.

“How do you tell if a mermaid has turned into a siren?” I asked Silas as I began stitching her up.

“You don’t,” he said. “You can’t tell until it’s too late. The only giveaway is their teeth. They don’t show their teeth until their prey is a heartbeat away from death.”

“Okie dokie,” I said, because apparently I was now just accepting explanations like this as fact.

Then I bit my lower lip in concentration. I lapsed into silence as I focused on weaving a tight line of stitches over the massive gash in the otherwise pristine skin of the mermaid’s forehead. The creature was truly stunning, a daughter of sunlight and water, all shimmer and grace. Sorry to report back to Walt Disney, but cartoon Ariel couldn’t hold a candle to the real thing.

“There.” I gently laid the mermaid’s head onto a bunched up blanket Silas had pulled from the horse’s pack. “It’s done. We can only hope that’s enough—she’s lost a lot of blood. ”

I splashed water gently onto the mermaid’s fin, not sure if these sorts of creatures needed water to survive or what. Silas looked at me curiously, like I was being ridiculous.

“I’m not a mermaid doctor,” I retorted. “I’m not even a vet. I’m barely a human doctor. Give me a break.”

Then I took Melodia’s hand in mine and splashed water on her wrists. The mermaid stirred, not opening her eyes, but giving us a sign of life.

“Paranormals heal quickly as a general rule,” Silas said. “If this is enough to save her, we’ll know sooner rather than later.”

I nodded, the thought floating into my head that I hadn’t even had time to wallow in uncertainty: were mermaids real? All logic told me no. So how was I grasping a mermaid’s hand, wishing for her to return to life?

“Silas,” I said, my gut sinking as I noted a change in the mermaid’s condition. “We’re too late.”

I pointed at unwelcome black lines weaving their way around the mermaid’s fin. Her tail looked dull and listless as the curse spread before my eyes—quicker than it had on Irina. I watched as the sunlight inside this mermaid’s essence grew dull. Her hair went flat, normal and plain, her skin pale and clammy instead of a delicate, porcelain sheen.

“I can’t possibly counteract this curse without Lily’s potion. The antidote,” I said. “I haven’t even come to terms with what I did for Irina yesterday, but I know I can’t possibly do it again without that vial. How far away is your Mixologist?”

Silas’s lips went into a thin line. The black lines crisscrossed over the mermaid’s waist. The pace at which it was overtaking Melodia was startling.

“I can’t watch her die,” I said, as much to myself as to him. I looked up at Silas. His expression was complicated. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I have two vials of antidote.” Silas ground the words out, like he was resisting being truthful. “One for me, one for you. Lily gave them to me when I told her we’d be going into The Forest. It’s only enough for the two of us. If we make a misstep mending the wards, we are going to need those vials. We can’t afford to use one now.”

“Give me one.” When Silas didn’t make a move, I put out a hand. “I would never expect you to sacrifice yours. I’ll use mine.”

“I told you that I would protect you,” he growled. “I will die before I let you die.”

“My vial, my choice,” I said. “Please.”

“I told you I’d die in your place.” Silas’s voice was sharp. “I meant it. You may use mine.”

“If I’m touched by the curse, are you going to be able to use the potion to fix me?” I stared at him. “My vial is useless unless someone else can fix me. ”

“Maybe so.” Silas put his hand over mine, and I felt the touch of glass against my skin. “But I’d like you to use mine.”

My fingers closed around that precious bottle of magic, the spinning double helix. Those white wisps of clouds encased in glass were our only chance to save this mermaid. Semantics aside, we were going to be down one bottle. I had a feeling if we both needed our dose, it’d be too late anyway.

Closing my eyes, I poured the solution onto my palm, my body sinking into the same sort of rhythm, a newly-acquired muscle memory, from my practice yesterday on the floor of Wisteria Cottage.

I began to weave this precious magic over Melodia’s body. I stretched the cotton-candy magic around her fin and nestled it into her, feeling her life force resisting the repulsion of evil magic.

The curse had pulled her under so completely I almost couldn’t retrieve her, but I was stubborn. And determined. I might not believe fully in enchanted lands and Fae Queens, but I believed in myself. I felt in my soul that it was my duty to help her.

Through sheer persistence and determination, I completed the weaving process. I collapsed back, sweating under the hot sun, my body limp and weak.

“You’ve done it again.” Silas didn’t sound surprised.

He did sound something else. Reverent? Impressed ?

I wiped perspiration from my brow. “I’m just doing my job.”

“More than you know.” Silas knelt beside me. “You’re incredible, Alessia. More magnificent than I’d ever dreamed.”

“Silas.” I put up a hand on his cheek.

The movement was so weak it was like my muscles were acting without my brain attached. As if I believed he could funnel his strength to me and share a little of that power he so clearly possessed.

Until he was knocked out of my view. Blown backward by an astronomical amount of force. Silas had an unending stream of power that I could sense, but he had been taken off guard—as had I—and it had been his undoing.

One minute, my palm was resting against the rough five o’clock shadow on Silas’s jaw. The next, his head cracked against a tree, and he was surrounded by nets and nets of shimmering magic, some sort of barricade to keep him tied down when— if —he regained consciousness.

The mermaid had healed. Except this wasn’t any mermaid.

She was a siren.

The angry, powerful siren caged me in, pushing me back against the ground. I was pretty sure Silas wasn’t dead—he was too powerful to be killed like this. But I wasn’t nearly powerful enough to defend myself .

I was going to die.

The siren showed me her teeth—the kiss of death that Silas had promised. My last thought was that I felt relieved Silas’s promise had been broken. It didn’t make sense, but nothing did right now. He’d promised to die before me. I’d never wanted that to happen.

The only thing I knew, as the siren curved her long neck over me, her features shifting from the beautiful mermaid to reveal the monster she’d turned into, was that I would gladly give my life to keep Silas alive.

“It’s been centuries since I’ve tasted human,” the siren hissed. “My lucky day.”

“I saved your life,” I pleaded. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

The siren merely smiled, an awful smile, displaying rows of pointed teeth, long and discolored, rusted like nails drilled into her terrible jaw. Those jaws gnashed as she toyed with me, played with her prey. I tried to scurry away, but I couldn’t move. She’d pinned my legs down with her tail.

Silas had been right all along, about everything. He’d been right.

“Alessia, the dagger!” Silas’s strained voice came just as the siren was lunging for my neck, vampiric in her bloodlust.

I rolled as the siren turned her head; she looked surprised to find Silas conscious. I took advantage of Melodia’ s lapse in concentration and extended a hand, my palm circling around the dagger which had rested on the ground next to me as I’d stitched up the bloodied mermaid.

The siren’s mouth opened, letting loose a terrible shriek as she lunged. She missed me by inches. Another banshee-like wail radiated from within her jaws, a devastating song that silenced birds and creatures for miles.

I could hear Silas straining against his bindings—a glimmering black magic laced with death and despair. Everything about this siren was dark and deadly and bleak.

Silas would break free, but not soon enough. The siren had already twisted toward me, barreling down for the kill. I plunged the dagger at her—she dodged, but I clipped her tail.

The scream of pain from Melodia was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. I’d barely nicked the surface of her scales, but the way she writhed away from me, recoiling in pain, it was as if I’d put the blade through her black heart.

“Human!” Melodia’s eyes were wide and red, bloodshot as she gave a final lunge for me. She slapped my arm enough to break a bone, and the dagger dropped to the ground. Blood spurted from my nose as my head smacked against a rock.

The siren paused to lick her lips, tasting my blood .

“ Human ,” she reiterated, with a snake-like slither. “Succumb to me now. There is no one to save you.”

“No one,” I said, “except myself.”

The siren’s lips curved into an amused smile, a bleak wasteland of rusted teeth and impending death.

Her long, forked tongue flickered over her disgusting lips, landing on a spot of blood like it was a treasure. She lapped it up, ravenous for more of me. Her eyes went gray and bloodshot, her body trembling in a frenzy to consume me.

Then, suddenly, Melodia’s figure went eerily still. Like she’d forgotten to breathe. Like her heart had stopped. She stared at me, her head cocked to one side, lizard-like in her pose. Alert and confused and shocked.

“You are no human,” Melodia whispered, dropping to the ground. “It is my mistake.”

I swallowed as she crawled toward me, a lecherous nightmare of a mermaid. This was no longer a creature of sunlight and joy—it was one of hell and horror.

Then the siren bowed. At my feet, she bowed until her long, hooked nose touched the ground.

“Your majesty,” she purred in an awful voice. “My deepest apologies.”

Then she slipped back into the water and disappeared, and if it weren’t for the bloodbath on the rocks, I’d wonder if she’d been there at all .

I was still staring after her in silence when I heard Silas approach. He’d shredded through his magical bindings to join me.

“What did she say to you?” Silas breathed heavily. His expression was murderous, and I had no doubt if he’d worked himself free one second sooner, he would’ve killed the siren in a heartbeat. “What did she say to you?”

“She...” I paused, like even I couldn’t believe it. “She apologized.”

I wasn’t trying to withhold information from Silas, but I hadn’t processed Melodia’s words. I needed time to sit with them alone before sharing it with anyone.

Plus, it felt stupid to repeat the siren’s declaration out loud. Melodia was clearly confused. If I told Silas what she’d said verbatim, it would only bring more questions from him and more unwanted attention onto myself. The last thing I wanted was more attention.

“You’re lying,” Silas turned his gaze on me. “Did she threaten you?”

“No.” I met his gaze evenly. “She apologized.”

Silas ran his tongue over his lips, like he was debating whether or not to believe me.

“Get on your horse,” he finally said. “We have work to do.”