Page 5

From the moment Evander had slammed my door, I’d wept.

I’d prayed to the Great Gods and Goddesses as if they could hear me, mindlessly asking them for some fleeting peace that never came.

I’d waited for the clomp of Evander’s boots on the stairs, for him to crash through my bolt and drag me to the courtyard for execution.

It had been years since a public execution of a Siren—Nemea’s men killed them too quickly to bother hauling them up the mountain for a show.

But I was already here.

I’d be made into a spectacle: the king’s ward having her wings gouged from her back. Her throat cut deep, a pulsing curtain of red. When they were done, my body would be displayed on a stake to rot for days after. Perhaps my wings would hang on Nemea’s wall too, this trophy a perfect set.

A quick knock sounded at the door. I tightened my hold on my dagger. “Yes?”

“Open up, Im.” The heavy oak muffled Agatha’s voice.

“ Shit. ” With Agatha, I might as well be made of glass. She’d know something awful had happened the moment she laid eyes on me. “Just a minute.”

She gave another impatient rap.

“I’m coming.” Everything ached as I moved toward the door. The raw skin on my back pulled as I reached for the bolt. At the sight of my outstretched hand, I paused. Dark brown crescents of dried blood sat beneath each nail.

Evander’s blood.

Images of last night sliced through my mind. The feel of him, the salt on his flesh, the monstrous power I’d felt at the sight of those glimmering drops of red. I couldn’t parse which was worse—that I’d nearly killed him or that I’d let him live.

I’d always known what I was. When I was growing up, there had been a beckoning whisper in my mind and a pull on my body to descend and meet the sea.

I’d never heeded it, fearing it would make a monster of me.

For the legends of Sirens and blood were true.

We were created to yearn for it. To call it—hot and rushing beneath a sailor’s skin—to us. To pull them fully beneath the spume.

Forcing a fist, I finally slid the bolt and opened the door. My voice scraped. “Morning.”

Agatha rushed straight for my dressing room, not sparing me a glance. I locked the door behind her. “The ritual starts soon,” she said. “Let’s get you dressed.”

I’d been so consumed with worry over Evander that I’d forgotten all about King Nemea’s blasphemous ritual.

For nearly three decades now, he had refused to worship the Great Goddess Ligea—the queen of Sirens.

He claimed Sirens were vicious and pitiless as the sea, that they took joy in destruction, and over time he’d stopped honoring the Great Gods altogether.

He made blood offerings to his water deity, Eusia, instead.

I wasn’t even convinced Eusia was real, as the histories I’d read were bereft of her name.

Yet Nemea was devout, gathering his court for an offering before making weighty decisions, before fishing seasons, before name days.

And before weddings too, so the betrothed could ask for her blessings.

I’d been forced to give my blood since I was small.

Denying Nemea and his deity an offering meant death.

“The tailor brought the wedding gown,” I called to Agatha. “Nemea asked that I wear it for the ritual.”

My body dragged as I forced my way to the basin to scrub my fingertips. The brush’s stiff bristles were sharp against my nail beds, and a shiver fell down my sore backbone.

“Imogen, I thought we might talk,” Agatha called from the dressing room.

“Last night, I was able to speak with King Theodore—” She came in, brow buckled with thought, a clean chemise and the wedding gown of black lace carefully slung across her arms. She froze when she finally looked at me.

Those big eyes of hers flared with worry, with the fierce, sisterly look she always armored herself with when I was hurt. “Tell me what’s happened.”

Suddenly, I was a girl again. Thirteen, slipping into a salt bath that a new maid had drawn me, forgetting that she should have forgone the salt.

A sharp pulsing had filled my chest at the feel of it.

My body had begun to ache. Agatha had pulled me out the moment I’d called for her.

She’d had that same look in her eye then as she did now.

She’d wrapped me in a towel, hurriedly drying the brine from my skin.

“I’m like you, Immy,” she’d whispered. “A Siren away from the sea. Salt water only makes the longing worse. Keep away from it.”

Agatha had kept me safe. I was not so alone with her as my confidant. And so, I’d shoved the ugly, rearing head that was my true self below the surface. And last night, blinded by my unabashed desire, I’d hauled her back up. I’d let her gulp the air.

“Imogen?” Agatha’s gaze darted over my disheveled body. My dark waves were knotted with hairpins, my chemise was wrinkled and hanging askew. A light smear of blood marred my hip. “ Imogen. ”

My throat clamped. I threw my arms around her neck, crushing the dress she held between us.

“Oh Gods,” Agatha wheezed. She returned my embrace, hands pressing over my spine—over the open wounds left from my wings.

I gasped at the pain. When she pulled away, her hands were red with fresh blood.

Sudden understanding widened her dark eyes.

“ How? ” She spoke in a rush. “We have to leave right now. We need to get down the mountain—”

A languid knock sounded at my door. My head snapped toward the sound, hackles rising. “ Imogen. ” Evander’s taunting voice called through the wood.

Who is that? Agatha mouthed.

I gestured frantically for her to shut herself away.

“Open up, Imogen.” A loud thump. “Or I’ll open it myself.”

“Agatha,” I whispered, “go into my dressing room. Lock the door. Do not come out, no matter what you hear.”

She straightened her spine, defiant. “What—absolutely not!”

“ Shhh. Do it. Please. ” I hurried to the chair I’d spent the night in and retrieved my discarded dagger. “ Now, Agatha. I could never forgive myself if you were hurt. Go. Do not come out.”

Finally, she rushed toward my dressing room.

Once the lock clicked, I raced to the chamber door. The bolt scraped. The hinges wailed as I opened it.

Evander stood, tall and imposing, wearing the black coat and trousers he was meant to have worn last night.

His hand rested on the leather-wrapped hilt of the sword at his hip.

Bright amber eyes slithered down my body.

They creased with an unafraid smile when he saw my dagger. “You’re not ready yet.”

I took a step back, heart hammering. “What do you want?”

Evander pushed past me without answering, unbuckling his sword belt as he went. He laid it reverently upon the bed and perched himself at the foot. The man looked like a bad omen, all clad in black, stark against the light hues and harsh morning sun that filled my chamber.

“Close the door, Imogen.”

My breath caught at the soft, emotionless command. I threw the door shut, never taking my eyes from him.

“Lock it and come here.”

“I asked you what you wanted.”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Imogen. Lock it. And come here.” He bent to retrieve the gown and fresh chemise that Agatha had dropped. “Let me help you.”

I was a mouse, and this was the cat’s gentle play before it sank its teeth in. “I can dress myself.”

The way he looked at me was so close to the way he had last night. His gaze was heated, but a shadow swam through it now. He’d seen the dark thing within me, and it had changed him. Changed us. “ Come here. ”

I took a cautious step forward. Then another.

When I was near enough, he leaned forward and took my hand.

Hard fingers kneaded my hips as he placed me between his open legs.

I tensed as his arm slipped around me, holding me still and close.

“I still want you.” He looked up into my eyes.

“I’ll admit I’m… shocked.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “But… Nemea doesn’t need to know.”

I set my hands to his wide shoulders and pushed. “This is a trick.”

“No,” he said, his hold on me unrelenting. “No trick.” I tried to hide my wince as he set the gentlest kiss to the middle of my chest. “I came to apologize. For hurting you.” He pulled back and swiped at the angry red puncture marks I’d left on his own neck.

“I don’t understand.” My blood screamed in my ears. “You can’t possibly still want me.”

He gave me a solemn nod.

“You kill my kind. You are ordered to do so. Why would you want to marry me now that you know what I am?”

“Besides the fact that I’ve come to… love you—”

I flinched. Love was not something I’d ever hoped for.

It was not something I’d ever felt. I’d read great love stories; I’d spoken to maids with blood in their cheeks and stars in their eyes over a quiet stable hand or handsome soldier.

And always, love struck me as something soft and incessant.

It seemed lavish, sometimes foolish, dangerous even, but it was never threaded with terror, like what I felt now.

Like Evander had felt last night when I’d drawn his blood.

He drew his thumb across my lower lip, dragging my attention back to him. “You grew up away from your kind,” he said. “You’re nothing like the rest of them. You’re docile. And there are benefits for me. Do you know of the Siren’s blood bond?”

I knew enough. A Siren was tied to the sea and the air.

Their power and instinct to drown was made stronger by their proximity to it.

The blood bond dulled this instinct. It kept the person the Siren was bonded to safe from the lure of other Sirens.

The bonded pair would be compelled to protect one another at all costs.

But up in the mountains, I was simply a woman.

My instincts and power were all but dead.

“The bond is painful,” I said. “And there’s no need. What happened last night won’t happen again.” I’d keep away from wine. He’d scrub himself clean after being on the sea.

His hand rose to my jaw, fingers curling around it. He spoke slow and clear. “I do not want a wife that can kill me.”

My stomach plummeted. “The blood bond is treasonous.”

“I said Nemea didn’t need to know.” He released me and shook out the gown.

Guiding me by the hips, he turned me, so my back faced him.

He slipped my bloodstained chemise from my shoulders, letting it fall to a puddle around my feet.

The cold air on my naked body raised bumps on my skin.

He set his fingertips beside the open wounds at my shoulder blades.

“Did you know…” His lips brushed my shoulder.

“… that if you were down by the water this would have healed almost instantly?” His knuckle bumped over the bones of my spine.

“I could take you down there with me, when we’re blood-bound. ”

My mind flooded with thoughts of all the things Evander knew about my kind that I did not. I pictured his hands covered in their gore, his face sprayed with it. “King Nemea doesn’t allow me to leave the fort.” And I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

His lips touched my ear. “You wouldn’t belong to Nemea anymore, Imogen. You’d belong to me.”

I bent and pulled up my chemise, stained as it was, over my shoulders. I strode to the settee, where my stays had landed the night before, and forced my arms through the straps. “Help me.” A tremor shook my voice. “Nemea will never forgive us if we’re late for the ritual.”

Evander obliged, walking toward me slowly. “Who else knows?” he asked, as he clumsily started on my ties. Each tug was agony.

I stopped myself from looking toward my dressing room door. I’d slice off my own wing before sharing that Agatha had spent years and years with my secret tucked safely behind her lips. “No one.”

“Good.” Another torturous tug, and then my stays were squeezing, squeezing, puckering my ripped skin. “Like this?” he asked, pulling them even tighter.

“Yes.” I shuddered from the pain and stepped into my black gown. Evander fastened the glittering buttons up its back. At the looking glass, I ran my fingers through the knots in my hair and pinched some color into my wan cheeks. My gold-brown eyes looked glassy, empty. “There’s a problem.”

His lips pursed. “What’s that?” Possessiveness thinned his gaze as he traced the lines of my body.

“The blood bond can only be performed if my wings are out. I’d never shifted before last night.” Last night had been an unfamiliar swirl of wine and salt and heated skin. “I don’t know that I could do it again.”

I watched him in the looking glass as he adjusted his coat and said with frigid indifference, “We’ll do what we do for executions.”

I spun, gaze locking with his. “For executions?”

“I’ll bring up seawater and use the siphon to force it into your lungs. It makes you shift.” He came to stand before me, so close that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. He bent to place a kiss on my neck. Then another. His lips might as well have been a clamp around my throat.

Crushing.

Silencing.