Page 1 of Waves (Tangled Crowns #6)

Avia

P oor, innocent Stavros stared at me with wide and wondering liquid blue eyes—no doubt shocked by my admission that I couldn’t love him.

Sweet as he was, it just wasn’t possible. Not with the shadows swimming inside of me, that dark evil looming, waiting for its chance to eclipse my humanity.

I would only drag this poor siren under—ruin him as I’d been ruined.

Corrupt his innocence in unspeakable ways.

We floated on the surface of the sea, our heads and shoulders just below the waterline. The moonlight draped across one of his cheeks and part of his neck, turning his golden skin the palest yellow. He was so beautiful he made my chest ache.

Until I registered each minute change in him as he swallowed hard, and his jaw tightened.

He was upset. As he should be. One night of camping in the wilderness of the sea—which had begun with bonding between tournament competitions—had turned into disaster.

Stonefish had arisen from beneath the ocean floor.

Lionfish had surrounded us, some enchantment guiding them all to assault our traveling party.

The hollow space where my heart should have been clenched tight.

It had been a deadly attack.

One my magic hadn’t been able to stop.

As everyone else had cleared away the final debris of the vicious event, Stavros and I had come up here to gather Julian’s body, which had floated to the surface.

Julian, whose life was stolen by the rebels and their violence.

Ripped out like a page torn from a book. Ended too early. Story unfinished.

Sharp grief had cut into both of us. And here, on the silver laced waves, the siren and I had allowed our pain to give way to impulsiveness. We’d shared a kiss.

A bland, dull kiss that was clearly a mistake.

A wave smacked into my shoulders and sent a tremble across my skin. It seemed the ocean was rebuking me.

Unable to stand the forlorn look on his face any longer, I broke eye contact with Stavros. Then I unwrapped a belt from my waist and tied it around Julian, tugged on the body, and ducked back beneath the waves.

I glanced down through the shifting water, eyes drawn to the others dealing with the debris far below.

Our square tents bobbed on their anchors as if nothing happened.

The lavender campfires still flickered merrily.

But there was no more singing, no more laughter.

The posture of each and every person was slumped with the weight of grief.

Silhouettes merged and split as mer soldiers carried the injured to the mage tents for treatment.

More people dragged giant nets to capture the lifeless enchanted fish from the attack, hopefully to be examined to determine who had charmed them into mindless violence.

Closer to us, Sahar and other sirens from my entourage were gathering the bodies of the dead that had drifted up to the surface like snapped strips of seaweed, limp and lifeless.

I needed to bring Julian’s body there, so it would return home for burial rites.

Stavros joined me, holding on to Julian’s other side. The sea wrapped us in a solemn sort of silence that fell like a shroud, making the underwater world and everyone in it a bit hazy. Winding tight and binding us together in grief.

I found it hard to believe I was here. That this was my reality. And that I’d been such a careless fool as to kiss someone amidst this calamity.

Dismay smashing through my gut—no doubt guilt would eat at me later—I felt compelled to be honest. To do the right thing by him.

Before the last event of the Syzgos Tournament, I’d scoffed at men who’d wanted to turn tail and leave, but with this recent attack…how could I even allow this matchmaking farce to continue? How could I hold decent men here knowing the dangers?

Keelan had been permanently injured. Julian was gone. It was all too much.

These rebels were out of hand.

I needed to protect an innocent like Stavros. He would be safer far from me and all of the violent hatred that my reign attracted.

Safer from my heartless self.

Even now, little sparks of irrational fury danced within my throat, vengeance flickering and begging for me to breathe life into it.

I couldn’t seem to stomp those tiny embers glowing inside me, and I had to carefully choose my words lest I alert him to my madness.

To the fact that my humanity was a tenuous thing.

Haltingly, I managed to say, “I’m going to release you from the tournament.”

“What?” His whisper cut through the water between us as he blinked and one lone tear that must have been lingering on his lower lid fell and spun through the waves, blurring his face for a moment.

Not a tear for me.

It couldn’t be.

“Don’t. You can’t,” he murmured.

A shower of shocked hurt and sorrow and a strange yearning made my empty chest pulse with feelings that didn’t belong there. Emotions that were oddly intense and borderline painful. Perhaps I was awash with longing that he and I could be right for one another.

Maybe in some other life.

I shook my head because that was wishful thinking. Foolish. I was merely a charred remnant of the hopeful girl I used to be. And who knew what sort of monster I’d devolve into?

This was for the best.

Better to disappoint him now than destroy him.

Stavros turned, boxing Julian’s limp form between us, the dead man’s head lolling to one side. The siren reached for me with his free hand, his fingers squeezed mine desperately, his black ring digging into my flesh, hard and insistent. “Please, don’t do this,” he begged.

Oh no.

He must have felt differently about that kiss.

Fool! I cringed. Look what you’ve done. More damage.

Swallowing, I dropped my eyes to our linked fingers, which clutched at me almost as if he was afraid to let go. As if I was somehow his lifeline. “I need this,” he urged.

I was bowled over by a furious sort of desperation racing through my ribcage. A need to prove myself. To whom? For what? My body was going haywire, and these feelings made no sense.

Gah, I was a mess.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I admitted softly. Though I'd never give him the whole truth, that the price of my magic was my humanity—I could give him a simpler explanation. One that was a truth even if it wasn’t everything.

With a shake of my head, I glanced back up at his face, to find his jaw clenched as he braced himself for my words.

“I don’t want what happened to Julian to happen to you too.

The world needs good men like you, Stavros.

You’re a gift. And I’m a danger.” Untwisting our fingers, I dragged my hand up to cup his cheek and he leaned into the touch, his warmth soaking into my palm.

A staggering, swimmy daze overtook me, and my hand stayed against his face longer than I’d intended as a hollow sort of longing intense as hunger pain pulsed right through my bones.

What is that ? Where was this feeling during our kiss?

Strange, changing emotions shone inside me like dappled sun rays bursting through the waves only to be cut off a moment later—as if a cloud in the sky, one invisible beneath the sea, had blocked off the light.

There one second. Gone the next. Then another splintered fragment of sunshine would appear. Bizarre.

It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.

It was as though I was a stranger to myself. As though I was outside my own body.

As if Stavros’s emotions had leaked out into the ocean with his tears and somehow leached into my pores.

Blinking, I pondered how that might be. But as my eyes traced over his handsome face, a theory came to me. A revelation.

What if Stavros wasn’t a full siren?

What if he was a half-blood and didn’t even know it…

Did he have magic?

Perhaps he was like one of Bloss’s husbands? Growing up, I’d watched as Connor had been able to taste the feelings of others.

What if the man in front of me didn’t swallow emotions with his golden lips…but what if he emitted them? If they spilled out of him like a lantern and lit up whoever was in his proximity?

A serrated inhale nicked my throat.

Connor had recognized his magic when he was young, when everyone else’s sentiments had swept over him like a flood. His sort of power would have been hard to ignore. But would a shy siren ever recognize when his own attitudes leaked into someone else?

Under the ocean, where my birth mother had cut the Okeanos off from the land countries, would anyone even realize what was happening?

Our kiss took on a new light and I wondered if Stavros had still been in a state of shock when our lips had touched. I most definitely hadn’t been thinking clearly. Had the kiss been ruined by his numbness? Or were we really just unsuited?

Chewing my lower lip, I wondered.

Granted, it was only a theory. A flimsy one at that. But this possibility gave me a sliver of optimism.

Could Stavros be the solution to the awful inhumanity that was a side effect of my power?

If I lost all my emotions…could he give some back to me?

Was he the key to keeping the monster within locked up?

Had I nearly sent away my only hope?

My head swayed and my knees woozily bent. The question itself almost burst rudely from my lips. But he'd just seen so many of his fellows slaughtered. One of his friends was dead and I’d just suggested he go back into the harsh world alone… a suggestion I needed to retract as quickly as a whip.

The situation was already mired down enough.

It was not the moment for an interrogation. It was a moment for mourning.

Meanwhile, Stavros finally found his voice.

His eyes gleamed with earnest desperation as he said, “Majesty, you’re a danger to my heart, that’s certain.

But I’ll willingly endure any other dangers to be able to stay by your side.

You. Are. Worth. That. Risk.” He pronounced each of his final words with a conviction I hadn’t known he was capable of.

Of course, he was wrong.

I wasn’t worth it.

Especially because when I lifted our conjoined hands and kissed his ring, murmuring “As you wish,” just after, I did so with an awful, selfish thought fluttering inside my mind.

I was going to find out if Stavros had the magic I’d just imagined. And if he did, I was going to keep him in order to save myself.