Page 17 of Wicked Tides #1

Vidar

Are they beautiful because they are beautiful

Or because they make us believe it so?

~Captain William Foardragun

Present Day

Things were getting interesting. Very interesting.

Why I didn’t fight as hard as I was capable, I didn’t fully know. Maybe my mind was too scrambled from seeing her that I couldn’t use my limbs right. Maybe I thought it was a dream a bit too long. Whatever the reason, I let her get the upper hand.

That scarred face had haunted me for eighteen years. Of course, my mind saw a child. A scrawny girl barely younger than I had been when I was stuffed in that tiny, barnacle-covered cage. The face I saw when I opened my eyes was entirely foreign in so many ways. The scar was there, but her eyes…

Her eyes were pure onyx and filled with malice. Pain. Rage and despair.

It was like looking in a fucking mirror for a split second.

But we were nothing alike…

The demon of my past had gotten the upper hand.

Whether I’d given it to her or not, I wasn’t entirely sure, but she had it nonetheless.

I remembered the cold water washing over me.

The ocean was rough and she moved through it like a needle through cotton, swift and true.

Not that I could see much. I could only feel.

She could have drowned me. Could have plunged to the depths where my human bones would curl in and shatter.

Where my lungs would flatten. She didn’t.

Instead, she’d kept me alive and the weight of my limbs on stone beckoned me out of unconsciousness.

That and the overly tight binds wrapped around my wrists.

Fuck .

I pried open salt-crusted eyes to see moon-washed land ahead of me.

A smooth rock formation created a monstrous arch before me.

Around me, the waves crushed the edges of shallow cliffs.

Whatever island I was on, it was small. I could see the ocean in every direction.

Against my back was a thick rod of some kind.

Metal. Clearly not from the island originally.

It chafed my forearms where I was tethered tightly against it, hands behind my back.

But none of that mattered when my gaze came upon her.

She slowly revealed herself against the rocky background, camouflaged almost perfectly.

Once she was in view, all of my doubts about her existence washed away.

She was there, tall and slender and pale under the moonlight.

Any traces of that girl I knew that night had been ripped away, violently it would seem.

She wore a thin dress made of strange material laced loosely at the front.

It didn’t cover much more than her breasts and upper thighs.

Every bit of her that was visible to me was marked in some way.

Scars. Black tattoos of some kind coiled around one forearm.

Her cheek bore the scar I’d given her all those years ago.

It was a perfectly straight line from her ear almost to the corner of her mouth.

And the look on her face made her seem like she hadn’t slept since the day we parted ways. She held a bone knife in her hand with an intricate handle and a slightly curved and very sharp edge to it that reminded me too much of the one I used on my father.

The corner of my mouth lifted and it made her head tilt a bit. The blackness faded from her eyes until they gleamed silver-gray under the light like two glass marbles.

“You planning on using that to skin me alive?” I rasped, my throat burning like I’d swallowed too much salt water.

She cocked her head again like she heard me but didn’t understand. I glimpsed the knife and tested my binds, but she’d given me no leeway to pull free. I didn’t expect her to.

She stalked forward, each of her steps silent on the slick stone and reminding me too much of her horrid mother. The material of her garments moved strangely, clinging to her form, until I doubted it was fabric at all.

Fuck me…

It was skin. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was human skin.

“Don’t try to struggle,” she finally said, her voice unnervingly melodic and calm despite the hate burning in her gaze. “There are three islands in these parts, any one of which I could have brought you to if your crew doesn’t think I just dragged you to the bottom of the sea.”

She was close now. So close that if I wanted to, I could have kicked a foot out and broken her knee. She didn’t seem to care, even when my eyes glimpsed her legs. She just adjusted the knife in her hand to remind me she had it.

“This place is only visible during low tide,” she continued, taking another step until she had one foot on either side of my legs. “It’s not on any human maps. I’ve checked.”

She dropped to her knees astride my lap. The weight of her on my groin further proved she was real. She lifted the edge of her knife to my chest and let the tip skim my scar where I’d buried my silentium under my skin years ago. She knew it was there. There was no doubt about it .

“By the time the tide rises, you’ll be buried beneath it,” she whispered, her face close enough to mine that I could feel the caress of her breath on my lips. “In pieces.”

I kept my eyes on hers, studying everything about her. It was no use thinking of her as the girl from that cursed island. She was a different creature entirely. So was I.

“So? How do you plan to get me into pieces?” I said.

She slowly cut the blade across my chest, leaving my silentium in place and instead slicing just above it in a diagonal line.

Hot blood immediately wept down my skin.

I clenched my teeth but gave her no other indication that it stung.

She watched me for a sign, though. Oh, she watched me eagerly.

She wanted my screams, but I didn’t have much else to give in that department.

I’d spent my screams through eighteen years of nightmares, hate, and rage.

“Slowly,” she whispered, lifting her blade to her mouth. She licked across the bone until my blood seasoned her tongue and then wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Hemsbane. Your blood is bitter with it.”

“Did you expect anything less?”

“It makes no difference. I have waited a long time to get my hands on you, Vidar. Do you think I haven’t been suffering hemsbane all these years? Your body could be filled with it and I could still devour you before it took effect. I told you I would not forget your name.”

I scoffed. “I never expected you to. But after eighteen years, cutting me up in pieces is the best you came up with?”

She shrugged. “I never desired to be creative with my vengeance.” Her blade made a quick pass over my chest again, making a parallel cut. That one was a bit deeper and the suddenness of it made me hiss. “I only wish to be rid of you.”

Under the moon’s muted light, I could hardly tell, but I thought I could see a slight glisten beneath her inhuman eyes.

But sirens couldn’t weep. Weeping was for people with hearts and sirens were hollow. I knew that all too well .

“Well,” I sighed, lifting my hips to remind her where she sat. “Better get on with it. If I’m to be buried under high tide, you’ll want to start.”

My lack of distress seemed to make her tense.

I couldn’t help myself. I smirked at knowing what she wanted.

She wanted my fear. She wanted me to plead for my life.

Killing me wasn’t enough. She wanted me to feel it and the fact was, I hardly felt anything anymore.

And the other fact was that my truest fear was that she would take out her vengeance on my crew instead of me.

But she’d taken me and I was oddly relieved about it. Another thought that made me smile.

She hated it. She snarled and stood from my lap, looking over my body as if searching for a place to start. She was going to draw it out… if her anger didn’t get the best of her. Maybe if I made her lose control, I could get things over with and be done with the whole damn game.

The wet slap of something solid hitting the rocks drew her attention.

Another siren slid from the waves, her body moon-white and almost glowing in the darkness.

Silver hair hung over her shoulders and freckles of glowing marks littered her face and the contours of her body.

I’d only seen a few like her and never had I left them alive long enough to truly see how their skin glowed like that.

Sirens could have been considered beautiful to the untrained eye.

She spoke in a tongue I couldn’t understand. Not fully, anyway. Over the years, I’d picked up things here and there. I noticed “ship” and that was the only clue I needed to know they were talking about the Rose.

The pale one’s eyes caught mine, but it was hard to tell what she was thinking when there was no color in them. They were just luminescent, white globes that were almost too big for her slender face.

“Your ship’s heading west,” my little demon said. “Away from here.”

Good , I thought .

“Well,” I said, adjusting myself as if to get comfortable, but in truth, my ass was going numb and I couldn’t really feel my hands anymore. “Torture me how you like. You know how to do it, don’t you? Seeing as you’re Reyna’s daughter.”

The pale one furrowed her brows, but my demon? Oh, she looked livid. Her nostrils flared and her fingers curled ever tighter around the hilt of her blade. She was not going to be difficult to anger.

“Come, now,” I continued. “You should be ashamed.” My tone dropped an octave. “With a lineage like that, I expected more.”

For days. For days I listened to the morbid symphony of my father’s crew dying. Being eaten. Dismembered. Skinned.

But she didn’t care. It was in her nature. She had said it herself all those years ago.

“I wish I was so skilled,” I finished.

She lunged forward, grabbing a handful of my hair in her fist and yanking my head back so my throat was exposed to her. The cool edge of her knife kissed my skin and I almost rejoiced at how easy it was to hasten my end.