The little water I was working with wasn’t a match for her own power. My magic faltered under her strength, and I begged her to stop fighting me. Sweat broke out on my hairline and dripped down into my eyes as I focused on maintaining my hold as I moved far enough to reach the sink.
I yanked on the handles on either side of the faucet as hard as I could, and water poured uncontrollably out the spigot. Water spilled onto the floor as if I had broken a dam, and soon enough, the liquid mingled with my waning magic, strengthening my hold on Breena. Water wrapped all around her, tightening her arms to her waist and her legs together until she fell to the floor.
Placing a pillow under her head, I apologized profusely as she fought against me. I was growing weak, her pure strength as much a rival as the first day I met her.
A chime rang out, and Breena sank into the floor, limp.
The door swung open a moment later, and my grandfather stood in the doorway, head tilting side to side as he saw Breena on the floor in front of him, water spilling out of the sink. My hold on Breena broke, and I too dropped to the floor.
“What is going on in here?” my grandfather called out. He ran to the sink to turn off the water before kneeling next to Breena to check on the girl splayed across the sodden floor, her green dress slick and twisted like seaweed.
I apologized weakly, and with a motion of my hands, every ounce of moisture on the tile floor began migrating toward the sink’s drain.
“Did you get his address?” I asked, lifting my suddenly all-too-heavy head off the floor.
My grandfather held up a small piece of parchment, dabbled by droplets of sink water, and said, “I sure did.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BANDITS OF THE NIGHT
“How are we supposed to steal your pelt back from the sailor if you’re going to run right into his arms the second we get close to him and his house?” I took a large, angry bite of porridge then resumed pacing the workshop floor. “I’m going on my own.”
“Like depths you are,” Breena said, pushing off the stool she’d been leaning against. Both of us had eaten and rested our weak and shaking bodies, but neither of us were back to our best selves, and I wasn’t sure when we would again.
My grandfather sat on his leather chair in the corner of the room, silently watching the two of us go back and forth with anxious, twiddling thumbs.
“There are only two things that can break me from this innate urge to go to him. The first is the obvious answer of getting my pelt back, and the second… is, well, magic,” Breena said, her voice deepening on the last word.
“What are you saying?” I paused my pacing and met her gaze for the first time in twenty minutes. I couldn’t let those dark, mesmerizing pools influence the decision I had to make to keep her safe.
“I’m saying, can’t you use your song to hypnotize me?” Her eyes traced the details of my face, as if she was making up for lost time.
“No. We’re not meant to use our song like that on fae.” I’d known this since I was a little girl. No one used their song on fae unless it was for healing purposes or to help them, never to control them. That magic was reserved for the humans, and with good reason.
“Not meant to, or you can’t?” Breena asked with too much air held in her chest, too much hope.
“Not meant to, but do you really want me in your mind like that? It’s just another form of control over you,” I said, weary of her willingness to fall under my spell, my song.
“Yes, but this time, it will be you, not him. This time, it’s someone I know… someone Itrust.” Breena stood a mere foot away from me now. My heart thrummed wildly in my ears as I felt her warm exhale skate across my left arm. I couldn't have heard her right.
Did she just say “trust”?
“Trust? You trust me?” I asked, almost feeling silly as I reconfirmed. Of course that’s not what she meant.
“I do.” Breena lifted her chin, a defiant stance in contrast to her soft eyes. “I’ve had no choice but to trust you, siren.”
I wonder if she too felt the pounding of an unsteady heart—a heart that longed for the words like the ones she spoke—but entirely unsure she would ever hear them in her lifetime. Sirens, we had community, our pod, and eventually, when we grew mature enough, we found a partner we were meant to mate with. Trust, love, or anything in that realm were not always a given, even between mated partners. It was only when we found someone truly fit for us that we loved and trusted, and it always seemed to come faster than expected.
“Well, I think it’s settled then,” my grandfather finally chimed in from where he hid in the corner of the room. He stood and brushed shortbread cookie pieces off his lap and onto the already dirty, albeit dry, workshop floor. His shoulders fell to a relaxed state for the first time since we arrived. “You’ll both go together. Keep each other safe.”
I cleared my throat and begged the heat rising in my face to fade. I took a step further into the workshop and away from Breena. I’d been smart earlier not to look into her eyes, but I’d slipped up, and oh, I’d slipped up badly. Not only had I looked into her eyes, but I allowed them to crack my walls, splinter them even further than they already had been. Another crack, and I’d undoubtedly be lost in her, unable to reel back, helpless in my descent into maddening lust for the woman before me.
Depths knew, lust wasn’t the only thing I had to worry about. There were much stronger forces at play here that I wouldn’t yet admit to.
“Your granddaughter has nothing to worry about,” Breena said. She spoke to him, but her brown eyes rimmed with gold were trained on me. “No one will lay a hand on her.”
Those stubborn minnows in my belly came to life as her unblinking eyes bore into me once again.
