“I don’t know you atall, despite wanting to,” I bark, throwing my hands out to the side. “You have your secrets, and that’s fine, but you actively choose to spend our time together beingmiserable. And cruel. Those are choicesyoumake, whileIhave been nothing but kind to you.” Something shifts in her expression, a muscle at her jaw pulsing with the steady beat of her heart. I can’t help but study the way her midnight-black hair is tucked behind her delicately pointed ear, the shape of itperhaps the only soft thing about her. Everything else is as sharp and finely honed as the blades she wields, including the vicious curl of her barely there smirk. The memory of our mouths fusing together surfaces uninvited. It had felt so different from any other time I’ve used my magic, and I had spent the evening afterwards trying to figure out if that was good or bad.
“You know what your problem is?” she asks, her boots scuffing softly against stone as she approaches. “You’re toosoft. It’s a weakness. A gaping hole within that you’rebeggingfor people to cut deeper into.”
My heart catches at the defensiveness of her tone, but I wanted a reaction, so I don’t back down. “Give me my dagger.”
“Take it from me. That’s what youwantto do, isn’t it?”
“You don’t think I will?”
“Iknowyou won’t—just asIknow you.” She stops a few feet away, her cloak fluttering in the gusty wind traveling through the cavern. “The weak are always easy to read.”
My talons grow from my fingertips, my vision spotting as my breaths quicken.Who are you willing to become? Anyone that Lyre needed me to be. Iwasweak, but now… now I havepurposein my veins where before there was only hopelessness. My upper lip lifts in a snarl, sharpened canines smaller than the fae’s across from me flashing with the movement. “Fine. If I take the dagger, all of our remaining lessons —including this one—will double in length. No questions asked. No delaying our deal to try and get out of it.”
“And if I keep the dagger in my possession, then we shave two lessons off our timeline.”
I growl at her in frustration. Maybe I had walked right into that one, but if Myla wants to see just how far I am willing to go to protect those I love, then I am happy to show her. “Deal.”
“Oh, Little Siren,” she says, her voice dropping low as she prowls towards me. “While confidence certainly looks better onyou than the usual meekness you hide behind, in this case, you lack the skills to back it up. It will be your downfall.”
I wait until she’s crossed half the distance between us, my talons curling into my palms. “And overconfidence will be yours.” My voice rings out as I start to sing, the notes low and melodic from where they vibrate from deep in my throat. I had thought long about ourkissbetween my meetings with Sade and conversations with Lyre this past week. Because my magic wasn’t useful during hunts, I had allowed myself to becomeafraidof using it. Sure that once someone else realized that my song only lured females, my life would be cut short.
Maybe now is the time to reclaim the magic I have shunned as the weapon it was meant to be.
I retreat as Myla pushes forward, the fact that she is fae making it easier for her to fight against my song at first. But then her next steps falter as her eyes glaze over. With only a foot between us to spare, she comes to a stop and doesn’t move again.
I let my song fade and drag in a breath, though it does nothing to calm my wildly beating heart. “I don’t know if you can understand me while you are under my song; I suppose I’ve never been given the opportunity to ask.” I drop my focus to the bone hilt of my dagger strapped to her thigh and pull it free. Holding it up, my eyes meet hers. “The thing about shutting out even theenemy, Myla, is that it makes you blind to their strengths. I don’t like using my song, and I do apologize for using it on you for a second time, but I won’t apologize for becoming who I need to be in order to keep my sister safe. And I haveyouto thank for that.”
This close, it’s impossible for me not to lose myself in the stunning brutality of her beauty. It’s the kind that demands you take notice, each feature drawing you in closer and closer until you realize too late that you’re caught in her web.
She blinks away the glassiness in her eyes, but though her anger immediately surfaces, it’s accompanied by an emotion Ineverthought I would see from her—fear. She doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that I’ve taken my dagger back when she grits out, “Second time?”
I guess that gives me an answer to just how aware she is while under my song. I clasp the weapon tightly and move my hands behind my back. “Yes.”
“When, Aria? Because by my count, you’ve lured me under your influence by your lips once and now by your songonce.”
I shiver at the use of my name, but shame sits heavily in place of my magic. I had done what I needed to prove to Myla that she couldn’t walk all over me, but it doesn’t change the fact that, at my core, I acted no differently than any other siren.
My eyes bounce between hers as I try to formulate the right words. “I used it on you when I found you floating in the sea during the rogue siren attack. You woke and were disoriented, and you kept trying to kick me. I attempted to calm you, but eventually, I couldn’t swim and dodge your attacks, and I didn’t want you to fall off the raft and through the Spell. So I sang to get you to calm down.”
She gives herself the length of one breath to glare at me before she steps away, retreating to the other side of the cavern, her expression tight. Rain begins to fall outside, lightning flashing before a wave of rolling thunder follows. I quickly bend down to grab my bag and place the dagger in it, my fingers trembling. Myla doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything as the rain falls in heavier sheets, water leaking in through the gaps in the ceiling.
The storm intensifies, the thunder rumbling the pebbles around us as lightning continues to flare. I stare at Myla’s blank face from where she is now seated on the ground, her legs bent in front of her and her arms propped on her knees. My mouthopens and closes as I struggle with what to fill our own silence with. I don’t want to leave and miss valuable training time but it’s clear that our interaction perturbed her, and that shame within me whispers that it’s my fault that it has.
“Myla?” I shout over the rain, crossing the platform to get to her. The hair rises on my arm as light flashes right outside the entrance, the answering crack of thunder forcing my hands to my ears. When the ringing stops, I look up and watch as Myla climbs down the platform, her boots planting on the sand-covered rock below. “Where are you going?” When she doesn’t answer, I scramble behind her, my bare feet hitting the ground just as she reaches the edge of the cavern’s entrance. “Myla?”
“I have to walk to where Navin will be able to retrieve me with Lan. This close to the storm, it will be unsafe for the dragon to land.”
“You cannot go yet.” The words come out as half plea, something souring in my gut at how lost she looks.
Myla’s eyes cut to mine. “Why don’t yousingand make me stay?”
The wind shifts, sending a wall of rain directly into our faces and forcing us to take cover deeper into the cavern. “I don’t want to do that. Despite what you may think about me and my magic, I don’t enjoy using it.”
She releases a broken laugh, the sound slipping through tense lips. “No, you’ll just resort to it when you need to trick someone.”
My lips part on a gasp, and I take a step towards her. “Don’t act like you would not do the same if you had the ability,” I say quietly, fire lit in my belly as I point to my chest. “Not justmylife depends on these lessons, and time is a luxury I do not have. You made it clear that you wouldn’t bargain fairly with me, so I took the opportunity you laid at my feet. I simply pretended I wasyou, and this was the result. So if you want to be upsetwith anyone, start with yourself. Because you showed me what ruthlessness looks like, and how could aLittle Sirensuch as myself resist such a tempting opportunity?”
The storm batters the beach around us as we stare at each other, the weather only partly to blame for the tension in the air. But that hollowed look in her eyes dissipates, and though the terrifying darkness in them returns, so does the slightest amount of surprised mirth. “I don’t think someone has ever simultaneously complimented and condemned me in the same breath.”
