I needed to get out of this place. To do so, I’d need to venture out of the damned room they’d quietly tucked me away in.
Hylos claimed I wasn’t a prisoner but a guest in his domain. It clearly wasn’t true, but I could at least test the bounds of what I was permitted to do without escorts. If I could explore the castle, at the very least get a feel for its layout, maybe I could figure out where the sailors were.
I watched bubble trails race upward past the window, unable to even see the surface of the water from here.You’re fathoms below sea.The siren king’s words needled through my mind.
One thing at a time. Learn the castle. Find the men. Then figure out the actual getting out alive part.
Clutching the book in hand, I rose from the comfortable bed. There had to be a library here if there were books. That, at least, would be my excuse if anyone were to question me. I swept out of the room, noting that Nixie's door across from mine was still closed.
Stepping out into the hallway, I turned a corner and collided head-on with a wall of blinding white.
“Going somewhere, terra?” Morvyn said, that vexing smile playing on his lips, still indecent with no top part of his clothing in sight.
I held up the book like a shield. “I’m looking for a library. I assume you have one, unless everyone around here is as uncouth as you?”
He let out a chuckle and leaned against the wall, deliberately blocking my path. “Hylos owes me two gold, you know.”
Despite being so strange-looking in coloring, he was classically beautiful, with high cheekbones and a chiseled nose, like a marble bust from forgotten times.
“He thought you wouldn’t leave this room for the rest of the day. But I knew.” He let the words linger as his gaze swept over me. “You’re far too curious for your own good.”
I stilled my features. How much danger was I in, standing in the presence of this creature? This siren. And why wasn’t I more afraid?
“Do you stalk everyguestaround here?” I said.
“Just the pretty ones,” he answered, then turned his alabaster back to me. “Come on then, I’ll show you around.”
Chapter 11
The thin fabric of my dress flitted with each step, light and airy, as we walked down a long hall, turning into an entrance with a sweeping glass staircase.
“So, where are you from then?” Morvyn asked coolly as we ascended the steps shoulder to shoulder.
I eyed him warily.
“Come on, I promise not to bite. Unless you want me to, of course,” he added with a devious smile, his sharp upper canines exposed, as white as his flesh.
All the sirens I’d encountered had sharp teeth. Besides Hylos’s, which were blunt like mine.
I pointed skyward. “I’m from up there.”
Morvyn’s smile deepened and his nose crinkled. “Of course, those pathetically small feet gave that away. But what region?”
“What do you know of the regions on lands?” I asked.
“Never heard of a map? Talk about uncouth,” he drawled.
“I lived by the mountains in an area called Ashbourne.” It wasn’t technically a lie. I had spent most of my life at Granger House, which slept at the base of the Ashen Mountains outside of Ashbourne.
“That’s quite a way from the ocean,” he said.
“Yes, I was sent away.”
The corners of our eyes caught as we wound up the glass staircase.
“By who?” he asked.
“My father, to be married,” I answered, unsure why I was telling him the truth at all.
