I drift, turning away from him, catching myself on a pillar as if I could catch my breath. The shimmering dawn through the surface mocks me. Close enough to draw golden lines across my face. Far enough that I’ll never be able to reach it again.
“You should have killed me.” I wish he had.
“You have a greater purpose.”
“I had a purpose!” Rage and hurt bubbles over. “I was a captain, responsible for my crew—the crew that you killed.”
“I didn’t—”
I won’t hear his excuses. I don’t care. “I was a daughter, a sister, responsible for my family. And you…you took me from them. Six months. I hadsixmonths… And now, they…” I trail off and shake my head. This was foolish. There’s no world in which this siren would care. Why would I ever expect him to?
“They what?” he presses.
Twisting, I face him once more. Ilryth’s eyes in the sunlight remind me of the sun between the leaves of fall. Cozy. Warm. They’re eyes that beg you to trust. Which is more dangerous than any cruel glare.
I’m not sure why I tell him. Perhaps it’s because it feels fair. I found out something about him—something he clearly never wanted anyone to know—and now I feel obligated to tell him something of me. Perhaps it’s because part of me desperately wants to believe that maybe,maybehe’ll find a way to help if he knows the truth.
“I owe a good deal of money to the council that oversees my home. If I don’t pay it, and am not present when it comes due, it’s my family who will pay the price.” It’s an oversimplification of my circumstances. But I default to assuming he wouldn’t be interested in any additional information.
I’m wrong.
“They will be killed for money you owe?”
“No, the council won’t kill them…but they might wish for death, if that fate comes to pass.” I think of them, toiling in a debtors’ prison. “Do you have debtors’ prisons here, Duke Ilryth?”
“No, I cannot say I am familiar.” He sounds genuinely intrigued.
“They are cold, brutal places where a person’s freedoms are stripped from them. People are treated as less than animals and made to labor on whatever tasks the council requires hands for—constructing roads, buildings, whatever else. They work tirelessly, and without pay. In exchange, their debts are forgiven…but only after years of compliant service.”
“We do not use our freedom as currency, here in the Eversea.” His mouth has pulled into a frown, brows furrowed. “It sounds like a monstrous practice.”
“Monstrous?” I scoff. “Says the man who intends to sacrifice me to the god who claimed my whole crew.” I can’t keep in the remark. The sea between us is electrified again the moment I throw the verbal jab.
It feels as though we’ve squared off with each other. Opposed. Equally horrible, if I think about it, his old gods…our prisons.
At least a debtors’ prison doesn’t take your life, I want to think. But it does. Either literally, as a result of the squalid conditions. Or practically, from the years of work and opportunity that it steals from the people thrown in.
I’ve always hated the debtors’ prisons. I can’t in good faith defend them. But they’re a staple of the world I knew. Of the sun rising or the pull of the tides. The idea that there could be another way is as foreign to me as Sheel’s siren curses.
“Everything in Tenvrath comes down to contracts and crons.” I deflate from my conflict. “Even if that’s taken to a debilitating extreme… We all understand that payment comes due and there’s nothing worse than not having it in hand at the time. Once I am declared dead, the man I owe the money to will immediately move to collect. It will be claimed that I abandoned my oath—the contractual amount I was obligated to pay.”
I touch my chest. Tingles shoot out along the lines he marked upon me, causing my heart to flutter briefly. Perhaps it is simply my desperation. “Please, I’m trying to keep my word. Surely you understand that? I would rather die a thousand cold, lonely deaths than break this obligation and allow misfortune to befall them.”
Ilryth hardly moves. His stare is intense, as if he is trying to not just hear my thoughts but peer into my skull. To root out if what I’m saying is true or not. His silence is the breeding ground of my desperation.
One last chance, Victoria.
“Ilryth, I knew you would come. I didn’t plan to fight you when you did. I worked so hard to get everything settled”—everything neglected to settle for me with your magic—“and this is all that’s left. My family is all I have left. If they are taken care of, then I will do whatever it is you wish without concern or objection. We had a deal for time, and since you didn’t—or couldn’t, allow me the full amount of time owed, then please help me settle this matter. I give you my word once this is done, I will put my full effort and every skill into being whatever it is you need me to be as your sacrifice.”
Once more, I’m bartering myself away. My heart. My mind. My time and my coin. It all slips between my fingers. Given away. But at least this time will be for my family. I can find comfort in that.
Finally, after what feels like ages, he says, “Very well then, come with me.”
“What?”
Ilryth turns, starting down the tunnel connected to the wall opposite by the balcony, to the left of his bed.
“Where are you going?”
