My lips part. But it is not a gasp, or a sigh, that escapes, but a clumsy and sharp note. Brief and fleeting. A pathetic attempt compared to his song and what I was feeling within me.
A low chuckle rumbles across the back of my mind. His grip slackens. The failure breaks whatever trance we were under.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I ask, but don’t pull away. My chest heaves, breathless. As if I just sailed the Gray Passage. My body is more sensitive than it has ever been in my life.
“I am getting you out of your head.” He continues running his fingertips up and down my forearms. I bite my lip and try to force my mind to be blank. I shudder to think of what he might hear if I lose control of my thoughts.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to touch the offering?” Yet I’m not pushing him away. I’m not telling him to stop.
“The most important thing is that you learn the songs. We’ll focus on severing your connection after.” His tone is nonchalant. Typical noble thinking the rules don’t apply to him. “Besides, there’s no one here to know—to report my transgressions. Unless you will?”
I swallow thickly and shake my head.
“Good.” One word vibrates in my very core. “Now, sing.Feelthe song. Don’t think it. Don’t force or command it. Let it flow as an extension of you.”
“How? I don’t really know what to sing.”
“You sang in my dream without knowing what to sing,” he points out.
“That was different,” I counter.
“How?”
“I had a mission, at the least. I need direction. A headwind.” The destination I’m pushing toward. The goal.
“Song isn’t about the end point. It isn’t about having sung. It’s about the act itself.”
“But one must prepare and plan for what they will sing.” Even I must admit, it’s a new level of stubborn to argue with a siren over singing.
“If you’re so worried about what will be, you’ll lose what you already have in a moment.” His hands settle on my abdomen, over my corset. “Has there ever been a time in your life where you just…let go? Where you lost yourself?”
My eyes flutter closed once more. The sensation of his body is distant as my mind retreats to my past. There were times I let go…of everything. Of my future. Of myself…
I can still smell the water on Charles’s skin as we swam naked in the creek in the woods not far from my house. He had only been in town for a week…stopping in because the wheel on his cart had broken.
I can taste how sweet his words were on my tongue on our wedding night. All his promises of love and respect. Of partnership.
The whirlwind I was swept into when I let myself go—just acted on instinct. It blew me off course, farther than I could ever recover.
What my life might have been if I’d just stayed on the path. Yet, my heart could never resist the call of adventure. My soul is divided between everything I want and everything I know I should pursue.
“The times I lost myself, I was just that,lost. Those times are not exactly memories I savor. It’s not a place I want to go back to. Physically or mentally.” I can’t stand the shame lurking behind my eyelids for a second longer. But I’m not sure I said anything until he shifts. The water is cold on my back where he just was.
Ilryth releases me. His brow is furrowed with what looks like genuine concern. I don’t know if I can trust it—trusthim.
“What?” I say when I can no longer take his assessment.
“You’re shaking.”
“I—” I stop short. I am. “I don’t know why,” I say softly.
He frowns and almost reaches out to touch my face, but abandons the motion halfway, for some reason. He’s already touched me more than I would’ve ever expected.
“There is something more I should tell you about anointing…”
“Somethingmore?” I give him an incredulous look, trying for playful.
His expression grows even more serious in response. “I was holding it back because I thought it might frighten you.”
