“Yes, he does,” Wanda said, shaking her head as if she, too, had remembered where she was.
I noted the faintest glimmer in her teal eyes.It almost looked as if she was crying.But Wanda Fischman did not cry over anything.Though I supposed alcohol could make you do strange things sometimes, so I did not press her about it.Instead, I offered her a smile and said, “You should go up there.”
She waved me off.“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?You’re a siren, isn’t singing, like, your one true passion?”The way Delaney said the words were tinged with alcohol but there was also a sort of understated knowing to them.
It wasn’t a question.It was a careful suggestion.Like somehow, she knew what Wanda’spassionswere.
“My song is dangerous,” Wanda said darkly.“Singing alone is...dangerous.”
“Then we’ll go with you.”As she said the words, Delaney slipped off her chair.It wasn’t a question.It was solid fact.
Wanda’s eyebrows furrowed.“Delaney...”
“Violet’s totally game, right, Vi?”
I blinked as the crowd clapped, watching Norman bow, his tentacles all moving in tandem like arms placed before him as he took his bow.
“Uh...”
I had never sung in front of a crowd before.I barely sang alone in my room backhome, and in the shower at Blackthorn.
But something about the look on Wanda’s face—I knew what uncomfortability felt like, and I also knew how much of a relief it was to know people had your book.
And Wanda did have my back.When it mattered the most, anyway.So, I nodded and prayed I hadn’t just signed my own death certificate.My stomach was starting to swirl with nerves as Delaney grabbed both of us and practically dragged us up to the stage, whispering her song choice to the man who was working the music booth.
“Last chance to leave,” I said humorously to Wanda as we stood under the lights.Though I wasn’t certain I wouldn’t leave myself, from the anxiety bustling in my veins.
I looked out into the crowd, catching Bane’s curious expression.He looked at me from his periphery and I could see his delicious smirk, and the wave of anxiety settled.
“We would never hear the end of it from Delaney,” Wanda tutted.
“At least this will sate her whims for the time being.”
It wasn’t what she said, but how she said it.Like sheknewwhat Delaney’s desires and whims were on a personal level.
And then I caught her gaze drifting to the Kraken in the audience.He slithered into the small huddle comprised of Bane, Aiden, and Desmond.
Desmond turned his face and looked at me.There was a brief moment between Delaney’s request, and the start of the music, when it felt like time stopped, and Desmond’s purple eyesglowed.
And the vision that came was least expected.
I saw the once overgrown castle that called me home, in the dark woods.It was still covered in vines and dead plants.The moon hung in the sky.Flashes of myArdaimpushed forth, along with the memory of Bane and my friends coming to my rescue, and then things shifted.
I was not on the ground, being lit up by magic.
It was Desmond.Large black wings shook and he was huddled over, the vines retreating from him as if they were scared.He was in full incubus form, huddled over.
Crying.
“Why isn’t it working?”a woman’s voice cried.
Lithia.
His mother.
“Because he’s defective, that’s why,” a man snapped.
