That was the worst part. The not knowing what or who I was. Not the way his hand tightened around my arm. Not the silver blaze of his eyes. A gaze fixed so intensely on my face that it felt as though he were trying to strip the truth straight out of me. Not even the fractured remains of the marble circle still glowing faintly at our feet could compete with the one thought that refused to loosen its grip on my mind.
Something about me had just broken his magic.
My lips parted, but for a second, nothing came out. My mind felt like it had been scooped hollow. Every thought stumbled over the next in blind panic, and all I could hear was the echo of those words still ringing through me.
What are you…my little Siren?
Siren.
The word settled between us in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Like it carried meaning I wasn’t supposed to understand yet. Like it wasn’t just a name at all, but the answer to a question I didn’t even know how to ask.
“I…”My voice caught embarrassingly in my throat, and I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry.
“I don’t know.”The words came out weaker than I meant them to, smaller somehow.
For the first time since I had met him, I thought I saw something in Oblivion’s expression that looked dangerously close to being unguarded. Not softness, not exactly, and certainly not mercy. But something that looked like fury and disbelief had collided, and neither one had won.
Then his gaze moved.
It happened so quickly I almost missed it, just a flick of those pale, inhuman eyes beyond me, out across the club, but it was enough to make my own attention follow it. And the second I looked around, that’s when the cold began to creep under my skin.
The entire room was staring.
At me.
Every single face on the upper level had turned toward me. Every demon that was gathered near the ruined circle. Every strange, beautiful, unnerving creature that had filled this place only moments ago with music and noise and movement.
All of them were now looking at me. Not at their Lord…but at the one who had defeated him.
It wasn’t curiosity anymore. Not like when I first stumbled into this place, and they all stared at me like I was the first mortal they had ever seen here. This wasn’t that. No, this was something else. Something far more guarded, as some of them had actually stepped back.
Whispered voices started up at the edges of the silence, words that were impossible to make out. But I didn’t need to hear them to understand the feeling behind them.
Fear.
They were afraid of me.
Which would have been laughable if it hadn’t also been the most terrifying thing I had ever experienced in my life. Because I was not the frightening one here. I was five foot four on a generous shoe day, collected frogs, and ate way more pizza and ice cream than what was good for me. A curvy girl, currently trapped in a green dress I had not picked for myself, standing in the middle of a broken magical circle in a demon nightclub. And added to that, now facing a man who ruled the room like a dark god. One who had just asked me what I was in a tone that suggested the answer might rearrange both our lives.
I wasn’t the danger. I was the idiot who still had no clue how I had managed to shout weird ancient syllables into the air and blow apart a spell. A spell cast by someone who looked as though reality itself bent slightly to accommodate him.
Yet the further my gaze moved, the worse it became.
A woman with silver horns curling back through black hair had gone utterly still, her glass frozen halfway to her mouth. A sharply dressed man with skin just a little too gray beneath the club lighting had taken a step behind another body. As though instinct had made the decision before his pride could stop it. Even the demons who still looked mostly human were giving me a wider berth now, and the more I saw it, the faster my chest started to rise and fall.
No.
No, no, no.
This was bad. This was so much worse than bad. I didn’t know what I had done, and apparently neither did the terrifying ruler of this place. My pulse kicked harder. I could actually hear it, feel it everywhere. In my throat, in my wrists, behind my eyes, and I took a step back before realizing I couldn’t.
Because he still had hold of me.
The room suddenly seemed far too open, too exposed, too full of faces and murmurs and things with teeth pretending not to have them.
I must have tensed badly enough for him to feel it, because before I could think what to do next, his grip on me changed.
Not looser, but…tighter.
