“Leaf, not now,” I grumble, lost in my despair-filled thoughts.
“It is not your fault.”
I clamp my mouth shut, willing him to be quiet, to go away, to do anything but reveal my thoughts to the Sirens.
“He’s right,” Lirin says softly. “You aren’t responsible for the actions of monsters.”
“I am a monster!” I hiss at him. “Look at me. I am like him. We are the opposite sides of the same coin. He is going to keep hunting me until he kills me. Deux never gives up, he never stops, never sleeps, never lets his prey escape. This is a hunt.”
“So. What?” Ronit says and stomps past me. He goes into the kitchen and starts opening and closing cupboards.
“So what?” I shout, incensed. “So, he will kill everyone. You, me, them.”
“So.”
I twist around to where I know the rest of the Sirens are watching.
“What do you mean, so?” I growl when I realise I’m getting no help.
“If he kills us, he kills us. We don’t know if death is the end, but we do know that it comes to all who live. Perhaps his death will come first, perhaps we will perish.”
“He’d make you suffer.”
“But I have lived so many interesting years. I have done amazing things, I have seen things no other has seen, and I have loved my pack with all that is in me.” Ronit’s loud words cut off my argument. “I have lived an honourable life up to this point. I am not afraid to die, Mei.”
The silence is deafening, and something cold and lonely falls in my stomach and keeps going.
“I don’t want you to die.”
The sentence just slips out, small and broken and not at all like me. The vulnerability in it has me ready to run from them, but Brio slides his hand around mine.
“We don’t want you to die either, Mei. So, let’s try this together.”
What am I hearing?
“I thought we were enemies?” I blurt out, clenching my fingers around his as if to stop him from escaping. “It’s just, I know we were getting along, but we…it’s temporary, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps we all misunderstood each other a little bit,” Brio murmurs.
“Maybe we are, maybe we aren’t. But I don’t want to be your enemy anymore,” Reed says gently.
I vividly remember his kiss and feel my body heat.
“So, just like that, we’re friends?”
“How else shall we do it? Do you want to cut our hands and do a blood oath, or shall we braid each other’s hair and talk about our feelings?” Ronit grumbles, but I think I can hear satisfaction in his tone.
“It wouldn’t hurt you,” Lirin says to Ronit.
“Shut up, Lirin.”
Friends? With the Sirens? Is it possible?
“Leaf?” I whisper.
“They are fun when they are playing. I have always been friends with the Sirens, even when they haven’t been friends with me.”
That distinction makes my heart ache.
