“You’re tired, Kye. You haven’t slept for three nights now.”
“Fae can survive without sleep for a long time,” he dismissed.
“Survive doesn’t mean thrive,” I countered. “Have a nap. Rest. Nothing will come from the depths during the day, right? You don’t need to protect me while the sun is up.”
“What are you going to do while I’m sleeping, my butterfly?” he asked gently.
“Don’t worry. I won’t run away,” I promised, managing a smile.
There was nowhere to run, and he knew it.
“I’m more concerned about you dying from boredom. There is really nothing for you to do here. Hardly even a chair to sit on. I shall get the servants to bring you some furniture.” He made a move to get up, but I waved at him to lay down again.
“Later. We can furnish this place however you like later, after your nap. There are a table and chairs in the dining room, and I can always sit outside. Maybe I’ll have some tea or something.”
“The guards at the front doors will get you whatever you ask them for. Pencils for drawing, books to read, thread and needle if you want to embroider something.”
“I’m not much for embroidery.” I shook my head with a laugh. “But I could use some books. Where would they get the books?”
“My uncle had moved the royal library to his palace long ago. There are plenty of books and scrolls on any subject you like.”
“Maybe there’s something that will help me figure out how to break your curse?” I asked hopefully.
“Stubborn as always,” he muttered with a soft chuckle, laying back onto the bed. “You see, my brave little minnow, I’m starting to believe that this curse isn’t meant to be broken. It’s not just a curse but a punishment to be simply endured for as long as I shall live.”
The resignation in his voice gutted me. As an outsider, my hope was fresh, and a solution seemed very much within reach. But he’d been living with it for longer than a human lifetime, and he’d learned how useless that hope was.
Kye’s iridescent eyelashes fluttered close.
“Sing for me, butterfly,” he murmured sleepily.
“Oh...no, you don’t want me singing, trust me.” I laughed awkwardly.
My singing voice could never compare to his, not even close.
“I don’t even know any lullabies,” I added.
“Didn’t your mother sing you to sleep?”
I tried to think of a single instance of that happening and couldn’t recall any.
“No,” I said. “Never. A nanny usually put me to sleep until I was old enough to go to bed on my own.”
“Then sing anything, any song. Please. Or not even a song, just hum something. I just want your voice to be the last thing I hear before I fall asleep.”
I wasn’t much of a singer, but everyone could hum, right?
So I hummed. I hummed softly as the siren king finally drifted asleep for the first time in three days.
Chapter 10
Maren
“Tell me, Kye, how does it work?” I asked at dinner that night. “You turned the entire palace to glass, but not the beach outside or the ocean when you swam in it.”
“Mh,” he hummed, spearing bite-size scallops on the two prongs of his new fork.
He didn’t particularly enjoy talking about his curse, understandably so. But I still looked at it as a problem to be solved. And to solve an issue, one needed to fully understand it first.
