“Love, wake up.” Evander spoke softly. He held a candle above me. “Come with me.”
His gray shirt was creased and untucked. His cheek was stubbled with blond hair and his brow was damp with sweat. The contours of his face looked strange in the light, casting undulating shadows over the curves of his skull beneath his skin. I opened my mouth to ask what he was doing when he held a single finger up to his lips, silencing me. He took my hand and tugged me to stand.
“Take this off,” he whispered, as he pulled at the ties of my dressing gown.
“No.” I crossed my arms tightly over my chest. “What do you want—” Light glinted off a slim, curved pipe tucked beneath his arm. “What is that?”
Before he answered, a tendril of briny air wound itself into my nose and I knew precisely what he carried—the siphon. The one they used to force a Siren to shift before executing her. The scuff and fall of his soldiers’ footsteps filled the hall. Like ants at work, they filed into my chamber, each carrying two buckets of water.
Seawater.
The sea and I had never met—not truly—but I knew it. It was in my blood and bones. I was made from it and would return to it.
Evander’s men went into my dressing room. Thesplash, splash, splashof their buckets emptying into my tub sent a prickle across my skin. They kept coming, a dozen of them at least, and I watched, stunned still.
Evander set down the candle and worked on the ties at my waist, taking the dressing gown from my shoulders so I wore only my thin chemise. He took the siphon into his hand. Determination stained his countenance—fists rounded and jaw set. He moved toward my dressing room door. “Come.”
“I do not want to.”
Evander stopped midstride, his eyes filled with menace. His men were just winding their way back out to the hall. “You’re relieved,” he said to them, quietly. “Go.” They obeyed. The door closed noiselessly, and Evander slid the bolt.
He grimaced at me. “Don’t look at me like that.” The siphon dropped to the woolen rug with a dull ping. “Don’t you, of all things,darelook at me like I disgust you.”
Something snapped inside me, my anger dislodging from where I’d tried to stuff it. “It’sIthat disgusts you. I see it in the way you look at me, I feel it in the way you touch me.” The salty air was slinking through the room now, curling between us. I pulled in a deep, shaking gulp of it, and something in my chest vibrated. Astring, plucked. “You can’t possibly love me. You are so willing to hurt me—”
“Our binding will fix that,” he spewed.
“It won’t. It will only compel you to protect me.” My words were tight and quick. “It will not change me or your resentment. I will still be what I am, and you’ll only know misery because in your heart… In your heart you wish to kill me.”
His amber eyes pulled wide, brows sinking. Tense and silent, he bent to retrieve the siphon and came at me with stalking steps. He stopped when our chests touched. “If I’d wanted you dead, my love, you would be.” A sickening shiver fell down my spine as he raised a hand into my hair and gripped it in his fist. “I’ve loved you for so long. Did you know? Long before I begged the king for your hand. Long before I touched you.” He shook his head. “You gave me a shock, yes, but in her own strange way, Eusia has answered my prayer by giving me you. Your blood in my veins will make me untouchable. No Siren lure will be a threat. My men will look at me like I’m a god.” He pressed his lips to my temple, spoke against my skin. “I could never resent you for that, Imogen.”
The way my guts heaved made me feel like I was falling. Down and down, and my entire being knew that impact was imminent. Touching him felt vile, but I threw my arms around his neck, hoping it would stop my plummeting. “Please.” My mouth was at his ear. “Please don’t.”
A hot exhale against my cheek was his only reply. It wasn’t an apology. Not remorse, nor regret. It was a breath of disappointment, for I could not see and understand what he could—that this was best for both of us. He bent, breaking my hold, and hooked an arm below my hips. I wasn’t petite like Agatha. I was tall, with well-formed muscles. My waist nipped in between full curves, butEvander could lift me as easily as one might a child. He folded me over his shoulder and held me tightly as he carried me over the threshold of my dressing room.
“No.” I beat my fists into his solid back. “Put medown.”
The air within was thick and briny. I sucked it in as Evander dropped me to my feet. The seawater in the tub beside me glimmered in the faint light of an oil lamp one of the soldiers had left behind. Had I been alone, I would have climbed in myself, eager for the water to make me feel fearsome instead of fragile.
“I deserve this, Imogen.” His fingers bit into my arms as he spun me. He grabbed my chemise and ripped the back open, straight down to my waist, making space for my wings. Panic clogged my mind. It froze my limbs. His body was hot against my back as he spoke over my bare shoulder. “I’ll be the captain the Sirens could not drown, and you will live well and safe up here where your instincts can’t taint you.”
It was instinct that slashed through me then. It sent my arm rearing back, it crooked my fingers into a claw and sent my body whirling. My nails scraped over his forehead in an arch, then hooked into the lower lid of his eye. Welted lines of ripped skin rose on his sun-kissed face. A drop of blood slipped from his lashes like a crimson tear.
He growled through clamped teeth, but he didn’t strike me. Instead, his bulky arms clamped around mine, pinning them to my side. “It’ll be over soon.” Then my feet were off the ground. He tipped me backward, over the lip of the wooden tub. I gasped as he dumped me into the water. Not from the cold, or the way my spine struck the wooden base, but at how it set me alight.
My panic dissipated. It was as if a million tiny teeth cut through me, into my sinew and bone. Into my very marrow.
Taking the water where it belonged.
Everything around me faded, even as Evander set the curved pipe into the tub near my feet and put his lips around the exposed end. He sucked until the sea began to pour through it, then spat. His strong fingers dug into the back of my neck, folding me toward the siphon’s end. Its metal was sharp against my lips. Liquid spilled over my chin.
His fingers dug into my face. “Open your mouth.”
Despite everything, I wanted to taste it. To be flooded with it. I unhinged my clamped jaw. The pipe nicked my bottom teeth, the sound echoing through my skull. Salt water poured over my tongue, down my throat, filling my lungs. They grew heavy, my chest widening. I did not blink. I did not move. I only stared up at him.
Horror contorted Evander’s face. “Imogen?” His eyes darted over me, watching as the water that would not fit inside me trickled back out of my mouth, down my chest.
Drowning should burn, and I waited for it, only to remember that I could not drown. All I could feel was that odd plucking sensation between my ribs. An angry heat sparking to life in the very center of me. It grew and grew and grew until whatever was tied through me did not merely vibrate like a string—it pulsed like a vein. Like an artery, and it poured sludgy, oil-like power, black and sick, right into my gut.
