Page 69

The shadows shoved down my throat, cold and alive, choking me from the inside as pain split through my ribs. I clawed at my neck, but there was nothing to tear away. Only darkness punishing me from within. Punishing me for loving her. A broken sound tore from me as I collapsed against the boards, my vision blurring, black veins spreading beneath my skin in violent, pulsing lines.

“Fuck.” Solas’s voice cut through the pain, sharp with panic, but I could barely hear him over the roar inside my skull.

Then he was gone, boots scraping against wood as he climbed over the railing, leaving me to writhe beneath the shadows tearing through me.

I did not know how much time passed, but I surrendered to the darkness.

Hands grabbed my jaw. Something warm pressed against my mouth.

“Drink,” Solas ordered. “Drink, gods damn it!”

My canines ripped through the blood bag. The sweet taste of her flooded my mouth, chasing away the pain, the darkness, until nothing remained but the haze of liquor and shame. I drank every drop, pushing myself up to lean against the railing.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice gravelly.

Solas nodded, his gaze roaming over me with frantic precision, as if he were checking that I had not been hollowed out and left as something wearing my skin.

“We need to find a cure,” Solas said solemnly, hazel eyes softening.

A manic chuckle left me as I popped the lid off another bottle of booze. “There is no cure.”

“That’s not true.”

Always a dreamer, that one. Even after the fates had dealt him a terrible hand, losing his bonded in such a violent way.

“I have been reading about the Throne of Gods,” Solas said, voice dropping as though even the sea might be listening. “Stories mostly. Theories. But they all say it’s broken or starved in some way, and the curses blighting the realms will cease if it is fixed. I wonder if that includes yours.”

A bitter laugh scraped out of me. “We both know the only way to end my curse is to kill Helion and Maraveth’s soul.”

My creator and my reason for existing, or so Cerilla’s theory went.

It was a plan I had intended to enact, freeing myself from the vicious cycle of hunting and killing her soul every reincarnation. But I had fallen in love with her instead, damning myself in the process.

“Do not speak to me of cures.” My voice hollowed. “I will not hurt her, and I do not care for some throne built for gods.”

I looked down at the black veins crawling beneath my skin. “I am a monster, Solas. Monsters are supposed to die.”

He began to say something, but I held my hand up, peering over the edge of the crow’s nest.

The sense that something was undoubtedly wrong made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Aldric emerged from the cabins and crossed the main deck toward the starboard side of the ship, his dark blond hair mussed as though he had been dragged from the depths of sleep. He moved slowly, too slowly, with none of the stumbling sickness that had plagued him since we set sail.

“What is he doing?” Solas murmured, leaning closer to the railing.

Aldric reached the edge of the ship and braced one hand against the wood, his body tilting toward the black churn of the Dead Sea below. Spray burst over the hull, the mist narrowly missing him, but he did not flinch. Then, with the kind of calm that made my blood turn cold, the stupid Mortal climbed onto the railing.

That was when I heard it.

A song drifted over the waves, so faint at first I almost mistook it for the wind moving through the rigging. But no wind had ever sounded so mournful. No wave had ever carried a melody that slid beneath the skin of a male.

It wove through the crash of water and the groan of the ship, beautiful in the way deep water held secrets, in the way a grave could look peaceful beneath moonlight.

The notes curled around the mast, slipped over the deck, and reached for the weak places in a male’s mind.

A fucking Siren song.

I rose, boots crunching over broken glass, and threw myself over the edge of the crow’s nest without hesitation.