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I couldn’t go back to Cruinn.
I had been slapped with the reality of my uncle and his magic. His reach extended to the Dark Sea and beyond. He’d often spoken of allies across the Night Court, but I’d considered it an exaggeration.
The memory of pain lingered on my flesh, reminding me of split skin from the whip and the bite of the High Throne’s teeth.
I had suffered because of his choices; it was too much. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t allow King Irvine to use me again.
I placed my hand to my throat, unable to breathe. Whatever I did, the air would not enter my mouth, nose, or lungs. I clawed at the skin where my gills would be if I were underwater. Unable to think. Sucked into a whirlpool, unable to tell the seabed for the surface. My mouth opened, gaping like a fish out of water, and the next moment, Tor’s arms wrapped around my body. My nose pressed into his hard chest, and his body heat enveloped me like a cocoon.
Tor had stood between my uncle and me. His magic had hidden us; even my uncle hadn’t seen through it.
He was the prince—no, the King of the Reeds.
He had offered me protection not a moment before we had entered the hall of silvers.
Would I be a bad person if I let him protect me?
Would I be weak?
I gasped, unable to form words. I didn’t know what I wanted or needed to say.
“It’s okay.” Tor rubbed his hand on my back in a circular motion. Over and over. “He’s gone. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
I burrowed into his chest, my eyes closed tight. Tears raced down my cheeks, soaking into Tor’s shirt.
Rainn approached from behind. He pressed his cheek to the top of my head and wrapped his arms around me, stilling Tor’s hands and holding them flush against my back. Trapped in an embrace between the two of them.
“She’s going to sell me back to him,” I said, my words bubbling and incoherent, my throat thick with tears. “I don’t want to get sick again. I don’t want to get hurt again. It’s so hungry. All the fucking time. It wants my blood. I can’t do it again. I’m not built for it. I can’t—” I hiccupped. “I don’t want to be sick. It hurts. It hurts so much.” I closed my eyes to shut off the tears, but they wouldn’t stop. My skin itched. My back stung. I began to shake, and my teeth clattered in fear.
The only thing that kept me tethered was the two men holding onto me as if to stop me from floating away—lost in the past and the pain that lived there.
I came back to my body slowly. My face ached where the tears had dried, the salt burning my skin.
When I finally looked up, Tor and Rainn stared at each other midway through a conversation without a word out loud. Rainn pointedly flicked his eyes to one of the silvers. Tor’s lip pinched, and he nodded in agreement.
I licked my dry lips. They tasted like salt.
I wanted them to say it. I didn’t want to beg. I didn’t have it in me. I was so tired of running away, but I had to. If I stayed at the stronghold, the Siren Queen planned to hand me over to King Irvine in the morning—and I knew what he planned for me. Using me up until I was a husk. No more blood to give.
Moira flitted through my mind, but there wasn’t time. I was thankful I had carried my blanket in a pouch around my hips, just like Rainn did with his skin, though mine was unchained and unlocked. I thought of Colm, Arden, and the other Sirens I trained and ate meals with.
The Siren Queen promised soldiers for Irvine’s battle.
I couldn’t let that happen.
A plan formed in my mind. Something so unhinged that it didn’t have a hope of working.
I cleared my throat. “I’ll come to the Reeds,” I said, pushing the words through the lump in my throat.
Tor nodded. “We’ll go now.”
“Wait—”
Tor interrupted me mid-word. “We can’t stay any longer. If the Siren Queen knows you plan to run, it might jeopardize her deal with Irvine. You may not understand the importance of the title that Irvine spoke as if it was nothing—but both Rainn and I do.”
“The Queen of Air and Darkness?” My brow furrowed.
“The Night King lost his beloved wife almost half a millennia ago. She was the Queen of Air and Darkness and considered a god—fallen from the Tuatha Dé Danann.”
