Page 26 of The Crown’s Temptation

It seemed smartest to get as close to Alarna as possible. Gyarin was good for that.

Dali had made the decision herself. In truth, when her precious Asharin was harmed, Maridale was devastated. She had gone somewhere very quiet and very dark inside herself, and Dali had simply taken over because that was what devastation invited.

Devastation always made Dali hungry, but she did not mind. In fact, she loved to feed. She loved very few things, but Eravic was one of them. Feeding was certainly another.

He had asked both of them to look after Asharin carefully. They had failed. He was not happy about it, and his unhappiness was the one thing in the world that Dali found genuinely inconvenient.

So back to Gyarin they went. The small house along the northern shoreline. They would lay low, then return to Veynar once the king calmed down.

She walked into the cottage and all was fine until she saw the calendar.

It would have been her child's origin day.

Maridale’s child, that is. Dali did not particularly care about the dead child. Perhaps it would have more appeal if it had ever been born, or if it perhaps had not been the offspring of that weakling Tamal.

Nonetheless, the date was a trigger, and Maridale became inconsolable. Under normal circumstances that would have been manageable. But this, combined with whatever the assault on Asharin may have cost Maridale’s pregnancy, seemed to push Maridale somewhere new entirely.

A depth of grief Dali had not seen before.

Which meant Dali was absolutely ravenous.

And then a Yorali ship docked nearby for rest and trade.

Yorali. The cause of all their troubles.

It would have been unnatural to let it pass. She was hungry. Moreover, she was ridding the world of something rotten.

Anything belonging to King Orsin of Yorali was most certainly rotten.

She drained the men on the ship but left them half alive. Technically they were still breathing. Killing them felt like unnecessary effort, and the thought of slow, painful death was something Dali found appealing.

She had no way of knowing a Thren ship would come along, see the bodies, feed on her leftovers, and create thousands of undead that proceeded to sack several villages.

Maridale briefly awakened. She saw the massacre and became sad again.

Dali became hungry. And so it continued until she was…sated.

So, Eravic had been cross with her. Had even made her stay and help rebuild.

Several months, as it turned out.

She had lost count after the third village. There had been a fourth and then something that was less a village and more a collection of people who had decided to live near each other and call it something, and Eravic had made her help with that one too.

She had developed calluses on her hands. Her hands. She looked at them periodically and felt genuine offense. She was not some simple Saren, she was a fucking Siren. Sirens had royal blood and were not meant to have callouses. She was meant to be in water, her skin salt-smooth and perfect, not cracked at the knuckles from carrying roof beams for people whose villages she had accidentally destroyed.

Eravic had said it built character.

She had not spoken to him for two days after that.

The worst of it was his watchfulness. He always seemed to be keeping tally of the human lives around them, which made feeding extraordinarily difficult. She would identify a candidate and he would simply appear nearby doing something entirely unrelated and yet somehow making it impossible. She did not know how he did it. She suspected it was intentional.

Her Vaelor and Saren sides had split at birth, giving her access to power that most half-breeds only gained after accepting their duty to Sarenal.

Dali had accepted no such duty. Fortunately, Sarenal was unreachable now anyway, sealed behind wards no one could cross. She had no desire to belong to anyone or anything. Which made sharing a body with Maridale quite inconvenient at times.

Eravic had been born differently. His Saren powers had remained sealed with Sarenal, and he had simply accepted being human.

In truth, she sometimes wondered if he preferred it.