by C. L. Wilson
Her mouth went dry. Her skin tingled everywhere he touched, and her Rose warmed rapidly, the heat throbbing in time with her escalating pulse. “If you think I have it in me to kill someone—even a man as horrible as Lily’s father—you’re sorely mistaken. Everyone knows I’m the least powerful of all the Seasons.” The words came out hoarse and shaky. She gave her wrist a tug, trying to free herself, but his grip remained ironclad.
“Another lie. One you have clearly spent a lifetime building. Don’t get me wrong. It was wise of you to hide your true power from the world. There are those who would kill you if they knew what you could do. There are others—far more than I care to count—who would stop at nothing to gain some sort of control over you, to force you to use your gifts for their gain. But between us, moa kiri, this constant lying really must cease. Anything less than absolute truth weakens the bond between akua and liana, and I will not have you hurting yourself that way.”
“I’m not your liana. You are not my akua. And I’m not lying!”
“You know what I think? I think you’ve been lying so long to so many people, you don’t even know how to speak the truth anymore. I will help you with this. From now on, for every lie you speak to me, we will share an intimacy of my choosing. Nothing too much. Just a small kiss or caress, received or given depending on the needs of the moment.”
Her jaw dropped. “Why on Mystral would I ever agree to a bargain like that?”
He gave her a smile full of steely determination. “Ah, moa kiri, I was not asking for your agreement. I was explaining how I intend to help you keep our bond as pure, untainted, and powerful as possible so that I may best see to your needs, as is my duty and my right.”
She glared at him, rubbing her wrist (although in truth he’d not hurt her at all). “Look, whatever you think there is going on between us, you are wrong. Once I took your memory of what happened on that dock, you made it perfectly clear you had no interest in me—or have your forgotten how you prefer the taste of Summerlean fire brandy to milked tea?”
He winced. “This foolishness I spoke . . . it wounded you.”
“No, it didn’t,” she lied. “I’d actually have to care about your regard to be bothered by the lack of it.” Since he was still blocking the way to the eastern gate, she spun away and started walking back towards the palace.
“Tey, clearly it did, and I regret it.” He kept pace with her easily. “I was an idiot. A fool. I spoke without care, out of injured pride. You are not milked tea. You are so far from such blandness I cannot believe the comparison ever entered my mind. You are fire, without a doubt. Not the bright, blazing fire of your sister Autumn, or the controlled burn of your sister Spring. Nothing so small as that for you. You are the volcano deep beneath the sea. A power so vast, yet so well concealed most would never have known of its existence. Even I did not understand what you were until you killed that man.”
“Oh, I see. You’re attracted to me now because you think I possess some sort of terrible power you can use.”
“Ono. As you well know, I was attracted to you from the first. Deeply, powerfully attracted. To you before all others.”
She stumbled, his words too reminiscent of that voice resonating deep inside her. Claim him. He is thine, before all others.
She pushed that memory and the feelings it roused away and resumed walking briskly. “You have a funny way of showing it.”
“You made it clear you did not welcome my attentions. Besides, I was under orders from my queen’s council to marry your sister Spring or Autumn.”
“And I don’t see that any of that has changed. So go do your duty, Sealord.”
“Everything has changed. And I’m trying to do my duty—to you.” He caught her arm. “Gabriella, please, hear me out.”
She snatched herself free. “Don’t touch me! And don’t call me that, either!”
“Do you even know what a great power it is that you wield?”
“I am a weathermage of Summerlea. Nothing more. And not a particularly strong weathermage at that.” Maybe if she said it often enough, he’d start believing it again.
“What you are, Gabriella, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is a Siren—and you wield the greatest and most ancient power of Calberna.”
Her mouth dropped open. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, “You’re a Siren” wasn’t remotely one of them.
“Have you been into the Summerlean fire brandy again?”
He scowled at her. It made him look dangerous. “This is no joke.”
“You’re either joking or crazy. Everyone knows there’s no such thing as Sirens. They’re a myth—fantastical sea stories made up by mariners long ago.”
“No, Gabriella. The Sirens were real. They were slaughtered twenty-five hundred years ago by evil men who attacked the Isles. No Siren’s Voice has ever been heard again—not in Calberna, not in all of Mystral—until the night you killed that krillo.”
“I keep telling you I didn’t kill that man,” she protested.
“You mean you keep lying about it,” Dilys retorted. “But kill him, you did, and with a Voice that Called every Calbernan in Konumarr to your side. Every. Single. One. There is only one magic that could have done that: susirena. Siren Song. And given what you are, everything else makes sense. The attraction between us. Why I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. Why, sometimes when you look in my eyes, it’s as if you dive into my very soul. Because you do. Because from the first moment, you recognized me as a sirakua—a Siren’s mate.”
“I did no such thing.”
“The Siren in you did.” He took her hand, and she was so stunned by his declaration, she didn’t protest when he laid her palm over his heart. “I am yours to claim, Gabriella.”
Good gods, his skin was so warm, so soft. “I-I don’t want to claim you.”
“This is because of my foolishness at the start. I did not recognize you for the myerial myerinas that you are, and I wounded you with my prideful words.”
No, it was because right now all she could think about doing was letting her hands roam over the intoxicatingly touchable expanse of his smooth, muscular, naked chest. She snatched her hand back before she humiliated herself by giving in to the temptation. Sweet Halla, it was as if his entire body was a weapon—one specifically designed to smash through her defenses.
“You have every right to expect better from your mate.” His voice held an edge of irritation. “My only excuse is that you are the first Siren born in thousands of years. I didn’t recognize the signs. But I will atone for my initial blindness, Gabriella. Before these next two months of courtship are done, I will prove to you that I am a mate you can be proud of, an akua you will never regret claiming.”
The muscle beneath his so-soft skin looked hard as stone. The layered textures of him fascinating. She visually traced the outline of one swirling blue tattoo, aching to trace it with her fingers as well. What was he saying? Something about two months? That was far too short a time. If she spent a lifetime exploring him, it would not be enough. Then the rest of his words started to register. “Wait . . . what?”
He frowned at her. “What?”
“Two months of what?”
“I vowed to spend the next two months of our courtship proving myself to you.”
“Courtship? You had no interest in courting me before, and as far as I’m concerned nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed.”
“Not for me. So I suggest you focus your attention back on my sisters, because my answer, Sealord Merimydion, is no.” Yet even as she said no, she found herself swaying forward. His scent—fresh, tropical fragrances, underlaid with the warm musk of man—filled her nostrils, dizzying her senses. The long ropes of his obsidian hair gleamed with rich health in the sunlight. And his skin . . . that endless expanse of warm, bronze skin shimmering with the mysteriously compelling patterns written upon it in iridescent blue ink. There was a story there . . . a story meant for her . . . a story
she would understand if only she could touch it, trace each curving line and symbol with her hands . . . her lips . . . her . . .
Gabriella caught herself just before her empty, reaching hands landed on his body. She practically leapt backwards to put more distance between them.
“Summer Sun!” she snapped, driven beyond endurance by his inescapable presence and the terrible, burning ache he roused in her. It was like every part of him was a drug designed exactly to intoxicate her senses and addle her wits. “Don’t you have some actual clothes you can put on?”
Shocked silence surrounded them both.
Then, in a voice that sounded oddly choked, he said, “My manner of dress . . . disturbs you, Myerialanna?”
“How could it not disturb me?” she cried. “You’re running around half naked, for Halla’s sake!”
“My garb is no different than that of all my countrymen. Or are you saying they disturb you as well? Do my cousins Ryll and Ari disturb you? I have seen you speaking with them on more than one occasion.”
The last statement ended in a growl that sent tremors racing across her body. The lightning that had sparked when she’d touched his flesh struck all over again at the audible sign of a territorialism he couldn’t hide.
Later she would tell herself that running full bore into Dilys Merimydion’s hard, naked, shockingly seductive chest had made every rational part of her brain seize up and cease to function. That was the only explanation. Because if the rational part of her brain had been working properly, she would have died before admitting what she admitted next. Especially to him.
“Of course they don’t disturb me! Why would they? They’re completely different than . . . than . . .”
“Completely different than what?”
“Than this!” Her hands flung out, indicating his chest, his shoulders, his arms, everything beneath that colorful scrap of cloth wrapped around his waist. “Than you!”
His scowl cleared, replaced by the first hint of a smug, male smile. “You are saying that only I disturb you, moa halea?”
His voice had dropped to a low, husky note that sent fresh shivers shuddering up and down her spine. Her skin pebbled. Oh, yes, he disturbed her all right. Far too much. And she was having none of it!
“This conversation is over. Don’t follow me anymore. There will be no courtship between us.” She spun on one heel and took off towards the eastern garden gate. This time, to her surprise, he didn’t try to stop her.
Dilys watched Summer’s retreat with narrowed eyes. The beautiful, blue-eyed Season had spent the weeks avoiding him like the plague, and it was clear she thought he’d let her keep doing so. He watched her hurry through the garden gate and down the path that ran alongside the fjord, trying to put as much distance between them as she could.
At least now he understood why she had been avoiding him. Understood why she’d been so cold and standoffish to him, while treating his cousins to her generous warmth. At least now he understood why she flinched from his touch and trembled in his presence.
Summer Coruscate hadn’t spent the last month trying desperately to escape his presence because she feared or disliked him. She hadn’t avoided him at every turn because he left her cold or because she hadn’t forgiven him for insulting her that first day.
No, Summer Coruscate fled from him because he disturbed her.
Ryll, the tough, stern, often scary sub-commander of the Seadragons didn’t disturb her. Ari, the cousin who was Dilys’s mirror image, didn’t disturb her. The thousands of other Calbernans wandering about Konumarr in their shumas didn’t disturb her.
Just Dilys.
And he didn’t just disturb her a little.
He disturbed her a lot.
Moreover, there’d been nothing shy or timid in her voice when she told him so. Instead, there’d been fire. Snapping, sparking whips of it. Underlaid with a sound that made his toes curl and his body sing with tense anticipation.
That hook and line that had pierced him from the first moment of their meeting? The same hook and line that had grown to the size of a whaling harpoon when her Siren’s voice had dragged across an entire city to her side? Still there.
Now burning like a freshly stoked forge.
He’d been worried when she’d continued to refuse to see him even after she’d Called him and every other Calbernan in the city. He’d begun to think that somehow he’d made a mistake. That he wasn’t hers. That the feelings eating him alive were not reciprocated.
But now he knew that wasn’t the case. That what he felt wasn’t a misunderstanding made in the heat of a wild, shocking moment when a Siren’s Voice rang out for the first time in more than two thousand years.
He was hers. He was hers and she knew it.
And she was his, too. She was just fighting it, as he had initially done.
Because that hook and line? Apparently, it worked both ways.
He watched the bright, sky-blue flows of Summer’s long skirts disappear through the garden gate.
A slow smile curved his lips.
Any one of his cousins or his men would have recognized that slow, determined, predatory smile in an instant, just as they would have recognized the honed purpose carved into his features as he raced down the terraces of the palace gardens and dove into the Llaskroner Fjord.
Dilys Merimydion was going hunting.
Chapter 11
The cold water of the fjord slid over Dilys like a lover’s caress as he swam beneath the surface. Had he been a cat, he would have been purring. Water—like love—was a vital nutrient to Calbernans, but apart from an occasional nighttime swim when the rest of the palace and city was sleeping, Dilys had kept his need for the sea under tight wraps since coming to Wintercraig. He’d come to woo an outlander bride, and he’d not wanted to appear too foreign or off-putting to his future wife.
All that had changed now. Dilys was no longer courting a mere oulani princess. He was in pursuit of a Siren, one who thought she could outrun her own desires by denying them—and him. He intended to prove otherwise, and he would need every advantage he could muster to do so. Including the strength and revitalization he derived from the sea.
She was walking—all but running—towards the grotto under the waterfall. It was, he knew from Ari and Ryll, one of her favorite places to go.
In the water, the thin membranes grew between his fingers and toes, a translucent but highly tensile webbing that gave him speed in the fluid world of the sea. The muscles in his body flexed and pulled as he swam. He could outswim a dolphin, if need be, but for now he maintained an even, leisurely pace. He swam on his side beneath the water’s surface and watched Gabriella’s bright blue skirts as she hurried down the beautifully landscaped walkway toward the waterfall grotto.
She wanted him. So badly she could hardly keep her hands off him. So badly, she would flee him rather than face the truth.
That knowledge was a potent aphrodisiac that roused every predatory, territorial, and possessive male instinct he possessed. And every one of those sharply honed instincts was now fixed, entirely and immutably, on the princess Summer Coruscate.
Time to see exactly how hot her fire burned.
He swam deep enough to hide himself from view. He didn’t need to surface for air. The gill slits that had opened along his ribs filtered oxygen from the water itself. Still, every hundred yards or so, he swam closer to the surface just to get a better view. Each time he did so, he was careful never to disturb the water in a way that would betray his position.
Calbernans knew how to hunt in the sea.
The roar and turbulence of the falls grew closer, and Dilys slowed. His prey had reached the grotto.
Summer Sun! Gabriella paced across the damp, moss-covered stone floor of the grotto tucked away beneath Snowbeard Falls, the main feeder river that carried runoff from the snowcaps and the glaciers of the Skoerr Mountains into the Llaskroner Fjord. A westerly breeze blew the cool mist from the fall back into the grotto, bathing Summer’s hot
cheeks, but the normally refreshing mist burned off the instant it touched her skin.
Tension coiled tight inside her, dread snaking around the nervous knots. Why had she opened her mouth back there in the gardens and snapped at him over his manner of dress? What maggot had invaded her brain, and caused her to cast away an entire lifetime of self-preservation with a few foolish, unthinking words? She’d doomed herself as surely as a doe leaping out of the brush into the direct path of a hunter’s bow.
Gabriella wasn’t a hunter. Summerlanders, in general, weren’t. They were farmers, gardeners, nurturers. But she’d spent the last several months in Wintercraig. Hunting was a way of life here. Every man a natural-born predator. And she’d come to understand a more than a little about their natures. She’d seen that subtle tension that gripped them all when they sighted their prey. Sensed the electric thrill that rushed through their veins as they stalked. Heard the eagerness and satisfaction in their voices when they spoke of their hunts.
And she had just roused those exact responses in Dilys Merimydion.
Why, oh, why, hadn’t she just kept her mouth shut and kept whimpering and flinching away from him until she’d made a clean escape? When he thought she feared him, she’d been safe. Both his pride and his protective instincts would have seen to that.
But now he knew that her fear wasn’t of him but of what he made her feel.
And that, as they said here in Wintercraig, was an entirely different kettle of fish.
She stamped her foot and spun around, pressing her palms to her hot face. “Scorch me for a foo—”
Her voice cut off, her lungs suddenly and completely bereft of all air.
For the life of her, she couldn’t move.
She’d thought she’d bought herself some time. The rest of the day. A few hours at the least. Time to clear her head and plan a course of action.