“By the restless gods…” I staggered away from the water and up the beach. Blood dripped from the dagger. With a grimace, I wiped the blade clean on my coat and turned to regard the sea like the entire expanse had tried to devour me. “What was that?”
“A siren.” Tassen fell to his knees and sank his fingers into the sand. The brim of his hat hid his face, but not the tremor in his voice. “They are usually deep-water dwellers.”
Usually? Like those things were part of everyday sailing? “I’m reconsidering joining your crew.”
“They’re never alone. There will be more.”
“A good thing we’re not in the water, then.”
He hard-swallowed and looked up. “Being on land won’t save us. Their songs can lure entire crews into the water.”
“Then we go inland and wait for dawn, away from the shore.” Although that hadn’t saved the people who had come before us, but what other option was there?
He nodded and then noticed the dagger in my hand. If he recognized it, he didn’t let it show. Only gratitude showed on his face. “If you hadn’t followed me…”
I offered him my hand, hauled him to his feet, and slapped him heartily on the back. “Can’t sail a boat without its captain.”
“Ship,” he grumbled. “Lady Jane is a ship, Vance.”
He’d be fine. “We need to get everyone away from shore.”
We headed back toward the flickering firelight, Tassen regaining his swagger with each step. Before the campfire could ruin my night vision, I paused, held the torch aloft, and regarded the ocean of blackness. The clouds had long ago swallowed any twilight and the glow from early stars. Black on black waited beyond the beach, as though the entire world had ceased to exist. A shiver crept down my spine, the mark in my skin tingling once more. I’d never been one for instincts or intuition. What I couldn’t see or hold or steal didn’t exist. I’d been taught as much, but it had been a lie. There was more in that darkness than what was tangible. There was magic out there, looking back. Its slippery gaze crawled over me like a claiming embrace.
Blue
She was a fool, my fallen sister who had tried to take that man too soon. I’d seen her approach, seen her release her sweet song upon him and lure him close, thinking her sisters would not notice. I’d watched from the shallows, looking for something, though I knew not what. I would not find answers on the shore, but I had found a song in progress and the thief. Curious, I’d swum in close to see how the song would end. The larger of the two men had been ensnared, but my sister’s song had not touched the thief. When she’d turned her gaze on him, he did not falter. And then, not without fear, for I had seen that in his hazel eyes, but without fear for himself, he had produced a dagger and struck with impossible speed. He’d thrust that dagger into her heart. Ruthless. Swift. Her song had ended, and all the songs she had gleaned ended with her.
Sadness for those forgotten songs knotted my throat, but curiosity had me quickly swallowing it. I drifted closer, among the weeds to keep hidden, and listened as they talked in the language I’d learned from the ship-faring fleshlings.
As they stumbled away, I tracked them, observing how the firelight stroked the thief’s hair and how, when he turned again, that same warm light touched his face. He looked at me. Through me. And I looked back. He could not see me with his eyes, but another part of him could. We were connected, he and I. Takers of things we did not own. I’d seen the blade’s shimmering jewels. Jewels of power. Of ancient magic almost forgotten in these lands. A blade like his would make a fine trophy… along with his song. Did he know the prize he wielded? Did he know the prize he was?
I lingered outside the breakers and watched the crew gather their supplies and carry their flaming torches into the trees. So, they had realized the ocean had teeth this night. On any other night they might have found sanctuary among those trees, but not this Night of Bleeding Hearts.
It was almost time.
Magic like that in his blade sang through my veins and in the veins of my sisters. The shift would soon be upon us, and then we would walk among the men and sing their songs as we gleaned them one by one. And I could not risk one of my sisters snaring him first.
I dropped below the surface and admired my green-striped hands, arms, chest, hips and tail, fins fanning out.
I could not lose him.
“Mother Ocean,” I whispered, “I am ready. Take me. Change me.”
Mother Ocean weeps for them. I brushed my sister’s last words away. No, I would not have her mistake ruin this.
“I am ready. I offer you my body so you may once again walk on the earth, as it was before all of time. I offer myself so you might be closer to Father Sky, as it was before the world was made anew. Take me, change me, and make me your voice of vengeance upon these souls.”
It was too soon, but after I’d finished the words, the water pushed in, crushing me as though I’d ventured too deep, too fast. Pain boiled my blood, and the fire of the shift tore through my body, splitting me open, wrenching my very being apart and remaking it into something land-born with legs and breath.
The pain was a gift—a rebirthing. Just as Mother Ocean had been torn from her home, from Father Sky, and changed into the sea, so was I changed. The fire passed and the waves pushed me onto the beach. I coughed, spluttered, and clawed onto the sand as the waves lapped around fresh, smooth legs. I still had my colors. I was not a pink or dark-skinned creature, but dappled in greens and blues. I ran a hand down one leg, then the other, marveling at their design and sensitivity. I brought my knees up, pushed onto my hands, and slowly rose to standing. The wind tore through my hair, whipping it against my naked back and shoulders. I lifted my head to Father Sky as I felt his touch and almost wept for the onslaught of sensation buzzing over my skin.
Far up the beach, among the trees, torches bobbed, my targets kindly alerting me to their position.
Placing one foot ahead of the other, I scrunched my toes—those odd little digits in the sand.
Curtis Vance
“I thought I heard something,” a man was saying as I patrolled by. He lifted his torch, but here, among the dense foliage, seeing anything beyond a few feet was impossible. Maybe moving into the trees had been a terrible idea.
“You all right, Vance? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
I’d made it around the camp to where Molly sat beside one of several fires. Tassen leaned against a tree behind her, arms crossed, watchful eyes on his crew of thirty.
I crouched beside Molly, withdrew the dagger from my pocket, blade first, and held it out for her to take.
Her gaze dropped to the winking gems and then lifted to my face. “Don’t.”
“Take it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Just for tonight…”
“Vance…” She shook her head. “That blade… I don’t want it.”
This was not the time to explain how the gems were just pretty ornaments in mundane hands. Ruby for blood magic. Emerald for earth. Topaz for water. And diamond for air. In her hands, they were just gems, but in mine…
I tucked the blade back into my pocket. The rejection stung more than it should. I turned my face away to hide my frown. I knew she believed I was a killer, or worse. I came from the Inner Circle. Breans knew now that only monsters came from there. She thought me among them, and maybe I was, but I’d hoped… I’d hoped I could pretend where I came from wouldn’t matter going forward. I’d tried to do the right thing. But sometimes the right thing was murky. And my actions hadn’t been enough.
You’ll make the wrong choice. Your kind always does.
“It’s not you…” she tried to explain.
I stood and left her side, adding that sting to the hurt, and stopped beside Tassen. “I’m not sure this is the best place to hole up,” I whispered. “We’re hemmed in.”
“We’re staying. We keep the fires burning and stay watchful.”
The crew spoke in murmurs, as thou
gh danger lurked in the trees, watching. I still hadn’t shaken the sense that something had been watching me from the beach.
“You can’t blame her for not taking the dagger.”
So Tassen had seen my failed attempt to protect Molly. I winced and turned my back on the camp to observe the thick shadows between tall trees. “It’s just a blade.”
“And you’re just a thief?”
A thief is not all I am… Those were my words to Shaianna, the sorceress who had called me thief in place of my name at every opportunity, knowing how it riled me every time and liking it. Shaianna and her carefree smile and her lust for life. The blade in my pocket had ended her. I missed her more than I’d admit to anyone, even to myself. She’d caught me when I’d fallen, and now she was gone and I… I remained, still alive, still going on. There had to be a reason I’d been spared when so many in Brea hadn’t. I didn’t deserve it. Not really. What was I? A hero? No, just a thief who’d almost ended the world and ended the woman he loved to save it.
I braced an arm against a tree and sighed. “Do you think me a monster?”
“No. Reckon you’re no worse than any man who’s had to make tough choices.”
Tassen didn’t know all of it.
Nobody did.
Even I questioned what had truly happened.
I rubbed my chest where the blade in my pocket had once sunk through my ribs and into my heart. I knew magic was real, and it was part of me now, like my past made me who I was today. But magic wasn’t kind. It wasn’t some wonderful spell. It was hungry, twisted, and ugly. At least for most. But not for Shaianna.
I winced at the memories. They weren’t all bad. There had been beautiful times. I’d seen magic do good, but it did not last. And one day that mark on my back and whatever magic was seeded into my soul would take me, twist me, make me into a man to be feared, like it had my ancestors and the people of the Inner Circle—the ones who hadn’t been burned as magic-users. The magic was a curse upon our ancestral blood for stealing from the land of the restless gods.
If I was so tainted, why did I live?
I grabbed a flaming torch.
“Where are you going?” Tassen asked as I brushed by him.
“Checking the perimeter.”
“Stay inside the light.”
I was already outside the light and fast moving away.
“Vance?”
“It’s fine… Don’t follow me. I’ll be right back.”
I shoved through the brush, wincing as fronds tore at my face. Come then, whatever stalks me. Come and find me and deliver me to my fate, if that is what you are here for…
The restlessness in my veins heated into frustration and rage. What had happened before hadn’t been right. I’d been part of something greater than me, something I might never fully understand, but I’d seen it, loved it, and hated it too. For all of that to happen and for me to be here now, my survival had to mean something. It had to. I would not die on this damn island. That was not my fate. Nor was it the fate of Tassen’s crew. I’d make damn sure of it.
I stalked on, dagger in hand to cut through the strangling vines and fat leaves. On and on I slashed my way forward, torch raised, until the brush spat me out on a rocky outcrop perched over a steep drop to the cove below, where the last of our beach campfire burned away.
There was something out there, something hunting me, or perhaps it was my fate and my past catching up with me. The mark on my back burned like a brand. Protection, the sorceress had told me after marking me. But to protect others from me or me from them? I told myself I did not know what I was, but that was a lie. I knew everything I needed to know. One day, that mark would be my end, but whatever stalked this beach would not be the end of me. I had too much left to give.
“Come find me, then!” The shout rolled on until the waves stole it.
“Gladly,” a purring voice said from behind.
As I whirled, dagger drawn, a flash of light greens, of flailing hair and green-blue eyes, filled my vision. Eyes like the siren’s I’d killed. I slashed wide, making her spring back, but then she was everywhere, her cold hands on my neck. She froze, so suddenly and so completely. I blinked back at her. She breathed fast through clenched teeth—straight teeth, not the vicious spikes of the siren in the water. Then I noticed the rest of her. An oval face with elegantly sloping eyes and ears that swept back into a point. She looked ethereal, like something that couldn’t possibly be real, but I felt the coldness of her pressed close, her midriff pushed against the point of the dagger—the reason she hadn’t yet choked the life out of me.
“You are fast, thief.”
Did the entire world know me for a thief?
The way she spoke, so filled with venom and lust and need, reminded me of another woman who had seemed just as cold and hard, until she’d shown me the warmth all that hardness protected.
“You’re the one…” I swallowed the crack in my voice. “… hunting me?”
“Your song will be mine.”
Her skin shimmered as though brushed with pearlescent dust. Seaweed trailed from her hair. She smelled briny but looked different from the siren I’d killed, softer and more human. And then there were the two legs she stood on. No tail. No fins that I could see, though we were pressed so close I could easily have missed them.
“Tighten your grip and I’ll gut you where you stand,” I warned.
Her blush-red lips stretched into a feral grin. She moved closer, so close I saw only her eyes and felt her gaze pulling me in deep. She parted her lips, and from them flowed a smooth crooning, not words but sound. I’d have called it beautiful if not for her hands locked around my neck.
The wind whipped around us, but still her song flowed, unaffected by the breeze.
My gaze wandered down her defined chin and jaw, down the curve of her neck to her small shoulders.
Her fingers tightened, choking off my air. I had my hand on her back, the blade below her ribs, and pushed in. Her song cut off with a gasp.
“Why do you not succumb?” She blinked double eyelids.
“It’s a lovely song… but I prefer a rousing shanty.”
Another blink. “How are you immune?”
“Was something supposed to happen?”
Brow furrowed, she finally let go and stepped back, out of my dagger’s reach and out of my hands.
Now that I could see all of her, I realized she was, in fact, exquisitely naked. I’d felt how she was mostly naked, thanks to having my hand on the curve of her lower back, but knowing and seeing are two very different things. After living in a whorehouse for much of my life, I would’ve thought myself more than accustomed to seeing naked women, and I was, but having one spring at me from the trees, wrap her hands around my throat, and sing like that song should suck out my soul had left me confused. I smiled. My luck with women of late had been… on the worse side. It was typical now that this one also wanted me dead. A lesser man might take it personally.
“You are… smiling?” she hissed.
“Am I?”
I’d come up here and demanded that fate deal me its worst, and it had thrown another killer at me.
Her eyes narrowed.
“I knew another like you,” I told her.
Her gaze flicked to the dagger. “Lies.”
“No, though sometimes I wish it were.”
Her lips parted. Her chest expanded, taking in the air she needed to sing her song. I scratched my chin and listened as that sweet, haunting sound fell from her lips. I could not deny it was lovely, but if she meant to bespell me the way her kind had Tassen, then we would be on this rock for a while.
“Lovely,” I said when she had finished and stepped forward. “Now will you let me pass? I must return—”
She opened her mouth and let out a sound. It was like no scream I’d heard before. The weight of the noise hit me like a physical blow. I was down on my knees and moments later, there was nothing but darkness and silence.
Blue
How could he resist my songs? When the first melody hadn’t worked, I tried another that had never failed me. And still he’d resisted. Worse, he had smiled like I was some little creature to be laughed around.
They had always wept, wept and begged and moaned, before the song took them and they fell at my feet. But this one! No. This one had smiled.
He wasn’t smiling now.
I’d carried him and his torch into a cave far along the beach where none would stumble upon us, and there he lay on the damp floor, among the rocks and flotsam.
I stabbed the torch into the sand and let it burn away the dark. The firelight lapped over him like gentle waves. Asleep, his face appeared serene and younger now that the lines around his eyes were relaxed. He might be invulnerable to my song, but that wouldn’t save him. I could kill him while he slept. It would be right. He had already killed one of us, and this Night was too short for games.
So why did I hesitate? My one night to feast, and I was in a cave, watching this man sleep. That would not do.
He lay on his side, hair fallen over his eyes and along his jaw. His chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm. I pushed my toes against his hip and nudged him. Once. Twice. He didn’t wake.
Crouching, I found his weighted coat pocket and reached inside. The thief latched onto my wrist. Wide-eyed and wary, he held on and squeezed hard enough to summon pain, and then he let go and shuffled back against the rocks. When he ran a hand through his hair, sweeping it out of his eyes, a fresh coldness shone in his dark eyes. I’d seen that coldness when he killed my sister. He would not hesitate to kill me. Behind his smiles and humor, something dangerous lurked.
“My friend will come for me,” he said.
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