In the Veins of the Drowning (The Siren Mage, #1)

by Kalie Cassidy

Far below, in the water, she waits. I wake and she fades. I sleep and she surges. Held in a decaying body, an ancient, familiar power hums through her veins. She is the clawed hand searching the waves. The tight fist around my gut. Always there in the water. Always there in my dreams. She is want, and I know her well.

“But this incessant blood bond will not let me ignore the fact that you’re shaking. You’re cold. You’re scared—”

have no desire to be like you—” I jabbed a finger against his chest. “To scrape myself empty for others and call it noble.”

“I called you a gnat, and I detest myself for it. I am the bug. A moth. And you are the moon. Drawing me, pulling me. But I’ll never be able to reach you without destroying myself. All I can do is pray for the day.” He gave me a pleading look. “Do you understand? I am doing my very best to keep a grip on myself, to keep my distance, but everything you do seems in service of thwarting that goal.”

“I would have worshipped you,” he said, husky and slow. “Laid you out over my bed like a goddess on her altar and gotten on my knees before you. And when we were done, after a very long time…” He brought me tighter to his chest, and I all but melted into him. My nose brushed his chin. “… I’d thank you for tearing me to ribbons with those pretty talons of yours.”

“I wouldn’t have torn you to ribbons,” I finally said, coyly. “I’m not that wasteful.”

“Oh no?” That chuckle again. “What would you have done?”

“What any Goddess worthy of devotion would.” He looked over his shoulder expectantly, heat and amusement in his gaze. “I’d have demanded you worship me a second time. And a third.”

“Lay a hand on my wife and you’ll lose it.” Theodore gripped the hilt of the dagger.

“You’re covered in dust and sweat,” he said quietly, “and a good husband would see you cleaned up before feeding you and putting you to bed, wouldn’t he?”

“The bodies are reanimated by my power,” said the fairer nekgya in an identical voice to the first. In an identical voice to the one in my head. “And I am animated by yours, dear, generous girl. There you are. Just like your mother. I have waited so long.”

“But she is not yours to take from. She is mine.”

“What I feel for you is beyond reason—beyond duty and desire. You have tipped my whole world on its side, and you are the one clear thing in the chaos.” His nose brushed the end of mine. “You. I want you.”

I kissed him like he was air, like he was light, and I had spent my whole life gasping in the dark.

“You have shone a light on me. You made me feel fury and terror and joy and longing. How do I curl myself back into the darkness after being so alive?”