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.

I 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.”

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

There is a crown. Ripped, ripped, ripped from the head. There is a bond. Cut, cut, cut from the blood. The queen lies drained of her divinity. The king sits wrecked and ravaged beneath her wing.

“I cannot even see her for the way you encompass me.” Emotion etched his face. “You fill my every sense. You stalk my waking mind. You make up the entirety of my dreams. I couldn’t speak to you after what Lachlan said because it shocked me—that he was right. About what I feel—”

“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.”

“If you are selfish”—he gave me a deep, luxurious kiss—“then I am a gluttonous, greed-riddled fiend for how badly I want you.”

But if you are to devastate me, then let it be completely. Lay waste to me and everything that’s mine. A life without you in it is not one I wish to lead.”

“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?”