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

by Kalie Cassidy

For those who seek a home. May you find it, and when you do, may it be sturdy and warm.

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.

THE MONSTER IS ALWAYS SLAIN.

For decades, King Nemea had obliterated all goodwill that might have once been his with the heinous practice of hunting divine Sirens.

There were women—I’d seen them—who were lit from within, and when they became wives that light dampened. I did not know if it was their husbands that doused their flame, or if they themselves curled up around it, their very souls trying to protect it from extinguishing. Regardless, I had been prepared to watch myself dim. But Evander’s touch lit sparks inside me, and somehow, he coaxed the light within to burn brighter, to burn steadily.

I’d always known what I was. When I was growing up, there had been a beckoning whisper in my mind and a pull on my body to descend and meet the sea. I’d never heeded it, fearing it would make a monster of me. For the legends of Sirens and blood were true. We were created to yearn for it. To call it—hot and rushing beneath a sailor’s skin—to us. To pull them fully beneath the spume.

“A Siren away from the sea. Salt water only makes the longing worse. Keep away from it.”

A Siren was tied to the sea and the air. Their power and instinct to drown was made stronger by their proximity to it. The blood bond dulled this instinct. It kept the person the Siren was bonded to safe from the lure of other Sirens. The bonded pair would be compelled to protect one another at all costs. But up in the mountains, I was simply a woman. My instincts and power were all but dead.

His eyes rounded, and I could only imagine how shocking I must have looked. Severe in my black wedding gown, dark hair windblown, blood smeared on my cheeks, smattering my chest like gruesome freckles.

“How is that possible? A Siren’s power is tied to the sea. You shouldn’t be able to change this far away from it.”

“I am not imbecilic enough to think I’d be undamaged, Your Majesty. What’s another scar atop many?”

The darkness was thick as pitch, so I closed my swollen eyes, and I sank into the mattress where I floated between wakefulness and sleep—in a liminal space where the sheets around me became seafoam, and the tears in my mouth the waves.

The sea and I had never met—not truly—but I knew it. It was in my blood and bones. I was made from it and would return to it.

“I’ll be the captain the Sirens could not drown, and you will live well and safe up here where your instincts can’t taint you.”

Who wouldn’t want to die a hero in service of one’s king? 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.”

Our bond glowed with delicious, glittering heat. It rolled and pooled heavily in my center. “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.”

“You speak of desire like it’s an illness. Like I have infected you with it.”

“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.

“I wanted my room. The comfort of a place that belonged only to me.”

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.

What they have made will bring chaos. Will bring ruin. Will bring death.

I was the queen, drained of her power. And Theodore… the king. Wrecked and ravaged because of me. And together… Panic slipped through my body as my thoughts and fears slowly crystalized. Together we would bring chaos. We would bring ruin. We would bring death.

“You are what will bring chaos and ruin and death. You are the fount of desolation and change.”

The unsettling, empty way he would lose himself to some remote place while looking at me. I wondered if it was my mother he thought of then. My mother—whose wing hung upon his wall.

“She’s the daughter of the Great Goddess Ligea and King Nemea. She can kill the monster that hunts the Sirens.”

“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.”

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

He swept through every part of me on a rising tide, dissolving all lines, all rationality. Together we sank irretrievably into the sweetest, darkest deep.

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?”

He did not resemble the untouchable king I’d first met. No, I had peeled back his defenses, and he had hardly put up a fight.

“In the wake of the ruined, when the spirit rends, mend and loop and seal. In the veins of the drowning, when blood fills the throat, clear and wash and heal.”