A Duet with the Siren Duke (Married to Magic, #4)

by Elise Kova

I cling to Ilryth. To this man whom I can hardly remember anything about and yet know with all I am. But it’s too late. It’s all crumbling. “Victoria.” My name is a whisper from his mind to mine—said like a promise that all we had, every glimpse I can remember and all I cannot, was real. “I love you,” I say as I am ripped from the world of the living and pulled down, down, and farther down into the Abyss of death from which there is no return.

And yet…I want to find out. I want to know what our possibilities could be. That is where my song begins: With the end. With the here and now. With wondering what we could be if we were given the chance, if the world was designed a little differently.

Come with me, my love, Krokan begs. This is no longer a place for us. They still need me. A little bit longer, she replies. Fainter, and fainter, each time more than the last. Their duet continues. He sings for her up from the darkness. Yearning for light. Yearning for her. Krokan sings with all the voices who have come before and Lellia responds with all the voices of those yet to come. But it grows weaker and weaker. Fainter. Soon, the duet is a solo. Come with me, my love, Krokan begs. There is little time left. There is no reply.

“I was wrong, about you. About it all. I had thought you were perhaps enemies. I thought that you kept her captive. But she was the one who chose to stay, even knowing what it might mean for her to continue pouring her power into this world… All you wanted was to free her and return to your kin—to save her.”

There is good love out there. True love. Love that will go to the highest mountain or to the depths of the deepest sea. I know it before me and know it beside me.

“He knew there was no way the sirens would abide cutting down the tree to outright free Lellia. So he began weakening it as he was able while Lord Krokan tried to free her as well with the rot. Because of what we knew as ‘Lord Krokan’s rage,’ Renfal had an excuse to weaken the tree enough that maybe she could break free.”

I don’t know what will come next. But I do know that this is the right choice. And no matter what awaits me, I will live without regrets. My life feels full. I have sailed every sea, and ventured to the deepest depths. I have known and lost love and found it again. I have chosen a purpose when I could’ve avoided the responsibility. My song is complete.

“My songmate.” That stills me. I meet his eyes. I can almost feel our hearts beat in tandem through the pulses in our fingers. “The duet we sang down there…” I start softly, abandoning the thought. He finishes it for me. “It was the song of our souls, harmonizing as one.” “You, me, we were destined to be together?”

“True, there are stories that say the songs of some souls might be more naturally compatible than others—destiny, if it pleases you. But our songs evolve as we do. They are learned and taught, shifted and changed with our choices and experiences. We make our own song—the song doesn’t make us.”

For so long, I believed Charles wholly when he told me I was hard to love and difficult to be around. But now I know he was wrong. He was a sad and bitter man who desperately needed control after his life upended with the deaths of his family, and I am no longer beholden to his cruel catharsis.

Ilryth has loved me, deeply enough to stand before an old god for me. He has come to the literal edge of the earth to plead for me. It is a love I had only ever dreamed of and long since written off. But here he is beside me, fighting with and for me. He is a man of flesh, and blood, and virtue, who wants me, out of everyone in the world, and I want him in equal measure.

“I know, it is terrifying when the world you thought you knew, thought you had control of, is suddenly crumbling apart. When the things you’ve always counted on—the foundation you built your world on—crumbles.”

“Enough, Ilryth,” Fenny interrupts, that smug smile widening slightly. “She is not the woman you think she is. And, now that I am the Duchess of Spears, it is my job to defend the Eversea from evil, wickedness, malice, and lies.”

apologies for how this has unfolded. “Then you confess to being an oath breaker.” The chorus murmurs, exchanging glances. The word shakes me to my core yet again. It brings back every jape and jeer cast in my direction. Can I never escape my fate? Is this all I am?

“I will not speak against my brother.” “The chorus commands it!” “You are not the chorus,” Lucia fires back. “You are merely a stand-in for our brother and a sad one at that. I thought better of you, sister.”

“I am not going to take childish swipes at you, Victoria. I was giving you space to work through whatever you needed to so that you could arrive at a place where you felt ready to speak. I am a grown man and you are a grown woman. I assumed we could handle this as adults.” I lean back, startled. He wasn’t trying to punish me? Ugly instincts still left over from Charles try to tell me that this is a test.

“Stop running, please,” he says softly. “I’m here now. I don’t want to be anywhere else. So don’t run from me.”

“Charles forever wanted the naive and perpetually optimistic young woman who made him her entire world. Someone who would never challenge him, who existed to make him feel good. She faded, with time, and the woman who replaced her needed so much more—needed a man he couldn’t be. I wanted a partner; he wanted a servant.

“Good. You should never lessen yourself to spite another. The best revenge is to thrive.”

“Goodbyes between us are pointless. I already stole you from death’s Abyss once.”

The silvered and gold lines that coat my flesh tell the stories of the old ones that came before me. I am the keeper of the last vestiges of their magic, and their memories. The anchor for the final of the gifts they bestowed upon this world. I am also the overseer, the one who will help guide and protect the growth of all that might come after.

I’ve come for you, just as you asked, he sings. We have given to the world. We have sacrificed and stabilized. There is nothing more to fear. Now it is time again for us to live.

“But now that I’ve become one with the remnants of her power, I can come and go as I please. Though, I must return to the tree eventually, at least for brief times, to keep the anchor.” This truth is embedded in my soul. “I know, and I will have to return to the Abyss on occasion for much the same reason.” He leans in and brushes his nose against mine. “But these duties shall not keep us apart for long.”

Duets are meant for two singers, and ours has always been the hymn of life and death and all that is woven between. A song of sorrow and joy, passion and longing. It was a song intended to be for Krokan and Lellia, but each time we sang those fateful words, they became more and more our own. Now, our duet is of Ilryth and Victoria. The human and the siren. And it is a melody that will have no end.