In the Veins of the Drowning(20)
No, no, no.
That pulse in my gut turned white hot at the thought of it. Then Evander went suddenly still, eyes drooping and muscles loose. The dagger he held slipped from his hand. It clattered against the edge of the tub as it fell to the floor. I retched up the water from deep inside my chest, and as if commanded, Evander stood, lifted a leg, and stepped into the tub.
Blood screamed through my ears; the dark pulse in my belly thumped. My essence slipped outside my flesh and bone and watched as Evander sank down into the water. He was large for the narrow tub, but he managed to bring his body over the top of my own, and wrapped his arm around my winged back. Reverently, he placed a kiss below my eye.
In a shadowy corner of my mind, I thought it curious that he would come in with me. That he’d dropped his dagger. His whole body was rigid as a new corpse above me, but his breaths kept coming. They fluttered across my mouth, like warm waves, rolling in, then sucked back out.
A Siren’s domain was the wind and sea, and even his breaths felt like my own.
So I took them.
Through the part in my lips, I drew out his air until there was none left in his chest. His face reddened as he dipped his head just below the waterline to rest it on my breasts. The desire to drown him gripped me. I wanted his chest filled just as mine had been, and when I wished it, he pulled in a sea-choked breath. His nose and mouth flooded. I knew the paths the water took, sensed it as it pooled inside him.
His heavy body twitched against mine.
As the beats of his heart slowed, so too did the pulsing current inside me. It ebbed, stopped. It left me feeling full, but not satiated. Now that I had tasted such control, such power, I understood why Evander had been so hungry for it. My mind returned to me fully once he was waterlogged and limp.
My dressing room was silent, the lantern light steady. I pushed against Evander’s heavy shoulder. “No.” Panic sliced at me. “Gods, no.”
For a moment, I wished I could drown. I’d let his weight pin me under, and I’d drink deeply, and before the light in my eyes went black, I would see, as if they were real, all the things I’d always yearned for.
Evander’s body grew somehow weightier, bending my ribs and pulling me from the daydream of my idyllic death.
The one that awaited me would be so much worse.
I pushed against Evander’s dead weight with my teeth gritted. My mind filled with all the awful things King Nemea’s guards would do to me in retaliation. I’d ended one threat and invited in a myriad of new ones. King Theodore’s voice echoed in my head—
You’re an imbecile to marry a man whose job it is to kill you.
The water in the tub came up to Evander’s open, unseeing eyes. Burst veins were stitched through the whites, like blood trails in the snow. Nausea rolled through me. I pushed against his shoulder once more, twisting beneath him, trying to wedge myself out. The effort had me gasping, had me cursing, but I didn’t stop until I’d scraped my body over the side of the tub, and onto the soft rug on my dressing room floor.
Seawater ran down my body in thick rivulets. My torn chemise clung to me, a pale second skin ready to be shed. My hair hung like black ropes over my shoulders. I stared at Evander’s body, all twisted and overlarge in the narrow tub, and I suddenly didn’t care what the good and noble and just king of Varya would think of me. My one nascent thought was that I wished to live, and he alone could see that done. He’d already denied me his assistance—but there was another way.
I moved with primal single-mindedness. The unfamiliar weight of my wings had me off-balance, and I walked a staggering line toward my chamber door. At this hour, almost all the torches in the hall would be out of oil, but all those nights spent sneaking through the fort as a girl were not for nothing. I knew by rote how many paces it took to reach the end of the hall.
Evander’s men had obeyed and vacated their post outside my door, but from the north end of the corridor came the soft clatter of armor, the mumbles of King Theodore’s guards. He’d brought six with him. Considering how much he and King Nemea seemed to loathe one another, it was safe to assume he’d sleep with at least half standing watch.
That didn’t stop me from hurrying down the hall toward them, water spraying as I went.
I had no sense of how to wield the shadowy, terrifying power that had overtaken me—it was even possible that it wielded me. I couldn’t recall what I had done but steal Evander’s breath, and I sent up a panicked prayer, hoping my power would make Theodore’s men just as malleable.
Through the window, the moon was bloated and bright in the sky. Its light dripped like quicksilver over the sill, illuminating the guards. There were three of them. The one nearest me grunted and reached for his sword at my approach. In the next moment his body went slack. I felt it this time—a silent, heated lure that flew from my throat like a fisherman’s line. The second guard staggered dreamily to the far side of the hall, while the third opened the door and permitted me inside King Theodore’s chamber.
The hinges were maddeningly loud, whimpering as the door swung shut. King Theodore didn’t rouse. His fire had burned down to embers, and it sent deep shadows and rusty light over the bed where he slept.
He looked so large, sprawled indulgently over the mattress. One arm was bent above his head; the other rested on his chest. A long leg had escaped from beneath the covers to show me golden-brown skin and dark hair over a perfectly drawn calf, a strong knee, a muscled thigh. He wore a white sleep shirt and what appeared to be nothing else. I took a step nearer and could make out his shallow, even breathing. I studied the line of his jaw, the part in his full lips.