In the Wake of the Ruined (The Siren Mage, #2)(10)

As we jostled along, my memories branched. Too wide, too deep. There was a white flash, bright like a strike of lightning, and all of my senses suddenly stretched thin as a veil. I could no longer feel my pain, but I could taste blood. I saw through someone else’s eyes. Uncomfortably warm water slipped around me and two familiar voices rang through my ears. One, low and nasal; the other a lovely, melodic croon.

“Hold these words in your head, Nemea, Mortal King of the Isle of Seraf. For you will be this spell’s herald. You will carry it forth.”

The lines of his face began to come clear, though they wavered like I looked at him from just below the surface of a murky pool. My consciousness was not wholly gone, for something in my chest tightened to see him again. His narrow face and tight glare. So young, with his long dark hair unstreaked by white. His fair olive skin was smooth. His gray eyes looked different, somehow. Hungry and hopeful, as opposed to how I had known them to be, like weather-beaten stones. I wished to look away.

“What are the words?” he asked, gaze searching. Suddenly, as if the body I possessed had risen through the murky water, his visage came fully into focus. He yelped and reared back, tumbling to the slate floor beneath him. He stared on in horrified shock.

When Eusia spoke, I felt it in my own throat, felt it resonate through my very bones. “I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me, cleanse the sea.”

Nemea remained on his backside and gave a frantic nod. He repeated, “I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me, cleanse the sea.”

“Go,” Eusia said. “Forge your bonds, Nemea. And you will know my power and benevolence.”

A hard hand shook my shoulder. “Imogen.” Another shake. “Imogen?”

I cracked my eyes open to the sun’s harsh glare. My skin was feverish and clammy.

Lachlan stared down at me curled up tightly in the hay, gaze wide with alarm.

“What… what is it?” I slurred.

“Theo’s ship,” he said, grimly. “It’s left.”





4


Imogen


As Lachlan hurried to help me down from the back of the wagon, my thoughts jumbled.

Theodore’s ship was gone, but I couldn’t grasp the impact of it while the taste of fetid water and blood still lingered on my tongue. It had been a brutal dream, a hallucination of a memory Nemea had told me before he’d died, but it was particularly cruel of my mind to have me inhabit Eusia’s body. I didn’t want to know the curl and ache of her withered bones, or what the sharp edges of her teeth felt like against my tongue.

“Come on, come on,” Lachlan said, dragging me behind him as we moved down the first run of docking.

The warm air rippled, or perhaps it was my vision. Rot mingled with the sea air, and I squinted through the tangle of masts and rope, through the crowds of milling dockworkers and ships’ crews, trying to see out into the wide, twinkling bay. My sight was bleary, my body still consumed by the nepenthe-laced pain in my middle, but I managed with Lachlan’s help.

We turned at the end of the first dock, where I could just spot Theo’s massive ship gliding past the breakwaters, taking our best hope of getting to Agatha out to sea. I fought to think of only her, to focus on moving my body faster so that I might reach her, but my mind was dragged back to Nemea’s spectral imprint. Those sword-tip eyes. That voice that had been as terrifying at a whisper as it had been at a shout. I remembered what it had felt like when I’d forced his sword through his throat. My determination began to grind down to dust.

Lachlan tugged me on by the arm, single-minded. “Faster, Imogen.”

I made a half-frustrated, half-anguished sound as I tried to keep apace, but my head began to float. My wound felt like it had caught fire. “We missed the ship.” My legs slowed. “It’s gone.”

“We’ll take a boat,” Lachlan said, panicked. “You can use your power to catch us up.”

Use my power. My nerves recoiled. That was not part of the plan. The thought of using my power at all, even if just to coax a current, was terrifying and dangerous considering how easily Eusia could access my lure.

I shook my head and mumbled, “Not near Theodore.”

Lachlan’s brows dove. “What?”

I’d been resolute, but seeing Nemea and thinking of how terribly I could hurt Theodore was enough to stop me. “I can’t use my power anywhere near him. I won’t.”

Lachlan halted dead in his tracks. He let go of me so abruptly that I sucked in a gasp at the sensation of having to suddenly support my own weight. “That’s the Godsdamned thing about you, Imogen.”

Anger sparked, but I stood motionless, keeping a hold on myself. “What is?”

“You’re unstoppable until it’s too hard. You barrel through, unthinking, causing chaos, until your fear or your shortsightedness has a chance to catch up and cut you off at the knees.”

It was a jab to the gut. “That’s not fair—you don’t know me.”

“No, thankfully, but I get the gist.” His throat worked as he stared out at Theodore’s ship, now well past the breakwaters. “I’d thought maybe you’d be capable of some self-control, but apparently not, if you’re willing to give up going after Agatha so easily.”

“Don’t you dare—”