In the Wake of the Ruined (The Siren Mage, #2)(12)

That was all I could write before my hand began to shake too violently. It wasn’t the pain alone that made me tremble, but something in seeing those words in stark black and white, true and eternal. Lachlan read over the letter with his brows steeply pitched, before he began folding it to seal.

“Wait.” My heart struck my ribs as I wrote one final line.

I, your queen, will return home for my throne shortly.



Lachlan then folded the note, poured the wax he’d prepared, and took Nemea’s sword that hung at his hip into his fist. He held up the little rounded pommel where a knotted, tooth-bared eel was carved and pressed it into the dark green pool of wax. It left a ferocious, fanged impression behind. Something portentous twisted through me to see it.

To claim that emblem, and all it encompassed, as my own.

Lachlan packed the writing box as the pulleys on the side of his sister’s ship squeaked and clicked. The promised dinghy lowered slowly to the still water below. I could feel the movement of the sea beneath the damp dock wood, could feel that pulsing in my hurting stomach. My head spun from the heat and time seemed to ebb and flow again, swirling like a strange current, because in another breath I was in the little boat, sitting across from Lachlan, who held a worn oar in each fist.

Masts and hulls towered high above as he navigated us out into the open bay. “I’ll row us through the port. You’ll take over when we hit open water.”

I nodded. Theodore’s ship was nearly too far away to see clearly now. Sweat beaded over my skin. I swiped a hand across my forehead and unlatched my cloak’s clip.

Lachlan adjusted on his bench, nervously. “You feel like drowning me?”

I glared. “I’m just hot.”

“It’s cool out.” He gnawed the inside of his cheek, clearly suspicious. The sweeps of his oars grew sharper, before he let out a grunt. “Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me your favorite color,” he snapped. “Bloody fuck—tell me what happened to you and how bad it is, Imogen.”

The boat bobbed over the turquoise water as my sluggish mind tried to parse what exactly to say. Selfishly, I didn’t want him to see me as corrupted. I wanted to keep whatever tenuous camaraderie we’d found intact, and I expected that admitting that my bargain with Eusia had involved an illicit spell might wreck it. “Nemea stabbed me,” I finally said. “Before I… killed him.”

His mouth flattened into a grim line. “Theo will fix it.”

Theo.

The water sluiced and the wind whistled around my ear. My mind and task were set, but simply hearing his name drew my thoughts to him, as if it were a lure. I could almost feel the hot rush of his power penetrating my body, could feel the memory of his calloused hands pressing into my flesh. Memories of his lips, skin, breaths.

Only the king will do.

My jaw stung with a rush of saliva, and I gripped the bench beneath me. I wanted him with an uncanny hunger that felt like it might never be sated. I closed my eyes, breathed, and used every bit of strength I had to shove the want away.

“Imogen?”

I opened my eyes to Lachlan’s wary stare. Shook my head. “No,” I said. “I won’t be near enough to Theodore while I’m on that ship for him to heal me.”

He gave me a blank stare. “Like hell. I’ll make him heal you from across the deck if I have to.”

Even blunted by the nepenthe, my anger crackled. “Lachlan. He won’t see me. He won’t know I’m unwell. It’s the only way to keep him safe. It’s the only way to ensure that neither of us diverges from our duties. Do you understand?”

He glared, twisting his neck until it cracked, but finally he gave me a reluctant nod. We’d cleared the maze of docked ships and passed the few that were anchored in the shallow water of the bay. Lachlan lifted the oars. “You ready to help me?”

I blew out a long breath, recalling every sailor and soldier that Eusia had pulled into the sea with my power. It had felt like my blood was draining from my body when she’d taken hold of my lure, but I refused to be corruptible to the point of useless.

Eusia’s power came from me, after all.

I firmed my jaw and set my awareness to the sea. The drop-off beneath us turned the already deep water fathomless. I could sense the nekgya suspended within it, hanging as if from a line, waiting for me to reel them up with a thought. A misty gust rolled over my skin, and I closed my eyes to focus beyond them. I sent a command to the sea.

Far below, a current curled and rose to meet us, surging our little boat forward. Lachlan pulled the oars in and let them clatter at our feet.

Theodore’s ship sat upon the horizon. A dark little dot on the line between the sea and sky. The blue bled into a glowing orange, and thin wisps of fog were beginning to draw over the water’s pleated surface.

Lachlan gave an anxious grunt. “How fast can you go?”

“This fast,” I snapped. We moved across the water at a fair speed, but my energy drained from me as quickly as wine from a crack in its urn. I fisted my hands to hide how they shook. “Besides, it’s wiser to take our time and approach under the cover of night.”

Lachlan sat quietly and undid the straps of his breastplate before stretching out his arms. “If you won’t see Theo, then the ship’s healer will take care of your stab wound. You’ll drop dead if you go untreated, and I’m not storming this proverbial castle alone.”