In the Wake of the Ruined (The Siren Mage, #2)(34)
I’d grown used to her thrumming presence, used to the vibration of the debased string that connected us. It was the very same span that tied me to all the nekgya. It was to that bond in my middle that I sent my command.
It wasn’t long before I felt something surge through the water. I’d sensed it surfacing from far, far below me, and I wondered with a morbid shiver if Eusia kept her nekgya across the whole of the Leucosian Sea, dormant, ready for when they were needed.
A small hand shot up from the water and grabbed hold of the port side of the launch. It was missing its last two fingers on one hand but easily heaved itself into the boat, spiderlike, where it settled on the bench across from me.
I stared at it—no. At her. Water ran down her horrible body in thick cascades, the bright sun glinting off the droplets. This nekgya was different. She was only a girl. Fifteen or sixteen at most. Her frame was small and her once deep golden coloring had drained to a grayish blue, but that wasn’t what made me stare. It was the scaled, iridescent skin that shimmered across the lower half of her body. It had stretched itself between her upper legs, fusing them.
Her toes had grown long, and were slotted with crimson webbing. Her eyes had become too large and too round. The inky pupils were wide inside the light brown iris, so that they looked uncannily, unsettlingly, like those of a fish.
So long in the deep, dark water must have turned her into this.
The sudden croon of Eusia’s smooth voice inside my head made me flinch. “Dear girl.” This nekgya’s mouth did not move with the same ease that the others I’d encountered had. The jaw cracked, the lips fumbled and showed darkened teeth. “Look how you’ve faded. The light has fled your eyes. Perhaps magic does not suit you, after all.” She snickered. “It did not suit your mother either.”
“It suits no one,” I fumed. “From what I’ve learned of your life, it has suited you least of all.”
She gave a thoughtful, melodious hum. “And why would you say that?”
I stared at the monstrous creature before me. Not Siren, not woman, not fish, forced to linger, half alive, and my anger rose on a violent tide. “You are cruel. Your body is ruined. You have lived almost the entirety of your life alone—”
“Cruel.” Her mocking cackle echoed in my head, in sync with the laughter of the blank-faced nekgya before me. “Kindness does not keep one alive, Imogen. Magic does. It has given me everything I have ever wanted.” The nekgya’s lips curved like she was trying to smile. “I know what you want,” she said softly. “Better than you do, I suspect.”
“I only want to stop you.”
“You lie.” The nekgya leaned in. “I had beauty once, and a robust body, but they brought me nothing of consequence. I had a home and companionship too, for a time, but they could not endure.” The nekgya tilted her head, and her round eyes flashed in the sunshine. “I was always less than her—than my sister—and so it did not take me long to learn that it was power that I truly craved, darling. Power, and the reverence and fear that came with it.”
“I don’t want that kind of power,” I snapped. “And there is more to life than—”
“Oh, do tell me. What else is there?” Her voice was undeservedly lovely, warm and smooth, but now it grew brittle. “The body fades. Even good love changes and leaves. Homes crumble. None of them can be trusted, Imogen. None of them can keep us alive and safe.”
Alive. Safe. I was desperate for those things, surely. I’d spent my life in pursuit of them. Perhaps it was foolish, but I wanted to believe that the sweet, fleeting moments life could offer were not frivolous or pointless. That even though bodies and love and homes decayed, we did not fight like mad for them so that we could have them forever. Having them for a time was enough.
But Eusia spoke with such conviction, with a surety that made me feel weak.
“Very well.” My heart felt so heavy. I lifted the cup of Halla’s blood and the dagger between me and the nekgya. “If you believe magic is what I truly want, then teach me a spell.”
Eusia went quiet. The nekgya went still. “Hmm,” she finally said, thoughtfully amused. “If you answer a question, then I will teach you, dearest.”
I scowled. “I do not wish to play games.”
“But you will.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “For you need me as badly as I need you.”
I sat quietly, jaw tightening, as the boat bobbed and the waves lapped. “What’s your question?”
“The realm believes magic to be crude and ugly, the exact opposite of Gods’ power, which only picks a few from each generation to make great. But I will tell you: Magic is choosy too. It must suit the body that hosts it. I remember when your mother performed her first and only spell—we were young, and she’d wanted me to teach her how I’d filled a hole in the ground with seawater. She didn’t like that I’d done it; she couldn’t understand how, when I had no God’s power to speak of. So I showed her—”
A sunray must have pierced my gaze because I saw a bright white flash. Suddenly the wind muffled and the sound of the waves dulled. In a beat, my consciousness slipped from my body entirely.
I watched two young women in the sand. The image was strange, wavering and bright. One woman sat in a wide hole that had been dug up the beach, far from the water. Her hair was waving, a warm, honey-edged brown. Her eyes were like coins of amber—like mine. In fact, the angles of her face, the bow of her lips, the line of her neck were all like mine as well.