Текст книги "In the Veins of the Drowning"

Автор книги: Kalie Cassidy

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

We turned off the main road for the caretaker’s cottage and found three horses tied to the watering trough. A small, worn-down cart with packs and provisions sat in the small clearing. The little thatch-roofed building beyond it had no door, no glass in the windows. The floor through the entryway was made of the same packed dirt as the road. A small stone well sat beside it.

Low voices and laughter rose from the cottage’s opening.

Theodore pulled on his horse’s reins and dismounted. His hand hovered over the dagger at his hip. “Stay here.” His unease swept away all the dreamy heat I’d been basking in.

Before he could duck into the cottage, three young men came out. Two looked like brothers, small and reedy. They reminded me of Serafi arrowheads with their black hair and sharp noses. The third was tall and handsome, with gold-streaked locks, warm brown skin, and mirthful eyes in the palest shade of green. All of them smiled. “There’s room inside,” one of the brothers said to Theodore. “We’ll sleep outside. Weather’s nice.”

Theodore scowled and gave them a curt nod, but before he could do anything else, the handsome one looked up at me where I sat upon my horse. He crossed to my side with a widening smile. “Need a hand?”

“Lay a hand on my wife and you’ll lose it.” Theodore gripped the hilt of the dagger.

The man’s eyes went round as platters; his arms rose in surrender. “I was just trying to help.”

I shot Theodore a scolding look, but he ignored it. Stormy and inexorable, he stole to my side and reached up to guide me off the horse. With pinched faces and muttered words, the men retreated to a little clearing behind the cottage, where a pit for a fire sat.

“What the hell was that?” I scolded. “They’re not going to share that fire with us now.”

“Pretend you like me.” He reached up for the waterskin at my horse’s side and pulled it open so I could drink. “Act like we’re happily married—a stretch, I know.”

I took an angry gulp of water. “Why? What’s wrong?”

Theodore’s brow buckled. He set a hand to his stomach, over the bond. “I don’t know them, and the thought of him touching you—” He shook his head and took a drink of the water. “It’s that Godsdamned bond. Just do this for me, please? Keep beside me. If they think you are anything other than my wife, then you’re not safe.”

“You’re jealous.” I gaped at him as he rummaged through the saddlebag. “You thought my reaction during those contract negotiations was ridiculous, but this is exactly the same.”

He shook his head. “That was different. That was the Empress of Obelia—”

“See the handsome one?” Theodore frowned at him over his shoulder. “When you’re asleep tonight, he and I are going to sneak away into the grapevines to make love, and then over breakfast tomorrow, you can listen as we discuss the fate of our future children.”

He glared at me.

“Doesn’t feel good, does it?”

“No,” he conceded in a grumble. “It doesn’t.”

We troughed the horses, and all the while Theodore stewed. With a small bowl and a rag pulled from a saddlebag in hand, he led me to the little well. He rounded its stone wall, so his back was to the men around the fire, then sat upon its ledge. He scooped some water into the little bowl, set the rag into it. He spread his legs wide. Then tugged me by the hand, so I stood between them.

I stared for a moment—at the dark fan of his lashes, the slant of his nose, the bow of his lips. “What are you doing?”

“Acting like you’re my wife.” His eyes were level with my chin. He raised his hands and slowly, devastatingly gently, swept aside the stray hairs that had escaped from my braid. His fingers tickled at my ears, my temples, as he caressed the curls back. I held my breath as he reached around for my braid. He gripped it, wrapped it once around his fist, and gave it the softest tug. It tipped my chin up, baring my neck to him.

He made a throaty, approving sound as he looked from my lips to my neck and down further. Water droplets sprayed as he wrung the rag out with his free hand. Slowly, he dragged it across my cheek. Down the column of my neck.

I bit back a moan. “You don’t have to—”

He dipped the rag again and brought it back to my flushed skin. “You’re covered in dust and sweat,” he said quietly, “and a good husband would see you cleaned up before feeding you and putting you to bed, wouldn’t he?”

“That’s not what you’re doing.” The rag traveled down farther, to my collarbone, where the shirt I wore—his shirt—was pulled slightly open. My eyes fluttered shut. I didn’t doubt he could see the color rising on my cheeks. That he could see my breaths coming quicker, growing shallow. “You’re getting back at me for what I said earlier. You’re teasing me.”

He shook his head. “I promise, I’m not trying to.” The words were a hot caress over my skin. “But I’ll admit, I wish I didn’t care what you thought of me.”

“Two days,” I said. He swiped a bead of water from my chin with his finger, tugging my bottom lip down with the motion. “The bond will be severed. Then you won’t care at all.”

Our gazes locked and when he smiled at me, wry and full, my heart folded over on itself. “Let’s hope.” None of the heat left his eyes as he leaned back and let my braid slip from his hold. He held the rag up between us.

We’d reached a line, and now we toed it. I thought of Lachlan’s and Agatha’s pleas to let myself be cared for, to care for him. Despite the tumult of the past week, Agatha thought something more had woven and bloomed between us, like one of Theodore’s flowering vines. It was desire—attraction—but nothing more. Nothing sturdy could grow under such conditions, and on the odd chance that something had sprouted, bolstered by our blood bond, we were two days away from ripping it out at the root.

I emptied the bowl and filled it with clean water. Dipped and wrung out the rag. My saddle-weary legs ached as I perched on his knee. “So we’ve established that you were once—and still can be—lusty and potent.” He laughed and I couldn’t keep from smiling at the sound of it. “But I have always been afraid.”

Some of the heat in his eyes banked. I scooted closer to his chest, set my hand to his chin, and tipped it up. As I swiped at the strong column of his neck, he brought up his hand and rested it on the round of my hip. “Of what?”

“Everything. When I was little, I was afraid of the dark.”

“So is every child.”

I dipped the rag again and opened the collar of his shirt, letting myself enjoy the cut of his hard chest. “Maybe my fear was like a normal child’s. But the darkness in Fort Linum felt different. It felt sinister. It’s so dark, so thick, that it used to feel like its own kind of monster. Corporeal. I would forget myself and spend too long in the study reading and then I’d have to trudge through it to get to my chamber. I’d be crying and shaking by the time I’d reached my bed one level down.”

His thumb moved back and forth over my hip. “Why didn’t you sleep in the study?”

I shook my head as I swiped the bridge of his nose, his cheek. “I wanted my room. The comfort of a place that belonged only to me.”

“Brave of you.” He looked at me like he had the first night we’d met, like he was taking stock of all the pieces and parts of me, but now, he seemed to look closer. To a lower layer. Foolishly, I hoped that this time, those pieces would fall into a shape he found more pleasing.

I rose from his knee and threw the dirty water from the bowl, wrung out the rag. “I’m hungry.” I looked past Theodore to the three men huddled around a roaring fire. “You’ll have to make nice so we can heat some food.”

Theodore grimaced as he stood, then swiped his hands on his pants. “I’ll make our bedroll first.”

“Bedrolls. As in two.”

He came toward me and took the bowl and rag from my hand. “Bedroll. As in one. As in there is no way in all the sweet hells that this blood bond would let you sleep away from me when we are in the middle of the wildlands with three strange men sleeping beside us.”

The line we toed began to break and blur. I could just as easily sleep safely on my own bedroll, under my own blanket, beside him. And the men who shared our camp were as innocuous as ever, laughing and telling poor jokes. But I couldn’t bring myself to argue either point.

I was selfish, just as Theodore had said. I batted away my shame and nodded. “One it is.”

Back at the horses, I helped Theodore pull our supplies from their restraints. The road we’d taken in had widened, cutting between the long, flat beach and the edge of the vineyard. The waves crashed quite a way out, but I could nearly hear them as the end of the day settled into a hush.

Theodore whistled quietly as he handed me a bedroll and a blanket. The tune was familiar, perhaps a song I’d danced to before. It was quick and rhythmic, but he whistled it at half speed. In his old worn clothes, with his dark hair mussed from travel, he looked roguish and at ease. A smile curled my lips. “You’re different outside the palace.”

He gave me a cautious look. “Am I?”

“I think so.”

“You haven’t known me very long.” He smirked. “What if I’m always like this and you and I just met under very trying circumstances?”

I laughed and took a second blanket from him. “I don’t doubt meeting me made many things worse for you, but I wonder if it’s your responsibilities that make you so… surly. All that pressure you put on yourself.” I walked around the horse slowly, toward the cottage, and he followed. “You seem to like it out here. In the sun and dirt. I like you better out here too, I think.”

By the way he stared at me, I couldn’t tell if I’d hurt him or complimented him. He took the load I carried into his own arms.

“I’m sorry,” I said, when he was still close. “I didn’t mean—you’re right, I haven’t known you that long.”

He shook his head at my apology. “I find you rather terrifying, Imogen.”

“Terrifying?”

“It’s true you haven’t known me long, but somehow you know me rather well.”

He was devastating, standing before me looking windblown and anguished. I wanted to touch him, to smooth the lines etched into his face.

He turned toward the cottage, and before I followed, I glanced out over the waves—then froze. On the tremulous line of the horizon sat four little ships. They were no more than shadowy smudges at this distance, but something in my center dipped. I held my breath and crossed the dirt road toward the beach.

The bond sent rattling worry through my stomach as our distance grew.

“Imogen?” Theodore called. But I kept moving, knowing he’d follow.

My boots sank into the sand, my tired muscles burning as I tried to move over it. I’d spent my whole life looking at the sea from afar. Through my window in Fort Linum, a ship on the water’s surface was nothing but a dot from the end of an artist’s brush, but if I stared long enough, they distinguished themselves. And it was always easiest to tell when it was Nemea’s ships that floated into the harbor.

The red, eel-stitched flag, flapping in the wind as if it were undulating through the sea. The dark sails, the same color as King Nemea’s bitter wine. Theodore reached my side; our bond calmed. He saw what I did, and it morphed his countenance back into that of a king. His chin lowered. His gaze grew hard. “There he is.”

There was not a hint of surprise in his voice. He’d been prepared, he’d known Nemea’s men would come. So had I, but I found myself staring, slack-jawed, with terror wriggling through me as if it were that Godsdamned eel.

Nemea had come to take back what was his.

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I stumbled over the sand and hurried toward the cottage and horses. “We have to go.”

Theodore was at my heels. He grabbed my wrist and yanked me to a halt. “Go where?”

I looked back out toward Nemea’s haunting ships. “We need to ride through the night, unbind ourselves as quickly as possible. I need to leave Varya. I need to keep as far from Nemea’s men as I can.”

He cupped my cheek, forced my gaze to his. “You need sleep. And food. I’m not letting you go to the Mage Seer tired and hungry. That’ll only make the severance worse for you.”

“Please.” Fear wormed through me so deeply that I struggled to see his reason. “Please, just a few more hours on the horses. Then I’ll try to sleep. I promise.”

His brow furrowed, and then finally he gave me a quick nod. “A few more hours.” His hand left my cheek. “Then I’m force-feeding you and tying you to your bedroll with a blanket.”

My chin quivered as I nodded my agreement.

Once I was back on my mare, my sore body raged against my decision to ride on. The road grew so narrow that the grapevines were close enough for me to reach out and touch. I dragged my fingers over the soft, wavering leaves. Despite my discomfort, I was grateful to be moving rather than sitting in one place. It helped ease the clamp that had set itself around my ribs at the sight of those ships.

We passed row after twisted row of vines, and just as the rest of the daylight slipped away, Theodore looked at me over his shoulder. “You’re tired.”

I hadn’t the energy to refute him. “Is there a place to sleep nearby?”

He shook his head. “We’ll have to tuck in between the vines.” He turned us down one of the rows. At the end, a thatch of flowering trees formed a small barrier between the vineyard and where the beach began. The sky had changed to a deep, inky blue, and we dismounted and tied up the horses. The clearing was tight. I skirted around horses and posts to get my bedroll, when one of the vines tickled my cheek.

I paused. “Your Majesty?”

He huffed a laugh. “Call me Theo.”

“Theo.” I liked the shape of his name on my tongue. “I need to learn how to control my power. Nemea’s too close. Ligea could have swum out into the water and sunk those ships. I should be able to as well.”

He stopped unspooling a bedroll. “I’ll teach you how to use my power. Hopefully it will help you figure out your own.” He rummaged through the saddlebag for the dried meat and bread and handed it to me. “In the morning. Once you’re rested and fed.”

He was right. Exhaustion cut through my every muscle, but my mind still whirred. I bit off a hunk of bread and threw open my bedroll. I wrapped a blanket over my shoulders, then settled onto my back, food forgotten at my feet. “Do you recall the princess’s necklace?” I whispered as I stared up at the sky. Theodore lay an arm’s length away. “It’s identical to my ring.”

“It’s likely a coincidence.”

“Hmm.” That was logical and yet it pestered me like an itch I could not scratch. The waves hushed in the distance, insects sang, and the breeze shook through the leaves above us. “Theo?” I whispered.

“Yes,” he said, groggily.

“Why is there a stained-glass Siren on your ship?”

“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”

I rolled onto my side to face him. “I’m usually a far more agreeable bedfellow. I’m anxious. My mind is racing.”

“All right.” He stood up, then dragged his bedroll toward the base of the nearest vine. “Come here.”

I propped up on an elbow. “What are you doing?”

“We’ll do the lesson now. I’ll tell you about the Siren.” He knelt. “And then in the morning you’ll let me sleep in.”

I made my way toward him. “You strike me as the kind that rises with the sun.” I sat in front of the vine.

“Scoot up.” He set a hand to my back. “You need to be able to touch its base.” He nudged me forward and just that small contact sent a luxuriant heat slinking through my whole body. It quieted the chaos in my mind. “Good,” he said, when I was close enough. “And I wake with the sun when I’m well rested. Which you, my dear, are preventing.”

His hand skated down my arm, tightening at my wrist. “Put your fingers into the earth. Dig them in.” I dug through the packed soil to where it was cool. “Stay like that.”

The night was balmy, the air light and comfortable. I could make out his features in the moonlight, the sharp cheekbones and jaw. Those full lips. The messy locks that fell over his brow.

I stared at him unabashedly, and damn him, he relished the attention. A slow smile tipped his mouth. “The Siren on my ship. Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

It was, blessedly, too dark for him to see my blush. “Yes. The Siren.”

“When my father, Athan, was young, he fell in love with a Siren. Before that, she’d sunk one of his ships. He’d been furious. He had a notable temper, my father, and he went after her to seek some sort of payment for the loss. I’m unsure of his logic there—approaching a Siren like that is dangerous—but his temper and crown made him idiotically bold. Unsurprisingly, when he confronted her, she was utterly unfazed by him. She didn’t care that he was a prince, nor that he was furious with her. He made empty threats of punishment, which she listened to with a blank face.”

Theodore leaned forward to check my hands. “Still in the dirt?”

I nodded.

“Good.” He leaned back and looked at me with his head tilted to the side as he went on. “Naturally, because this Siren thought nothing of my father, he fell head over heels. Eventually, thank the Gods I don’t know the details of how, they became lovers. And they were for years and years. He had a new ship commissioned and immortalized her in that stained-glass window. But my father was the son of a Great God and as his father’s strength waned and his time to take the crown grew closer, he was expected to marry a noble wife. To have an heir. And he did. He married my mother, had children before me that didn’t survive. But he also kept his lover as his mistress. He flaunted her, brought her with him to balls and dinners. Lavished her with gifts that he didn’t give to my mother. My mother loathed her. And my father too, I expect, though she was wise enough to never let on. His Siren disappeared one day, likely a nekgya attack. I was born a year or so later.”

A moaning breeze filled the quiet between us. I rolled the soil between my fingers. “That’s heartbreaking. For your mother, of course, being treated so terribly. But for your father and this Siren too. They loved each other and they weren’t allowed to be together the way they wanted to be.”

“I don’t see them as the victims of that story.” Theodore looked away, deep in thought. “When the blood of the Great Gods runs through your veins, you don’t get to have what you want.”

“Who told you that? Certainly not your father.”

“No. He believed the opposite.” Theodore cleared his throat, sat quiet for a long moment. “He thought his divinity guaranteed him his every desire. And that made him callous and indulgent. It made him hurt others.”

“I see.” Theodore took my wrist again, almost absently. “And so, you have tried to shape yourself into his opposite.”

His thumb swiped over my skin. “According to you, doing so has made me into his very image.”

My lips parted. “You seem far better than your father.” I searched his face in the silver light, hungry for any emotion he might offer up. Suddenly certain that knowing him better would make me feel fed. “But I can understand now why I put you so ill at ease.”

“I wouldn’t say you put me ill at ease, Imogen.” He released me and leaned back onto his hands. “Quite the opposite. Unfortunately.”

“Oh.” My voice was dangerously breathy when I finally asked, “How much longer do I need to sit with my hands in the dirt?”

He gave me a piercing look. “A week.”

I froze. A mischievous grin spread slowly across his face.

“You’re despicable.” I threw a clod of dirt at him. “How long were you going to make me sit here?”

His laugh rumbled around me. I threw more chunks of earth.

“All right.” He held up surrendering hands. “All right. I’m sorry. Stand up.” His laughter rang through the night as he helped me to stand. A warm arm wrapped around my waist, and the solid heat of his body pressed against my back. The calloused fingers of his other hand took my wrist, and he extended my arm out toward a curling vine—not too close.

He pressed his cheek to mine as he asked, “What does your power feel like?”

Gooseflesh cascaded down my body. The bond flared like a lit candle. I had to swallow hard before I could muster any thought at all. “It starts like a hum,” I finally managed.

“Where?”

“Here.” His other hand rested firmly over my solar plexus, and I placed my own over it. “But it builds and climbs up to my throat.”

“Mine is the same,” he said. “But instead of building to my throat, it moves toward my hands.” He gave my wrist a squeeze. “Tell the vine to curl around your finger.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You haven’t tried.”

My nerves jolted at the thought of being incapable. At the thought of him watching me fail. I pulled a breath deep into my chest.

“Breathe out,” he said, soft as mist. He pressed his hand against my stomach, the gesture both commanding and supportive at once. “Focus. Try.”

Focusing would be a feat with his body pressed against mine. He was solid, unflinching, and I flexed my sore muscles so as to keep myself from pressing into him. I’d staved off the exhaustion of the last few days as best as I could, but now, surrounded by the night and Theodore’s body, all I wanted to do was give in.

His hand on my stomach flared with his warm power, and the hum in my stomach started. I couldn’t tell if he’d coaxed it forth, or if he’d simply helped me focus my distracted attention.

Once I felt it, I had to fight to keep my hold on it. My heart sped as I focused my gaze on the thread-thin vine. Teeth clamped, I beckoned it toward me with a clear and singular thought. It didn’t move. Theodore held me tighter. Again, I sent a command, a plea. Again and again, and Theodore remained a steady, quiet support at my back as I tried. Finally, as my emotion began to swell, my arm tingled, my palm turned hot, and the little green coil stretched, agonizingly slowly toward my finger.

It tickled as it slithered around me like a tiny serpent.

I pulled in a stunned breath.

“Look at you,” Theodore crooned.

I turned in his arms and gazed up with a smile. We were heat and racing hearts. My senses tangled into an impenetrable mass—every one of them filled with him. I let my head fall back against his shoulder. “I did it.”

His hand left my wrist, moved to my hip, and he looked down at me with wonderment. It struck me that my fears, my unease, felt as far from me as they ever had.

He lowered his nose to touch the end of mine. “You did.”

Slowly, I rose up onto my toes. I could just feel the heat of his lips near my own when a curdling scream shredded the night’s quiet.

We jolted, jerked free of each other’s hold. The wailing sob ceased, only to start again a breath later. Theodore gave me a final look, eyes wide with alarm, before he rushed toward the horses and untied them. Quickly, he helped me into my saddle, took to his own mount, and then raced off toward the line of sea grass and trees that barricaded us from the beach.

“Keep close,” he commanded, before he disappeared through the thicket of tall stalks. He was moving toward the keen, toward the danger, and I couldn’t get my horse to keep up.

“Imogen,” Theodore called, just as my stomach twisted with sickness. Finally, my horse moved into a canter and through the grass. But it wasn’t fast enough. Nausea wrenched my gut.

We were on a long, flat stretch of beach. In the distance, a cluster of little grass-roofed huts sat in a wide circle. Torches dotted the spaces between them, flickering in the wind.

Theodore sped down the wet sand, his horse at a gallop. He was closing in on a huddle of villagers that stood just out of reach of the waves. Their attention clung to something at their center, though I was too far away to make out what.

I drew nearer and shivered as their faces came clear. Every one of them wore the same look of horror. Amid them, a woman—a Siren—lay on her stomach, face toward the water, hand outstretched, screaming. Her low-backed dress was clinging wet, her brown hair plastered to her face. Dark blood gushed from the exposed, muscly root of her right wing. It hung on by only a few threads of sinew. The flesh was shredded, as if it had been gouged with a saw-toothed blade.

Theodore was already off his horse, rushing to the Siren’s side, by the time I pulled on my mare’s reins. I fell to the sand as I dismounted, my knees too weak to hold me up.

“Imogen.” Theodore came back toward me, awash with concern.

“I’m fine. Go.”

He seemed unsure about leaving me before he finally raced to the Siren and knelt. “A nekgya?” he asked as he set his hands into the gore at her back. Inexorable purpose bent his face.

I made it to Theodore’s side just as he took the dagger from his hip. “I have to remove the wing.”

The Siren’s outstretched hand shook. I knelt in front of her, grabbed it and held tight. “He’ll take care of you.”

Theodore was covered to his elbows in slick, red viscera. He held the dagger in a firm grip and set it to the base of her wing. I looked away, into the Siren’s terror-wide eyes. She shook her head and said through quivering lips, “My daughter.”

“Your daughter?” Her hand was damp and shaking. “Where?”

When her wet eyes strayed to the water behind me I understood. “She’s in the water.”

My gaze shot to Theodore just as he dug the blade’s edge deep into her back. Dark, sweat-soaked locks of hair stuck to his forehead. He moved efficiently, even as the Siren’s screams sliced across the beach.

Focus. Try.

I squeezed the Siren’s hand before I let it go. “I’ll get her.”

The sea’s surface was calm as I rose to face it. In the distance, the moonlight illuminated a sandbar that cut the lagoon off from the rest of the sea.

Find the hum in your stomach, I thought to myself as I walked toward the water’s edge. I’d been able to command that little vine; I could command the sea as well.

After all, it was mine.

The water was to my ankles, seeping into my boots, when it shot straight to that chord in my middle. It hummed until it broke into a pulse, and then I was filled with that awful, sludgy power once more. It built up toward my throat, filling me, and then suddenly it was as if I could see the whole of the lagoon in my mind’s eye. I focused further and could feel the roll of the small waves on its surface. I could sense three bodies hanging in its depths.

Only one had a heartbeat.

Teeth clamped, I moved deeper into the water, homing my attention on the faint vibrations of that single beating heart rippling through it, and then, as Theodore had instructed, I commanded the power rolling through me to bring me the girl.

“Imogen.” Theodore’s voice boomed over the Siren’s whimpers. I whipped my head toward him. He looked murderous, hands covered in blood and sweat and sand, face carved with violent fear. His hands rested firmly on the Siren’s back as he worked to stop the bleeding. “Get out of the fucking water, or so help me, I will—”

“No.” My voice was quiet, but clear. “I can help.”

He shook his head, face bending with desperation. “Gods damn it,” he said through his teeth. “Quickly.”

The surface of the water began to ripple and roll. It had obeyed. It sped the girl toward me, but as I waited, the pulse in my chest began to burn like ripped skin. Like something was pulling against it. Fighting me. I gasped at the pain.

Theodore yelled my name from the shore.

I widened my stance as the body cutting through the water came closer. When, suddenly, it stopped. That ripping pain flared. I tried to command it to me once more, but it wouldn’t move. Something broke through the surface of the water, only feet away.

I couldn’t breathe.

Yelps and gasps and prayers erupted from the villagers on the sand.

A nekgya stood before me, holding the limp, adolescent girl in her arms. The girl’s body was slashed with oozing wounds. But her chest still rose and fell.

The thing holding her—the dead woman—had long, matted hair that had lumped into tentacle-like strands. They covered her chest and arms, curving through gray flesh like a thread through fabric. A small, violet urchin lived in one of her eye sockets, but the eye that remained watched me with familiar regard.

My voice quaked. “Give her to me.”

“There you are, dearest. I’ve waited so long.” The nekgya’s flat words came from its black-lipped mouth, but there was a second, identical voice that echoed the same words within my skull. The power in my chest blistered.

“What did you say?” Those words. I knew those words.

She moved toward me with hiccuping steps until she was close enough to set the girl into my outstretched arms. Her eye locked with mine. “There you are, dearest,” she repeated in a slow, awful voice. “I’ve waited so long.”

My shock had me stumbling backward through the water, clinging to the girl. Those were the same words I’d heard in my head when Evander had forced me into that tub.

The laugh that rasped from the dead woman was sterile and crackled like water was lodged in her chest. “Do not fear. You and I are one,” the nekgya said. “Bound with your given blood. Bound with the words. We cannot harm one another.”

“Bound to you?” I thought of the scars on my hand. Of all the blood I’d been forced to give over the years. Of the words—Nemea’s ritual prayer. A trickle of cold, complete horror ran down my body. “You’re Eusia.”

The nekgya didn’t answer.

Another body splashed through the surface of the water beside it, and I fell back another step. Her hair was fairer, the color of wet sand. The skin over her shoulders and ribs looked gelatinous, nearly transparent. Her large black eyes locked with mine.

“The bodies are reanimated by my power,” said the fairer nekgya in an identical voice to the first. In an identical voice to the one in my head. “And I am animated by yours, dear, generous girl. There you are. Just like your mother. I have waited so long.”

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