Текст книги "In the Veins of the Drowning"

Автор книги: Kalie Cassidy

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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.

I would do it quickly—slice his palm and press it to my own cut hand. A blood bond was that simple to forge, but I could not bring myself to move. He looked so soft in his sleep, all the sharp angles and harsh glares that I’d come to expect from him replaced by his open body and pouting mouth and delicate breaths.

This was wrong. It was treacherous and cruel to even consider this, but I steeled myself. I only wished to live. Mere hours sat between me and the discovery of Evander’s body. Between me and my certain, gruesome death. The water soaking my hair and chemise would dry quickly, and when it did, my wings would curl back under my skin.

Now. I had to do it now.

My body ached with tension, but I forced myself to the side of the bed. I set my knee into the mattress, then flinched when it creaked under my weight. Drips from the ends of my hair beat into the bedding. With a trapped breath, I made a shallow slice in my palm with a talon and reached for the hand that rested on Theodore’s chest, but before I could even touch him, he jerked. He seized my wrist, his grip as tight as an overdrawn manacle. A low growl, and he yanked me forward with such force that I fell over him and landed with my stomach pressed to his. Cold metal bit into my neck. This close, I blocked the dim light from the hearth and lost the details of his face. He pressed the edge of the blade further into my skin.

“It’s Imogen,” I wheezed, my throat moving against the pressure of the dagger. “It’s me. Please, don’t.”

“Imogen?” His voice was thick with sleep. He pulled the blade away. “What the fuck are you doing?”

We both moved clumsily in the dark, tangling with the sheets, scrambling to put some distance between us. He reached for the candle and striker on the bedside table, and the room filled with a burst of warm light. He gave me a terrible, wide-eyed scowl.

I froze.

Just like I had been with Evander, I was laid bare before King Theodore. He took in the whole of me. The shape of my wings, tucked tightly against my back, my fear-drenched face, and then his gaze slipped down to take in the lines and curves of my body beneath my wet chemise.

I waited for his revulsion, for him to throw me to the ground and wrap a hand around my throat, but he only looked at me with bewildered awe. The seconds seemed to stretch until finally, he pinched his eyes shut. He reached for a blanket and quietly extended it toward me. I pressed it to my chest.

Some grim awareness shot through him suddenly. He held his dagger up between us. “You’re covered in seawater.”

The implication in his deep voice was clear. He was in peril. Sirens on the sea were dangerous, drowning and eviscerating those who would harm them. I shook my head. “I’m not here to hurt you.” His distrust was palpable, scathing. I reached slowly for the hand he held the dagger in and guided the tip toward my sternum. “You have my word.”

The rigidity in his shoulders eased slightly, but he kept the dagger where I’d put it. His voice was dark as the night. “Tell me what’s happened.”

I curled my talons into the blanket. “I need to leave Fort Linum tonight.” My voice trembled. “Right now.”

“That’s not an answer.” He shook his head like he was in some warped dream and wished to wake. He glanced toward his door. “How did you get in here?”

I blinked. “I—don’t know exactly.” It wasn’t a lie. The power that had overtaken me bent the world to my will, but I’d not asked it to do so. I’d needed safe passage into this room; I’d needed Evander to not hurt me further. And that oily, awful power had seen it done. “Your guard opened the door for me.”

“I doubt that very much.” The tip of the blade pressed against my stomach, not hard, but enough to still me. “Answer me.”

“I’ve killed King Nemea’s captain.”

His mouth dropped open. “You killed… your fiancé… and then you came directly to me?”

I spoke in an overloud rush. “He took the siphon—like they do for executions—and he filled my chest with water. I shifted, and then he just climbed in with me, and I drowned—”

“Shhh. Quiet.” His free hand covered my mouth. He pulled the dagger away from me and stabbed it into the mattress beside him. “You have to keep quiet.”

I nodded, tears welling.

Like a stitch pulled too tightly through fabric, his muscles bunched, and his face creased. He dragged his hand slowly from my mouth until it rested on my chin. “What do you mean he climbed in with you?”

“Into the tub,” I whispered, eyes locked with his. “He had his men fill my tub with seawater and then he forced me in and—”

“Did you sing?” His hand fell away from me. “To drown him?”

“Sing?” I shook my head. “No. He climbed in with me, and he lay on top of me and then I… I don’t know how. I took the air from his chest.”

The look that he gave me sent cold skittering through my blood. It was a look of astonishment, like he could not fathom a more monstrous act, and it made the mattress beneath me slip away. It made the walls around me fade, until I was alone and adrift and hurtling toward my death.

“You killed your fiancé,” he said in a brutal whisper, “and then you came here moments later to beg me to leave in the middle of the night and take you with me?”

“No.” I looked him squarely in the eye—I had nothing left to lose. “I came to bind myself to you.”

The air around us thinned. His voice was deadly quiet. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Perhaps.” I didn’t bother to hide the desperation in my voice. “But I have nothing left to armor myself in except your protection and you refused to give it.”

His gaze was filled with the embers’ light, with incredulity. “I did not refuse. I said I needed time.”

“I’ll be tortured.” My words caught on tears. “I’ll be given to Evander’s men for them to do what they please before they slash my throat.”

The silence sat like pins in my skin. It eked out until he finally deigned to speak. I would have preferred spiteful words, a curse dripping with disdain, anything at all besides the complete lack of emotion that he gave me instead. “That’s what happens to murderers in a place like this.”

My chest ached with the weight of my hopelessness, but still, I wouldn’t leave without at least trying to make him understand. “He deserved it,” I spat. “Had I been married and bound to him it would have been me that died. He would have sucked the life from me, one small cruelty at a time.”

I scooted toward the edge of the bed. I left the blanket behind, and shivered as I moved toward the door. Death loomed just beyond, and I wondered if I should wait for it in my room, or if I should go out in search of it. Perhaps it would be better to trek out toward the fort’s guards, wings wide, and suffer a quick death from an arrow to the heart.

“Stop.” Theodore blew out a long breath and rose. His white sleep shirt was askew and rumpled, stopping just above his knees. A flinty look filled his eyes, but his voice was softer than I’d ever heard it. “Come away from the door.” His gaze darted quickly down my body before he picked up the blanket and tossed it at me. “Keep this on you, Gods damn it.”

When I finally had the blanket secure around me, he came nearer. He stood close, enveloping me in a wave of warmth. “What’s this?” He reached out and grazed a finger over a sore spot on my chin.

I winced at the pain. “From my darling fiancé’s siphon, I’d guess.”

“It’s bleeding.” He shook his head regretfully. “I’ve told you, helping you now will start a war.”

“Yes, I know.” Hot tears rolled freely down my cheeks. “I’m not an imbecile, contrary to what you believe. I understand the repercussions. I understand why you are sending me away to my death—”

He swiped a hand down his face. “Shut up, please.”

“What?”

“Shut up.” He moved to cradle my face in his hands so quickly that I gasped. “I’m fixing this.” He tilted my head back, thrusting my bloody chin forward and, with an angry glower, using his bright power to close the cut.

He finished quickly, his heat there and gone, but neither of us moved for a drawn-out moment after.

His hands finally fell from my face. “Were you truly going to bind us?” he asked in a strangely even voice.

“Yes.” I locked my gaze with his. “I am tired of being diminished.” I stepped toward the door. “But you were right, I’m too cowardly to save myself—”

“Do it.”

“I beg your—”

“Bind us,” he said. “A war with Nemea is unavoidable. He cannot be allowed to commit one atrocity after another. It’s not ideal to start it with the death of his captain and the stealing of his ward, but I believe… I believe it’s preferable to the alternative.”

My mouth hung open. “The alternative being my death.”

“Yes. So, I agree to our binding.”

“But why?”

“There’s no divine or earthly way that I would get anywhere near a ship with you unless I was immune to your lure.”

My face flushed. “That’s fair.”

“There are three conditions.”

“Of course.” I sucked in a shaky breath as wariness surged. “What are they?”

“You denounce Nemea, and you swear fealty to me as your new king. Then, when we arrive in Varya, you go directly to the Mage Seer and have our blood bond severed in a ritual there.”

It wasn’t lost on me that he could ask me to remove my own hand and feed it to his dog while smiling and I’d say yes. “I can do that.” I waited cautiously for the final condition. Theodore was a shrewd king, with a gaze like razors, and a mind just as sharp. He would require something of me, something far greater than my bending a knee and trekking to sever our bond. “The third?”

He began to rummage through a trunk at the end of the bed. Out came dark trousers, a white shirt. He bent toward the hearth and set some logs atop the smoldering embers. “When you return from the Mage Seer,” he said, “you will complete one task of my choosing.”

A warning bell tolled through me. One task of his choosing. I watched with a wary gaze as he dug through the trunk again. He checked papers, other small items shoved between the clothes, and I realized he was deciding what to burn. We’d be leaving too quickly for him to bring along his effects. “What’s the task?” I asked carefully.

He avoided my gaze. “I don’t know yet.” He threw a small stack of papers into the fire and then began to pull on his trousers. “Quickly, my lady, your hair is drying. Your wings will shrivel up next and we’ll have lost our opportunity.” He began to remove his sleep shirt, and I looked toward the door. “Do you agree to my conditions?”

By every marker of what was fair, I should have. I should have fallen to my knees and kissed his warm fingers for being willing to cut himself open and tie us together. And if he asked that I risk my life, my safety, the prospect of a home of my own, I should say gladly. The king looked at me with disbelief, as if he could not understand my pause, and I thought: He has never known what it is to exist purely for the use of others.

The thought of submitting to the open-ended whims of yet another king, of owing obedience, of not being wholly my own, choked me with despair.

“I am willing to put my life in danger,” he fumed, “to jeopardize the well-being of my kingdom, so that you can leave this place safely—”

His words landed like a spark on dead grass. They lit my mind with a dreadful realization. No good and fair and just king—no king who was duty-bound to his core—would do something this foolish. A king as virtuous and powerful as Theodore would let me, an orphaned ward of a vicious and lowly king, die here because his reign demanded it. Of course, he might feel the barest prick of guilt to deny me, he might even be so soft as to lament the loss of a young woman who had so wished to live, but he would not do this.

“Your decision, Lady Imogen?”

In the firelight, he looked as hard and imposing as a statue. Shadows tucked themselves beneath his golden-brown cheekbone, into the hollow of his neck and the furrow of his brow. I could see the shape of his ancestor in him. The Great God Panos had been strong and indominable too. He needed nothing from me. And I had nothing to give. But I thought of him in Nemea’s ritual room, spun through with fury over my blood. He’d told me with surety, I do know you.

Who do you think I am?

Suddenly, I wondered if this lopsided favor was perhaps perfectly balanced.

“I agree to your conditions, Your Majesty.” I tilted my chin up. “But if you prove untrustworthy, so help me, once our bond is severed, I will—”

Theodore cocked his head. “Are you threatening me?”

“I have little reason to trust men who say they will do right by me in exchange for my obedience.” I’d grown so cold, so weary, that the words came out in one pathetic, trembling breath.

He raised his brows, conceding my point. “Let’s do this before you accidentally kill me.”

I lowered myself into the warmth rolling out of the hearth. Theodore didn’t join me. He strode to the door, glowered at me, and said, “Keep your blanket on.” Then he brought the three guards in, one by one. Each took me in with alarm and Theodore gave them a searing look. “Where’s Commander Mela?”

His commander. Agatha’s commander. All the men held themselves still, their faces unreadable, until finally one of them looked ashamedly to the floor. “He told us to cover his post.” There was a heavy pause. “He went to meet a woman.”

I’d not thought the king’s mood could have gotten worse, but he grew even more glum, and his voice fell even lower. “Find him.”

“He’ll be on the floor below,” I cut in. “Fourth door on the right.”

Theodore’s attention snapped to me. “Agatha?”

I nodded.

He swiped a hand down his face, then in precise, hushed tones laid out the plan of escape. “Wake the off-duty guards, and before you return here, go to Lady Imogen’s chamber. There’s a dead man in a tub of seawater. Collect some of that water and bring it to me. And for the love of the fucking Gods, do not leave my door unguarded.”

Theodore’s men swept from the room, and he forced the door’s lock into place with a frustration that was surely meant for me. There came the susurrus of linens and the clink of metal, but my attention was on the engagement ring that still sat on my finger. A heavy, sickening feeling settled over me. “I have one condition of my own.”

Theodore came to sit before me with his dagger in one hand and a heap of green silk in the other. “You don’t get conditions—I’m the one doing you a favor.” He tossed the pile of cloth at my knees. “Put this on when your wings shift away.”

I gave him a determined look. “Agatha comes too.”

He spun the hilt of the dagger in his hand. Shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. You don’t need your nursemaid to accompany you and—unlike you—she’s perfectly capable of getting out of here on her own.”

Tears tightened my throat. He was right. I gave an anguished nod and held my hand up between us, revealing the shallow cut I’d made before he’d woken. The scars across my palm looked twisted and pale. Undeterred, Theodore took my cold hand in his warm one and swiped a finger over the cut and gnarled skin, so softly that I winced.

“I have a soft spot for Agatha too.” He’d said it like an apology, voice tender and steeped with regret.

The dagger gleamed as he brought it toward my palm. I went taut wondering how deeply he’d cut me, if he would heal me quickly after, or make me wait.

“Take it,” he said, then pressed the hilt into my other hand. “I’ve heard a Siren bond is painful.” There was no trepidation in his voice, but I wondered if he was afraid. “The way it settles in the body.”

I nodded. I’d heard the same. “Don’t go soft on me now, Your Majesty.”

The corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly, and when I placed the blade to my palm, his lips pinched. I sliced, a quick and shallow cut, and then I set the edge of the blade against Theodore’s palm and made a twin wound. At once, we drew in a breath and pressed our bloody palms together. My heart thundered, beating through my entire body, but I focused on the sticky warmth between our hands.

Theodore gasped. His strong fingers clamped around my palm. The look that marred his face sat somewhere between pain and pleasure. Muscles shook, a sheen of sweat erupted over his cheeks, over the column of his neck. As his head fell back, he stifled a deep moan.

With bated breath, I waited. And waited. Theodore’s body went loose, his pain cresting and falling, and then he looked at me with expectant panic. “What do you feel?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

And then it came.

His blood felt like starshine. Bright and boiling, it climbed up the veins in my arm, into the pulse in my neck. It blistered me from within as it spread and spread through my body. I could hear myself moan, could feel my back curve with the hurt, but when it fell to knit itself through my stomach, the room went black. My jaw opened in a curdling scream.

Theodore’s hand flew over my lips, and when that wasn’t enough, he cradled my head and pressed my mouth to his chest. “Quiet,” he pleaded into my ear. “Imogen, stop.”

But I couldn’t. I was being ripped apart from within. That thread inside me pulled so tightly that I thought it would snap and slash my heart and I would die right there in his arms. I clawed at his shoulders, at his back, and too slowly, the pain began to gutter. The bond sat in my belly, emitting a fluttering heat, and I was whimpering against his hard body, trying for steady breaths.

Theodore looked down at me, stunned. He raised a hand to my cheek and pulled away the hair that had stuck itself to my slick skin. “Are you okay? We need to go now. Tell me you’re all right.”

I nodded.

“No.” His voice was hoarse, breathy. He gave me a little shake. “Say it. Let me hear you.”

His worry over me was clear, a deep, consuming current, and I knew the bond had taken. That was what it did—compelled protection. I looked into his eyes and tried to hide how strange I felt. My insides quaked. I thought I might be sick.

“I’m all right.”

He gave me a sharp nod and tried to school the stricken look on his face. Through the bonding, my wings had slipped back beneath my skin, leaving my shoulder blades raw and oozing. Theodore helped me keep my balance, gaze averted, while I removed the blanket and my wet chemise. He did not see the wounds my wings had left behind and I said nothing of how they hurt before I swung the robe over my shoulders and cinched it at the waist.

A soft knock at the door made me jump. Theodore permitted his guards in and this time it was his full retinue of six. One of them carried a vase that had been in my room—the scent of seawater met my nose. And trailing them all, with wild, knotted curls, flushed cheeks, and kiss-swollen lips, was Agatha.

Theodore looked at her and his mortification was complete. “Hello, Agatha.” He glared at the tall, smug-looking soldier standing beside her. “Lachlan, I’ll gut you.”

“Yes, I know,” said Lachlan. “Agatha informed me that she’s coming with us.”

Theodore shot me a scowl. “Blessed by the bloody Gods tonight, aren’t you?” He pointed to the vase of seawater. “Give her that.”

I cradled it to my chest and straightened under the king’s dour gaze. It was dark and stern and the sheer intensity of it turned the cool air in the chamber stifling.

“You got past my men, my lady,” he said, “now get us past Nemea’s.”

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