by Jessa Lucas
As his hands twisted in my hair, I let myself indulge in this man. The siren didn’t even have to claw her way to the surface; she rose in me like the lips of the sea brushing across the beach, and I felt whole.
It was my second gleaming truth: the dream had lied.
I’d carried the belief that the siren was my inner demon, a thorn in my side to endure, a dog in me to be tamed. The triumph of the dream— its single most effective deception— was that it’d severed me from her, put our identities on opposite ends of the spectrum when the entire time, I’d been the whole damn spectrum.
I was my siren. And facing the complexities of a man I’d long believed hated me as we stood at the brink of an abating storm, I realized how deeply intertwined the siren and I must’ve always been. On Earth, she’d been a mystery, an illicit power I didn’t want and, at best, used to save my own ass. Here, she’d been a secondary mind inside my own, a yearning which lived and bred death inside me, a champion of my wants and a foe to my intentions. But all along we were the same, holding hands with goodness and the capability of darkness, far too intricate a being to simply be only a murderer or only a savior.
The Grimms couldn’t suffocate my truth. It was so obvious now, and as my subconscious had trekked through loop after loop of the nightmare, it’d learned this, too. The siren and I?
We were one.
I felt the dam in me raise an inch, a trickle of might, a tremor of conviction, rush back into my veins. I broke away from Gilles, hungry for the sea. Thunder crackled halfheartedly as though sinking into the edge of the world along with the night. The faint flush of sunrise was brimming over the horizon, and I swore to god if a fucking rainbow appeared—
My hands grasped at the rail of the terrace, every molecule in my body screaming as I noticed a black streak in the distance.
“What’s that, Gilles?”
He stepped next to me, squinting out at the dark flecks silhouetted against the dawn. “Those are ships,” Gilles frowned.
I stared them down through the rain. “They knew I was awake,” I said. “She’s coming.”
I could feel it, a delicate thread strung between me and the black sails creeping ever closer over the cresting waves. It was tightening, pulling them in, drawing me out.
“Ündane célé-van ashriv-ar, ni nominmar elemtani,” I whispered.
I felt Gilles look over at me. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know what it means,” I said, “but it makes me feel brave.”
“Then keep saying it, Princess,” Gilles murmured.
My eyes narrowed in on the ships. With my mind, I plucked the space between us like a harp, letting the tension echo from tower to sea. I could feel them, sailing over my territory, readying their men, and my magic surged, smiling as it hurtled towards them.
I stood a little straighter. Tucked my hair behind an ear in the growing winds. Folded my arms, relaxed against one of the pillars, and let my gaze drift between Gilles and the looming threat. I smiled.
The golden yolk of the sun tipped above the ocean, light falling on the black streak of doom riding readily for us. It glinted against the undulating waves of desperate waters, glinted through the returning rain. The storm wasn’t drowning into the sea— the sea was becoming my new storm.
My hair whipped across my face as Gilles moved closer to me, expression colored with both concern and amusement. I glanced over at him. “Crafty and determined, right?”
He smirked, the concern losing out.
“You trust me?” I asked.
“I trust you,” he said.
Something dark lashed in the belly sea. I felt it rupture beneath the surface, a keening call, a thrash in the deep. I imagined the siren in me, a beautiful beast, thrusting against the prison of my body.
The siren. The tempest. Me.
Release her.
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About the Author
Jessa Lucas is a debut author of steamy, twist-filled fantasy and paranormal romance, and drinker of too much caffeine. She likes her heroes like she likes her coffee– tall, dark, and crafted with a little overindulgence in mind. She hopes you like them that way, too.
For more information:
authorjessalucas.wordpress.com
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