by C. L. Wilson
She pulled off the damp sheet, flung it over the top of the screen, and dropped the gown over her head, not surprised to find it a perfect fit. The gown had a modest scooped neckline and full skirts. She laced up the bodice and exited the alcove in time to see Dilys drawing the bathwater out of the tub and sending it out the window with a wave of his hand.
“That’s a convenient trick,” Gabriella noted. She rubbed one of the sheets over her hair until her curls were damp dry.
“Tey. There are a thousand and one practical uses for my gifts. That is number two-hundred thirty-three. The tub, I’ll have to physically carry out.” He smiled a little.
She didn’t smile back. Turning away, she picked up the hairbrush Dilys had left out for her, and sat down at his mirrored dressing table to begin pulling the brush through the wet tangles of her hair.
“Gabriella . . .” Dilys watched her in the mirror with eyes as careful as his tone. “Are you angry at me?”
The hand pulling the brush through her hair went still. The question honestly shocked her. “Why would I be angry at you?”
“Because I should have been there to stop them from taking you and your sisters.”
“Dilys, I was taken from my bedroom at Konumarr Palace. If I was going to be angry at anyone for allowing that to happen, I’d be angry at the palace guards. Or Wynter, for that matter, since he’s the king and was in the city at the time. But I’m not. It wasn’t their fault. It certainly wasn’t yours.”
“You’ve been acting strangely since we boarded the Kracken.”
She laughed a little without humor. “Have I? I suppose I have.” She winced as the brush caught on a tangle in her hair. Grabbing a chunk of hair above the tangle, she started to attack it with the brush, but Dilys made a sound of protest and took a step towards her.
She froze. Completely.
Dilys froze, too. His hands came up, palms open and facing her. “I was just going to offer to brush out that tangle before you rip out half your hair.”
She watched him warily, trying to still the rapid beat of her heart. “I’m sorry. I’m still a little jumpy.”
“Don’t apologize. Not to me. Not to anyone. I just wish I could have found you sooner . . . could have been there to stop it in the first place.”
“I know. I just . . . I don’t want to be touched right now.”
“Gabriella, the people who took you, did they—”
“The Shark and Mur Balat,” she interrupted. “That’s who took me. Mur Balat is a slaver—”
“I know who Mur Balat is.” His voice had gone hard, cold, his body stiff. “I suspected the Shark was involved. I even suspected Balat and the Shark had a mutual understanding not to interfere in each other’s enterprises. But I didn’t think the two of them were working together, and I definitely didn’t think Balat would be stupid enough to declare war on Calberna and the Winter King.”
“I don’t think Mur Balat meant you to know he was involved, but I don’t think he was concerned about the possibility either. If you or Wynter came after him with magic, you’d lose.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I tried to use my magic against him, and it was a mistake. It was almost as if he . . . absorbed it somehow . . . then he made a collar that prevented me from using my gifts at all.”
Dilys gripped the solid wood support beam that rose from the center of cabin. “Balat is a magic eater?”
“I’m vaguely familiar with that term, but he did say something about liking the taste of my magic. Is that what he was doing? Literally eating my magic? Like it was food for him?”
“It depends on the type of magic eater he is. That certainly helps explain how he managed to take control of the Trinipor Coast without an outright war. I always thought it was the witches he keeps in his employ who were his real secret weapon.”
“Did you know that the Shark is a Calbernan?” She watched him closely, saw the way his battle claws sank into the wooden post.
“We knew he possessed seagifts. You don’t sink Calbernan vessels or drown Calbernan crew without magic strong enough to counteract our own, but I didn’t begin to suspect he was from the Isles until after you were taken. As we tracked his ship down, it became clear he was using powerful seagifts, not some purchased spell or weaker form of water magic.”
“So, since you know the Shark is Calbernan, you wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that he’s a magic eater, too. Would you?”
Dilys flinched, and that was answer enough.
“Are all Calbernans magic eaters?”
His head shot up, his eyes wide and shocked. “No! By Numahao, we are not! A Calbernan—and I mean a true son of the Isles, not that thrice-damned, rotten-souled krillo who calls himself the Shark—are nothing like those scum.”
“But you all eat the magic of your wives, and especially your imlani women, to power your own. You’ve admitted as much. The ‘symbiosis’ you were telling me about.”
“There’s a difference, Gabriella. Magic eaters take what they want. Calbernans accept only that which is freely given, and we give back whatever our women need in return.” He drew himself up. “Is this why you don’t want me touching you? Because you think I would eat your magic the way Mur Balat did?”
“Wouldn’t you?” she challenged.
His head snapped back as if she’d slapped him. “Have I ever done so? Even once?” Then his eyes narrowed. “But you know that. You’re just trying to push me away again. I thought we’d gotten past that.”
She hated that he was so adept at avoiding her every attempt to control their conversations, hated that he was so good at seeing through her lies and misdirections. “Between the two of them, I’d rather have my magic consumed by Mur Balat than the Shark any day. Balat drained me without laying so much as his little finger on me.”
His expression went blank. The sort of blank that told her great and terrible violence was simmering just below the surface. He couldn’t hide it completely. It rumbled in his voice as he said, “And the Shark? Did he lay a finger on you?”
“He took great pleasure in laying all manner of parts on me. And no,” she added before he could ask again, “to answer the question that has you turning that post into toothpicks, he didn’t rape me. Neither of them did. Royal virgins are apparently not as valuable once they’ve been . . . used.”
He drew in a sharp breath, a muscle ticking at the hinge of his sharply clenched jaw. He glanced at the long furrows of splintered wood his claws had dug out of the support post and put his hands to his sides. “Gabriella.”
She turned back towards the dressing-table mirror, grasped a thick hunk of her hair and began working the brush though the tangle. “It’s funny,” she said. Her voice cracked a little, and she had to stop, take a breath, and swallow past the lump in her throat. “It’s funny, I always thought at heart I was a strong person.”
“You are, Gabriella. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”
She laughed hollowly. “Then you must know some pretty spineless and pathetic women.”
“I have known such women, yes, but you’re not one of them. Not even when you were doing your best to pretend to be milked tea.”
“Aren’t I? You give me too much credit. The pirates, the Shark, Mur Balat—none of them did anything to truly harm me. In fact, there are those who could reasonably argue that I was actually pampered by my abductors. I was too valuable a commodity for them to damage. They kept me restrained, of course, but Balat had these women aboard who spent hours working to beautify me. Massaging lotions and creams into my skin, tending my hair, my nails. Trying to make his product as close to perfection as possible before the sale.”
The brush had stuck on the tangle. She gripped her hair in a tight fist and forced the bristles through, hearing the rip as strands of hair broke. Dilys made a sound of protest, as if the damage she was doing to her poor hair hurt him more than it did her.
“I’ve never been a thing before,” she continu
ed as she pulled the clumps of hair from the brush and attacked the knot from a different angle. “That was a strange feeling. I’ve never been truly helpless, either. There’s nothing like being dehumanized and made completely helpless to strip away all the lies and masks and self-delusions a person hides behind and show them what they’re really made of. Even though I spent my life keeping my magic bottled up, I always knew it was there. That gave me a certain bravery. I told myself I would never willingly use that power, but it turns out that’s not true. It never has been. When it comes down to it, I will choose to kill whoever hurts me. I will kill them and take pleasure in it, and I won’t care who else gets hurt in the process.” She dragged the brush though the tangle again, tearing more hair free.
“Gabriella, stop. Give me that brush before you rip all your hair out.” Not waiting for her permission he crossed the floor and reached for the brush.
She thought about fighting him for it, but the instant his skin brushed against her, longing surged up with the force of an erupting volcano. She released the hairbrush as if it burned and snatched her hand back into her lap.
Dilys scowled, his eyes flaring bright gold as he clearly misinterpreted her flinch. But instead of calling her out on it, he gripped the brush, drew the moisture out of her still-damp hair, and went to work on the tangle at the back of her neck. He was much more patient and gentle with it than she had been—much more patient and gentle than she deserved—carefully unraveling the knotted strands a little at a time, pushing them aside to get at the core of the knot underneath.
“You say none of your captors raped you? The Shark did. When a Calbernan turns his back on every tenet of honor that we hold dear and choses to become a magic eater, as the Shark did, he becomes the worst, most despicable kind of magic eater there is. He takes sick joy in draining his victims against their will, and he doesn’t just take power when he feeds. He takes little bits of his victim’s soul. The Shark—may Numahao curse him for all eternity—he might not have raped your body, moa leia, but he raped your soul.” Tears welled in his eyes. “He did that to you, and I wasn’t there to stop it. I will never forgive myself for not being there to stop it.”
“Dilys—”
“You think that because you’re willing to do whatever it takes to stay alive that somehow you’re unworthy of happiness?” he asked softly. “You think because you want to hurt the people who hurt you that somehow you’re the monster? Gabriella, every living creature has a right to defend itself.”
“I did more than defend myself. There were innocent people aboard the ship that I destroyed. Servants. Slaves. I didn’t spare a single thought for any of them before I Shouted that ship and everyone aboard it to pieces. How was that defending myself?”
“Would you rather still be a prisoner sailing towards a lifetime of being treated as an owned thing?”
“You’re missing my point. I killed them. I killed every one of them. And I wanted to. That’s how I managed to do it. I kept fantasizing about killing them over and over and over again, in the worst ways possible, until not even Mur Balat’s collar could keep that part of me contained. I hungered for their blood, their deaths. I relished the thought of killing them.”
Dilys had reached the stubborn knot at the tangle’s core. He set down the brush and let his battle claws emerge just enough that he could pick apart the individual strands of the tangled knot.
“Listen to me, Gabriella, really listen to me. You have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to feel guilty about. As a Siren, no matter how you became one, you’re a force of the sea, just as I am. And like the sea, from which we derive our gifts, we are wild at heart, and deadly when angered. You say there were innocents aboard the ship you destroyed. How long were you aboard that ship?”
“Almost a week.”
“And in that time, did any of these supposed innocents attempt to free you or get a message to me or anyone who could come rescue you?”
He glanced in the mirror and saw her delicate brows draw together. “No.”
“Then they were not innocents, and they deserved their fate. You did what you had to do to free yourself. Had I been there, I would have slaughtered every last one of them, and their deaths at my hand wouldn’t have been as quick or as painless as they were at yours.” He met her eyes in the mirror and bared his elongated fangs. “I am a warrior of Calberna and a son of the sea, and I make no apologies for my nature. You shouldn’t either.”
“Easy for you to say. Their blood isn’t on your hands.”
“It isn’t on yours either. Their blood is on the hands of the Shark, Mur Balat, and the men who paid Balat to kidnap you and your sisters. Their blood is on my hands as well, before it’s on yours. Had I done a better job of seeing to your protection, you and your sisters would never have been kidnapped. You would never have spent a single moment in the possession of those vile krillos.”
“I told you I don’t blame you for that, Dilys.”
“Don’t you? A liana should be able to rely on her akua to keep her safe from harm, and I failed to do so.”
He had broken down the knot to its last few strands. With infinite care, he separated the last of the tangle and stared with aching sadness and a sense of vast emptiness at the smooth, vulnerable skin at the back of her neck, realizing at last what was at the core of the other tangle, the one wrapped around her heart.
“I failed you, Gabriella.”
He had come into the cabin determined to tear down the barriers she’d begun erecting between them again, determined to uncover whatever wounds her abductors had inflicted upon her so that he could help heal them. But if the root of the problem was that she had lost her trust in him—that she no longer saw him as a male she could rely on to be what she needed—then she no longer saw him as a male worthy of being her mate.
And, honestly, could he blame her? Twice now, Dilys had been measured on the most important scales there were, and twice now, he had come up wanting, unable to protect the females he loved. First, as a child with Nyamialine. Now, as a man with Gabriella.
Calbernan customs were wrong, it seemed. Not every male who earned the ulumi-lia was truly deserving of a wife.
He picked up the brush and ran it through her hair, mostly to give himself an excuse to touch her one last time. He brushed her hair until it shone like smooth waves of black silk and the curls of it wound around his fingers and clung to his skin. Then he set the brush back down and took a knee before her, reaching out to clasp her hand as he looked into her beloved, beautiful blue eyes.
“Gabriella Aretta Rosadora Liliana Elaine Coruscate, I’m going to ask you one last time, and then never again. Will you Speak my Name? Wilt thou claim me as thine own?”
Her soft mouth trembled. The slender hands in his trembled. “Dilys—I-I . . .” She broke off, closing her eyes and clamping her lips tight. She took a breath, then a second. The fingers clasped in his squeeze him tight. Then they relaxed, her face relaxed, and her eyes opened, deeply blue and full of calm determination. She pulled her hands free of his. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry, but no, I won’t.”
He bowed his head, absorbing the blow to his heart, accepting its fatal finality. “Accepted.” Was that his voice? So hollow and raw? There was no blood spilling from the invisible hole in his chest, but he could feel it pouring out of him all the same. With great effort, he forced himself to stand. “Your pardon, Myerialanna. I will take my leave of you now, and set the Kracken on a course for Konumarr. I promised your sister and her husband that I would find you and bring you safely home, and that is what I intend to do.” He gave a final bow and started for the door.
“What?” Gabriella leapt to her feet. “Dilys, no!” She ran after him and grabbed his arm. “We can’t go back to Konumarr yet. My sisters are still out there. Mur Balat and the Shark took them, too! I can’t go home until I find them! Balat was planning to sell them, just like he did me. Everything the Shark did to me, he did to them. I can’t leave them to that. I have to rescue
them! You have to help me rescue them!”
Her frantic fear beat at him. She might no longer trust him, might have rejected him as a potential mate, but he was still bound to her by the unbreakable ties of liakapua. He had hoped to reestablish the closeness they had shared that day on the docks, when he set sail, hoped to use that connection to ease into the truth about her sisters’ fate. But that option was gone now.
He drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “Forgive me, Myerialanna Summer. There is no easy way to tell you this . . .”
She drew back, every part of her closing off in instinctive self-protection. “Tell me what?”
“Your sisters . . .”
“No.” She began to shake her head, backing away further still.
“We picked up the trail of the ship carrying your sisters over a week before your Shout. Every Calbernan vessel in the north Varyan joined the pursuit. We had them cornered. We were about to board them, when the ship . . . your sisters must have tried to use their magic to get free, and the ship exploded.”
“No.” She held up a hand as if as if to silence him, as if that could make his words less true. “No, Dilys.”
He couldn’t keep his distance, couldn’t stop himself from catching her hand, threading his fingers with hers as if he still had that right. “I’m sorry, Gabriella,” he said softly. “Your sisters did not survive.”
Chapter 24
“No.” Gabriella’s trembling lips pressed together. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision. “No, Dilys. My sisters can’t be dead. They can’t be.” Her heart was breaking, the pain immense. They couldn’t be dead. Not Aleta . . . not Vivi. They were her sisters, her family. They were everything. “You must be mistaken. Maybe they weren’t on the ship. How could you be sure?”
