* * * * *
The Hunter listened to the siren enter the water, tasting her fear on his thick, black tongue. He’d wanted to take her when he’d first felt her presence. He knew where she was heading, knew what she must do. He was strong enough now that he’d eaten one of his own. For his brother was different than the humans he’d taken. Their bodies were useless and he’d discarded them in the sea. He gained power from their souls alone. But a serpent’s flesh is seeped in magic, even a serpent like Luther Pentos who’d forsaken what he really was. And now all that magic charged through the Hunter, giving him the strength he needed to ensure he could defeat his prey.
The Hunter lay frozen as the current coursed by him, and a faraway song touched his soul. It was a voice he knew from long ago, the voice that had called him, had made him what he was. He tried to resist it, but a sharp heat rushed through him, burning his insides. He had to go.
“No,” growled the Hunter, calling to her. “Not now, my queen,” but there was no turning back. As he let the young siren swim through the water and toward the destruction of his kind, he remembered the lie he’d told Luther Pentos, whose flesh was boiling inside him now. He’d said he’d released his queen, that he was out of her grasp, when really it was she who had let him go. She who had cut the ties that bound them, the love that was suppose to endure for all time.
“Hendrick,” sang the queen inside his mind, and he swam toward her, her song roping him in. “Hendrick, my beloved, our separation is over Now we shall do what we must to be free.”
Black Waters (Book 1 in the Songstress Trilogy) Page 23
