Chapter 261: 261
The salty water kisses the tips of my shoes and the hem of my dress. I inhale a deep breath while I wait to see the siren. Perhaps she won’t appear and I’m preparing for nothing. However, soon small ripples form on the water and a pink mane rises from the ocean.
“We meet again, Elara Voss.”
Her pointed teeth gleam as if she had just sharpened them.
“Let’s skip the formalities. Tell me what the sea wants in exchange for its favor.”
“I already told you, Elara Voss.”
“That’s no longer possible.”
“Oh? How so?”
The siren raises her eyebrows and for a second I wonder if her surprise is real or just a well-played act.
“Bryelle is no longer among the living.”
She seems to study my words, for several minutes she keeps silent, leaving me with nothing but the sound of the surf.
“If the ocean is right, there are two daughters of Draven. We can still claim one.”
“You said that when my daughters were born, I would know that one of them had been claimed by the sea, and so it was. Bryelle was born with scales on her body. Evren is intact, she has not been claimed and she will not be claimed now. I had hoped the sea would not be so despicable.”
She sharpens her gaze, looking at me almost offended.
“Even so, the favor has not been repaid.”
“And here I am, demanding to know what the sea wants in exchange for saving my life once.”
Despite the fear coiling in my stomach, I force myself to stand firm, with a determined and upright posture. I don’t look away for a second, alert to her movements.
“A life for a life is fair. But given the circumstances and your loss, the sea is willing to be benevolent.”
Her ruthless smile doesn’t match her words. Benevolence is the last thing that comes to my mind.
“We’ll be satisfied with a drop of your blood.”
I take a step back. However, the sea creature is not willing to leave without her payment as last time. Before I can run or defend myself, her sharp nails close around my wrist and her teeth capture one of my fingers. Despite her predatory appearance, with incredible delicacy she manages to prick the tip of my finger. To my horrified eyes, I see a drop emerge, so intensely red it seems furious. She licks my finger, and the contact of her tongue with my skin is rough. She closes her eyes as if savoring it, and when she opens them again, a vicious gleam shines in her gaze.
My chest rises and falls with hurried, incomplete breaths.
“Now the sea and you are at peace. May you have a long and happy life, Elara Voss.”
By the way she pronounces each word, it sounds like she’s wishing me the exact opposite. I wait, pulse racing and cold seeping into my bones, to see her disappear the way she came. She does so without turning her back to me or taking her eyes off me. It’s not until I see her vanish completely that I breathe again. It takes me several minutes to find the strength to turn without fear and retrace my steps, heading straight for the place where I know my pieces are safe, where evil doesn’t seem so powerful, where no matter how much pain my body suffers, he always finds a way to heal me again.
I enter the cabin, where luckily it’s a little warmer. I look at my already healed finger as I pass through a small room where a cradle holds a sleeping Evren. I follow a trail of light to a bath where there’s a kind of barrel filled with hot water. Inside is Cassian, whose eyes capture me the moment I set foot in the room.
He smiles, letting me see the tip of one of his fangs.
He extends a wet hand toward me.
“I was waiting for you.”
Me too, my heart whispers, all my life…
Seven months later…
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?”
I shake my head with Evren in my arms, and together we watch as Tucker sticks his head out the carriage window, looking at us with absolute adoration.
“Nerathis is no longer my place,” I reply. “But I promise to visit you on the day you least expect it.”
“Maybe I’ll surprise you with a visit.”
“I don’t know if Cassian will like that very much.”
He lets out a laugh.
“Yes, I’m sure he won’t miss me much.”
We remain silent, looking at each other. During these months, I’ve felt that our bond has healed, or at least as much as it’s possible to fix something that was never meant to exist. Our blood is not the same, but we still call each other siblings because the memories of growing up together, playing, laughing, bind us more than genetics. Still, sometimes it feels strange. Really, everything does.
The day I returned to the castle, to the place I can now call home without feeling I’m wrong, everyone erupted in commotion. No one expected to see me come back with a baby in my arms. Clarissa and Naida quickly pampered Evren as if she were their own daughter, just as they had done with me from the day our paths first crossed. It’s something I’m grateful for, because sometimes it’s hard, I feel like a bad mother when I look at her face and a deep pain cuts through my chest as I remember another face that would now look just like hers.
At times, when I’m alone, I look at myself in the mirror and say her name out loud so I don’t forget how it sounds on my lips.
“I’d better go now, before it gets any later.”
We look at each other one last time, not very sure when our paths will cross again. This isn’t his place, it never was, and it’s time for him to return to what I once thought was my home, for he still has ties to the small village where I grew up.
He taps the roof of the carriage and with one last smile, he sets off. I help Evren wave her tiny hand in farewell, and together we watch as he disappears down the path toward the edge of Cassian’s territory. When I can no longer see him, I turn and head back inside, where the atmosphere is no longer cold, like those first times I stepped inside. Now the castle is my home, there is warmth, I am surrounded by people who love me, and I no longer feel like a prisoner, because I have broken every bar and freed myself, even if sometimes I’m afraid to see my reflection in the mirror and remember the power that hides beneath my skin. That skin that not so long ago seemed so easy to break, so fragile, aging by the second…
“Witchy, don’t run so fast!”
“I’ve told you a thousand times to stop calling me that!”
“You didn’t seem to mind much last night.”