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“Who hurt you?” I said breathlessly as I stumbled back, blood rushing from my head in a dizzying wave as the pain receded.

“Say’s the one who got on her knees for a male who is not one of her bonded,” he rebutted, strolling to the doorway only to stop and look over his shoulder.

“I do transactions in games, vicious one,” he said, straightening his jacket as if nothing had happened. “I will give you the chance to win your memories back. What you do with them will be your choice, though I hope you choose to end the suffering you’ve caused.”

I pressed my lips together as nausea twisted violently through my gut. Shame burned so fiercely it felt as though it were stripping the flesh from my bones.

How he possessed my memories, I had no idea, but I would do anything to get them back.

“There will be a locket at the centre of a maze. Simply be the first to obtain it, and the memories will imbue into you if you sing to it.” His serpentine smile returned, gleaming in the orange flicker of candlelight. “Watching you absorb them will be very amusing indeed.”

I schooled my features, dipping my chin in a small nod. I could not keep fighting a past I couldn't remember.

“You carry her soul, Lyra Meridian, but your heart feels different to Maraveth’s. Perhaps you will choose differently.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Overboard

Rythos

The Dead Sea swallowed me.

Waves closed over my head as I dove into the cursed water, swallowing the storm, the ship, and the screams of the men I had tied to the mast.

For one suspended heartbeat, there was only the cold pressure of the salt water and the endless black of a sea that had drowned Fae and Mortals alike.

My vision sharpened, predatory eyes always adjusting to my environment as I swam deeper into the waters.

The darkness peeled back in shades of blue and black, the depths unfolding around me with clarity as I swam beneath the stern.

The ship groaned above me like a wounded beast, its hull cutting through the water while the song drifted from somewhere below.

Shapes moved impossibly fast beneath me, circling from the depths in long, fluid arcs.

They were too fast to see properly. But I knew what they were. I saw a glimmer of scales as tails swished through water.

Sirens.

They swam closer, circling me as their songs slithered through the water, sweet and hypnotic. Their tails brushed against my body in soft, deliberate passes meant to weaken my will.

But I was immune.

One rose from the depths, her body cutting through the black water with a predator’s grace. Her tail shimmered behind her, green as moss slicked over river stone.

She stopped directly in front of me, suspended in the dark. Brown hair drifted around her in a tangled halo, framing a face too beautiful to belong to anything but something made by my vicious drownling.

She tilted her head to the side, the motion unsettlingly slow, and studied me.

Surprise flickered across her features.

“You do not yield to our song, sailor,” she said in a lyrical voice, thick with an accent I had not heard since Maraveth. Somehow, her voice travelled to me as if we were not underwater.

“I am bonded to your goddess,” I replied, bubbles escaping my mouth and floating to the surface.

“That would not protect you from our spell. Unless…”

Her tail coiled beneath her, emerald scales glinting through the black water as it lashed out. It sliced through my chest with the side of her fin.