Hymn of Breath and Bone (The Whispering Sea Duet #2)

Chapter 8

“I want you to take the medicine twice a day for the next week,” Mira said, pulling away and moving toward a shelf filled with little bottles and vials. “Then you can lower the dosage to once a day.”

I was back in the healing wing as requested, Caspian hovering like the insufferable seagull he was just beyond the curtain.

It was both endearing and annoying.

“Three drops on your tongue, four if you’re having a hard day,” Mira continued, rattling off instructions as she stoppered a glass vial. She had listened to my breathing again with the strange tube—a stethoscope, she said—and made indecipherable mutterings as she scratched notes in a little book that she kept in her pocket. “You can take it in tea if you prefer. For the taste.”

“And when can I stop taking it?” I asked.

She looked at me over her shoulder with a frown. “Never.”

“Never?” I balked.

“What’s wrong?” Caspian asked, poking his head around the curtain to glare at Mira.

I rolled my eyes and Mira sighed.

“Your Majesty, if you would—”

“Shoo, you overgrown seagull,” I snapped, glowering at him. “No one is murdering me.”

Caspian frowned again but acquiesced, although I could practically feel him listening on the other side of the thin curtain.

“His Majesty tells me that you have flare-ups often,” Mira said softly, glancing at where Caspian’s shadow loomed. She pressed a bottle into my hands and perched on a stool before me, our eyes level. “That you’ve struggled since birth. Is that true?”

I nodded, and she smiled sadly, as if I had confirmed her diagnosis.

“Your lungs are damaged beyond repair, Your Highness,” she said. “Managing your symptoms is the best we can do, and preventative care is key to that. Your selkie healers have been reacting to the flare-ups. My goal is to prevent them, and I’ve been successful before with similar patients.”

“Mira is the most skilled healer among my people,” Caspian shouted around the curtain.

“If you’re going to eavesdrop, then you may as well get in here,” I sighed, exasperation mingling with affection. “And I don’t mean to seem ungrateful,” I added to Mira as Caspian did as he was bade without the slightest hint of embarrassment. “I was just…surprised.”

Disappointed, was what I meant. Caspian had gotten my hopes up that his people could cure me completely. Still, this was better than any other healers had been able to offer me. I should be grateful.

Mira patted my hand in understanding. “We have discovered herbs and minerals on the mainland that can do amazing things,” she said, “especially when combined with fae healing magic. It’s possible that a more permanent treatment will be available someday. And I will of course continue to adjust your medicine as needed if you have flare ups. Treating chronic illnesses like yours can often be a bit of a guessing game at first.”

“Do any sirens have healing magic?” I asked.

Mira shook her head. “Sirens all have wind and song magic. My skills in healing come from study and practice.”

Caspian sat beside me and took my hand. “Mira can do miraculous things though, Urchin,” he assured me, giving the healer a respectful nod. “She brought Astraios back from near death once. I trust that she’s right.”

Mira blushed furiously, and I wasn't sure if it was because of Caspian’s praise or the mention of his second mate.

“You’d have to go to the Fae Realms for true magical healing,” Mira continued, the blush fading only slightly. “Or perhaps the new Witch Queen could manage it.”

“Perhaps after we’ve dealt with our many problems,” I sighed, smiling resignedly at Caspian. He gave me a hard look, and I knew if I asked him, he’d take me to the Fae Realms today and beg their queen for a cure. I squeezed his hand in reassurance. “I’m fine for now.”

“Say the word, Urchin,” he murmured, kissing my brow, “and I’ll fly you there myself.”

“Best to wait until her concussion has fully healed,” Mira warned, glaring at her king. “And since you clearly couldn’t follow my other instructions, here’s your contraceptive.”

“He didn’t—” I blushed, looking aghast as Caspian shot Mira his catlike grin. “We didn’t—”

“Come on, Urchin. Mira doesn’t need the sordid details.” Caspian lifted me off the exam table and pocketed the vial Mira handed him.

She rolled her eyes and turned back to me. “Please let me know at once if there’s a change in your symptoms, or if you don’t feel relief within three weeks.”

“Thank you,” I said as Caspian pushed me from the room. I saw Mira roll her eyes again as I glanced back, a faint blush still staining her cheeks.

“Did something happen between her and Astraios?” I asked, dropping my voice to a whisper lest the healers overhear me. There were several in the wing this morning, some attending patients while others wrote notes or mixed medicines. I almost considered asking Caspian to let me stay and watch. “She blushed when you mentioned him.”

“Oh, the usual,” Caspian drawled, guiding me by the small of my back. “He bedded her after she healed him, and she would rather like him to do it again, I think.”

“What?” I choked, smothering a cough as Caspian glanced down at me in wry amusement. “Are they mates?”

“No.” He shook his head. “They would be bonded already if they were. Either Astraios’s mate hasn’t been born yet, or they aren’t here.”

I frowned, trying to read his tone. “You think other sirens have selkie mates?”

“It stands to reason,” he replied. “Or they could be in Nordhavn. Some sirens never find their mates, though.”

“They’re just alone forever?”

“They find companionship, like Mira and Astraios. But they never mate.”

“That sounds lonely.”

Caspian steered me down an unfamiliar tunnel. “I agree.”

“Where are we going, exactly?”

“Well, since you can’t train today, I figured we’d do the next best thing,” he drawled, giving me a smirk.

I was about to ask what that meant when I heard a faint melody floating up the tunnel. I moved to cover my ears on instinct, but Caspian caught my wrists.

“It’s not siren song,” he promised, bringing my fingers to his lips and kissing them with a bemused smile. “At least, not the kind you’re worried about. Equally magical though.”

He winked at my puzzled expression, drawing me closer to the music. I didn’t feel like I had in the library when the song muddled my senses, but I didn’t relax my vigilance until we rounded a corner to a curved cavern that opened to the sky.

A chorus of siren children was singing, their winged backs turned to us as they watched their teacher. She moved a baton higher, and their voices rose with it; lower, and they dropped to vibrate through the space.

It was only when the instructor, an elderly female judging by the gray tones of her hair and wrinkled face, looked up to give Caspian a delighted smile that the children turned.

“Cas!” one screeched, and the whole chorus fell to ruin as children ran for my mate and practically piled atop him.

He laughed, greeting the children by name, and my heart squeezed. He was the Siren King, yet he knew each of them, offering hugs to the younger ones and handshakes or shoulder touches to the elders.

Seas, there was something primally attractive about seeing him scoop small children onto his back and laugh without restraint at their antics. It made my core ache.

The children seemed to range in age from very young to early-adolescent. Perhaps twelve or thirteen at most. The younger ones didn’t pay any attention to me, but a few of the older children glanced at me warily as I waited, standing somewhat awkwardly a step away from their king.

Caspian looked up with a grin, his eyes sparkling gold. My heart lurched with affection.

“Marina,” he said, trying and failing to sound serious as children hung from his biceps. “These are my most precious subjects. And this,” he gestured to the cavern and instructor, who nodded politely to me, “is where they learn to sing.”

“Come sing with us, Cas!” called one of the children clinging to his leg.

“‘Cas’?” I asked, raising a brow.

He shrugged, ruffling the child’s hair. “They don’t swear fealty until they reach maturity,” he explained. “So I’m ‘Cas’ until then.”

The children were already tugging him toward the stone circle where they had their lessons, and a small girl with big blue eyes was looking expectantly up at me and tugging on the hem of my skirt.

“My mommy says you’re a princess.”

“I am,” I laughed, more nervous around these children than I had been around all of the adult members of Caspian’s court. “But you can call me Marina.”

“I’m Viola,” she said, dragging me by the hem toward the circle and tugging me down to sit next to her. “You can sit with me, Rina.”

I smiled at the nickname as a few other children sat beside me, their downey wings flapping in uncertainty.

Caspian was sitting, surrounded by giggling children, and the instructor had to whistle sharply to get their attention. He winked at me as the children began to sing a little song about rowing a boat, and I muddled along as best as I could with the rest of the lesson.

The children eventually relaxed around me and took pity on my clear lack of training. By the time the lesson ended, I had a small girl sitting in my lap, her soft feathers tickling my nose each time she turned, and another hanging on my arm.

When the teacher dismissed them, the children devolved into chatter and shouting, all semblance of order gone.

“Will you sing with us again, Rina?” Viola asked, tugging on my skirt as I tried to extricate myself from the other clinging children.

“Rina would love to,” Caspian replied for me, grinning down as he held two children aloft in his arms, one on his back, and two more hanging on his biceps. He made a show of flexing before lowering the whooping children, and they ran off with their friends as he offered a hand to help me up. “How did you do, ‘Rina’?”

“I am not accepting that as a new nickname unless you’re less than four feet tall,” I replied, trying to hide my smile.

“Urchin, then,” Caspian grinned, gripping me around the waist and planting a kiss on my mouth that made the children giggle and groan in disgust.

Caspian launched into the sky and carried me through the ceiling, the children waving and shouting at us in farewell.

“There’s no hope for me, is there?” I teased, brushing his hair back as the wind tossed it around.

“Hope for what?” he asked, raising a brow at me as he turned in the air.

“You sing, you play, you can carry me while flying, and you’re good with children,” I pointed out. “I never had any hope of resisting you, did I?”

Caspian laughed, angling us downward as he murmured in my ear, “None at all, Urchin.”

My stomach swooped as he dove, skimming close enough to the ocean that my toes touched the cold water. I almost heard the sea croon her ‘hello’ to me, like a friend who had been absent for too long. My legs itched with the desire to shift as I clung to Caspian’s neck.

Seeing the children had made me acutely aware of what the sirens had to lose if we couldn’t convince my father to reunite our peoples. None of the children seemed hungry or sick, but a few of the older patients in the healing wing had looked rather frail, and Caspian had told me that it was the winter months that were the hardest. Based on the bite in the air, winter wasn’t far away, and the idea of those children starving through the harder months made my gut squirm unhappily.

“You alright?” Caspian asked, sensing my shift in mood either through the bond or by my restless wriggling.

“Just missing the ocean,” I said—a half-truth, but I needed time to sort out all of my thoughts before discussing them.

He grinned again. “Oh, we can fix that. Deep breath.”

One moment we were hovering in midair, and the next we were diving into the sea’s frigid embrace.

In a move that was annoyingly graceful, Caspian dove in an arc beneath the water. I felt my legs transform into my selkie tail as we emerged again, his wings showering us both with cold water.

“You absolute wretch!” I hollered, splashing him with my tail in retribution as he laughed.

“Pompous seagull is more accurate, I think,” he replied, diving again as he held me close.

He had been too injured to swim properly when we were marooned on the island, but I had to admit, he was a good swimmer. He was strong and confident in the water, and he knew how to angle his wings to decrease the resistance of the sea as it pressed in on him.

I shrieked as we crested again in a move that definitely took more magic than muscle. A phantom gust caught his wings and launched us upward.

“Feathery ass,” I hissed, lamenting over my sodden gown that revealed far more skin than would be appropriate in front of his people. My nipples peaked with the cold, and from the shifting of Caspian’s body against mine and the rush of desire that flooded us both, he saw and admired them.

“Not feathery,” he reminded me, dipping slightly as I shifted my tail back into legs and caught him off guard. He laughed and kissed me, flying us back toward his room—our rooms—as his voice dropped to a purr. “And I’ll gladly prove it to you as soon as you’re well enough to keep up with me.”

Alas, it was not to be that moment. As soon as we landed and shut the wind out with the hidden curtain, a frantic knock sounded on his outer door.

“Go change,” he suggested, kissing me again. “You’re shivering.”

“Oh, I wonder whose fault that is?” I said in mock surprise, earning a pinch on my backside and a look so heated that I almost felt the chill leave me right there.

Damn the head injury. I could manage.

Another knock had Caspian growling as he prowled to the door, and I slipped into the bedroom to change. When I emerged in a loose-fitting dry gown and warm seal-skin wrap—no nipples in sight—Caspian was waiting with his arms crossed in the door.

“Duty calls, Urchin,” he announced, scooping me up and getting my dry skirts wet with his still-damp embrace. My cry of protest was lost as he launched us back into the sky and down, down, down toward the hidden cove where his ships were docked.

“What in the seas is this duty?” I asked, breathless as he alighted on the rocks below and carefully placed me next to him so I wouldn’t slip. It was windy, and my gown and hair flew about me, the sea eagerly lapping at my feet.

In an instant, I felt the wind still, and I knew Caspian had reached out his magic to soothe the gusts. I followed suit, calming the seas enough that our duty became suddenly clear and corporeal.

Ah, little goddess, came a watery voice I remembered and honestly hadn’t expected to hear again so soon. I thought we were friends.