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

Chapter 24

I awoke surrounded in warmth and tried to nuzzle into Caspian’s chest as I had done every night since we’d been mated.

His side of the bed was cold, and the memory of the stormy beach came back to me in a rush as I opened my eyes and saw my mother pacing nervously before the window.

“Where is he?” My head pounded, but I pushed myself to sit up. The iron cuffs were gone, red welts around my wrists already fading under the influence of my fae healing. I sent a pulse of magic to the sea—to call on Ran or Phyll or the waves themselves to help me somehow. My magic was weak and sluggish, but I felt a faint pulse in response to my request, as if the sea were far away. I felt the sky restless above me, and the wind howled outside as if screaming on my behalf.

“Vitulus?” My mother came to sit on the edge of my bed as she had so many times before. She stroked my hair back from my face as I blinked the world into focus. “He’s in the dungeons with the prisoners.”

“No,” I shook my head, feeling like it weighed a thousand pounds. Rain lashed at the windows, the sky the dark navy of approaching night. The pounding of drops against the glass made it even harder to focus. “Caspian.”

My mother pursed her lips and dropped her hand. “He is in the dungeons. Your father claims you are under some spell.”

“It’s no spell.” I shook my head and clutched her hands, ignoring the pounding in my skull. “Mother, you have to believe me. So much of what we’ve been told is lies.”

“My love,” she sighed, looking hesitant.

“Please,” I begged, trying to read my mother’s face. She was my last hope, and the only person who didn’t seem utterly convinced I was out of my mind. “I just need someone to believe me.”

“Alright.” She placed a hand on my cheek. “Tell me everything.”

The relief nearly overwhelmed me as I launched into my tale, beginning with my immediate connection to Caspian when he was first presented as Father’s prisoner. My mother listened, calling for tea when my voice became hoarse and furrowing her brow when I described the shipwreck and the fight with Morar and the siren library.

“And have you consummated this mating?” she asked when I got to the part about our handfasting. I blushed, and her eyes widened. “Marina—”

“Just listen, please.” I continued, emphasizing Ran’s insistence that we be mated and Phyll’s gift for Caspian.

When I got to my evolving magic, my mother pinned me with a hard look I couldn’t understand. “Show me.”

I nodded, going to the window and letting the rain and wind into my room to soak my face and hair. The storm was fierce, but I threw my hand toward the open window and willed the storm to still.

As if in slow motion, the water and wind stopped, stilling as they hit my wall of magic, as if the window was still in place.

Carefully, I drew a thread of both wind and water into my hand, forming them into the shape of a female with a selkie tale and siren wings.

My mother stood, eyes wide as she surveyed the figure of water and air I held in my palm.

“Where have you seen this?” she asked.

“It’s Melusine,” I replied confidently. “Daughter of Zephrus and Undine, the god of sky and goddess of sea. And she is in me, Mother. I don’t know how, but when I was born, her spirit became a part of me. That’s why, after so many centuries, Caspian and I found each other. Why we are meant to be and to unite the people of the Isles as Siren King and Selkie Queen. And if you don’t believe me, let me call the kelpies and the sea dragons to support my claim.”

My mother had paled significantly. She ran a finger through one of the watery wings of the figure of Melusine, and I made the figure fly to the window before I shut out the storm.

“Do you believe me now?”

“I—” My mother swallowed, then blinked and nodded. “I must show you something.”

She took my hand, and I grabbed a seal skin wrap to cover myself as she pulled me from my room. The halls were empty, all the guards likely directed to the dungeons while Caspian was down there. I sent a tug down the bond as we rushed down the stairs toward my father’s private rooms. A faint tug laced with pain returned to me, and I gasped.

Caspian was hurt. I needed to get to him.

My mother didn’t notice my momentary distraction as she led me into my father’s study. She shut and locked the study door behind us before pulling me toward the archives.

“He keeps his key somewhere in here,” she murmured as she moved to his desk and began opening drawers. “Aha!”

I shivered, the cold stone floor on my bare feet not chased away by the seal skin. Mother unlocked the door to the archives and ushered me in.

“You probably don’t know this, but most of our books on sirens and our shared history have been destroyed,” my mother said, locking the door behind us. “But these are the archives that remain.”

I didn’t correct her as I took in the familiar room, which I’d snuck into many times as a child. It was much smaller than the library in the cliffs, lit by candles and lamps rather than mirrors and moonstone, but it was similar otherwise. The space was round and tall with stairs that led to the stories above, although it contained none of the comfortable places to sit. I’d never ventured to the higher levels, taking care to not be seen whenever I snuck in, but my mother now ushered me toward the nearest set of stairs.

“Go to the top,” she commanded as she moved to the center of the room, which contained three large wooden tables for scholars to work at. Books were stacked high atop them, and she began shifting piles and moving tables as I climbed.

When I reached the top floor, I looked down to where my mother continued to shift books.

There was a pattern of stone upon the floor, several areas painted in blues and greens and browns to depict a scene. Images were inscribed around the edges in an intricate pattern, and I gasped as my mother shifted the final table out of the way.

It was a compass, similar to the one on Caspian’s table in the cliffs. A table that likely used to sit in these very archives, I realized. At the east and west cardinal points was a silhouette rendered in pure white—a selkie female. There was a gash of broken stone on each side of the figure, and I realized that it must be where the wings were once painted.

Melusine.

And in the center…

“It’s us,” I whispered, looking down toward the scene of a selkie female with brown skin and teal hair that became the ocean waves. She was reaching out of the water to clasp the hand of a siren male with golden eyes and white hair, his white wings blending into the clouds painted around him. “It’s me and Caspian.”

“It is Undine and Zephrus,” my mother corrected, looking up at me from the center of the painted stone. She raised a palm and gestured to the broken images at the points of the compass. “And their daughter.”

“This has been here the whole time?” I asked, eyes wide as I took in the painted stone. Zephrus looked so much like Caspian, it was hard not to believe it was the same male. And Undine…she looked exactly like me, just without the freckles.

“I knew,” my mother said, her voice hoarse as I descended the stairs to examine the painting in closer detail. “When you were born, your hair was dark like mine. A fine, downy midnight blue, like your lips.” She was crying, I realized, tears running down her face. “And when you finally took a breath, when you lived despite the healers telling me there was no hope, it changed. It lightened as if your first breath had brought color back to every part of you.”

“At first, we thought nothing of it, and I told myself that your resemblance to Undine was a coincidence. That you were blessed by her—had been saved by her as an answer to my prayers—and so she had blessed you with her beauty as well.” I smiled sadly as I took my mother’s hands, and she squeezed them gently. “But when your father presented that male as his prisoner—”

“Caspian,” I corrected.

She nodded. “I knew the moment I saw him that it meant more. That it was no coincidence that you resembled every depiction of Undine I had ever seen.”

I thought back to the illustration of Melusine in the old books that Ana had shown me. Of how much I’d resembled her—it was because I resembled her mother.

“I believe you, Marina,” my mother confessed. “Your father and I argued about this very painting the night you disappeared, and when the ransom note turned up, I somehow knew why. That fate had finally taken you from me as repayment for your life.”

“I’m still here,” I argued, squeezing my mother’s hands. “I’m here, and I’m alive, and now my mate needs me.”

Mother nodded, then shook her head. “Your father won’t listen. He will kill your mate, and then you will die.” She looked up at me, terror and pain in her eyes. “I know the stories. When one true mate dies, so does the other.”

My stomach dropped. I knew this, of course, but it only really occurred to me now that Caspian’s death would mean my own. I had never even considered not consummating our bond because of this risk, but it made my need to save him that more urgent.

“What are true mates?” I asked.

“A story that many, including your father, don’t believe in,” she replied, worrying her lower lip. “Some mated pairs seemed to have an instant, binding connection, but it’s not common. The priests and priestesses adopted the fae way of mates centuries ago—a chosen mate whose bond can be forged. And while it can be just as strong, just as permanent and real, it is not innate. It is not a soul bond the same way true mates are soul bonded.”

“Are you and father–”

“No,” she smiled sadly. “But it does not mean I don’t love him.”

“And what if you find your true mate after forging a bond? What if I had mated Vitulus, then found Caspian anyway?”

“The first bond is always permanent,” she replied. “Your fate would have been rewritten without Caspian in it.”

“Did Father know?” I whispered, understanding dawning. “Is that why he was so anxious to tie me to Vitulus?”

“He had seen the painting,” my mother nodded. “He didn’t really believe it, but he also didn’t want to take chances.”

I felt another surge of betrayal. My father had known, or at least suspected, that Caspian was my mate, and had planned to execute him without ever telling me. Had planned to bind me to another to hide the truth—that Caspian and I were fated to be bound by our very souls.

“Help me,” I begged. “Help me convince Father. Help me save the male I love. Please, Mother.”

“I will try,” she agreed, a tear sliding down her cheek. “But you must run, Marina. Leave the Isles with your mate, and do not come back.”

I balled, taking a step back. “What?”

“Your father will not rest until the Siren King is dead,” she pressed, grasping my hands again in desperation. “He thinks he can trick the gods and save you by tying you to Vitulus, but I know he cannot. So you must run. If you wish to live and be happy, you must leave.”

“No,” I said, pulling my hands back again. “We came to save the Isles. To reunite our people. To save all of us.”

“We do not need to be saved, Marina.”

I laughed as another crash of thunder shook the keep. I remembered saying almost the exact same thing to Caspian once.

“You think the storms, the earthquakes, the weakened crops and magic are a coincidence?” Mother blanched, and I nodded. “I know. I know that it was our people who cursed us, not the sirens. That it was the selkie king who killed his eldest son and used his death to banish the sirens. That Father and his father and his father before him lied to our people about raids and blockades and painted the sirens as our enemy to excuse our hardships. To blame them on an enemy who was far away and unable to protest. And that as our people have suffered, so have Caspian’s. Their magic weakens, and their bodies sicken. The gods punish us, not the sirens, and it is because we refuse to right our wrongs from five centuries ago.”

“What do you mean, he killed his eldest son?” my mother whispered, a hand over her heart and her brown skin so pale, it was almost the same shade as Caspian’s.

I told her the rest of my story then—Theia’s story. About her prophecies and warnings. About how Caspian killed his own father to save his people and ours, about how the Stormcrow betrayed him and would betray Father as soon as it suited his plans.

“There is no other way, Mother,” I finished, gripping her hands as if I could make her understand through sheer will alone. “No way but together. And I can’t do it without your help.”

She nodded. She still looked pale, but a familiar fire lit her blue eyes, the same fire that burned within my own.

“I believe you,” she agreed. “I can speak to your father. I’ll help you, dearest.”

“You will do no such thing.”

The hope that had blossomed in my chest died a swift and terrible death as I turned to see my father standing in the door.