In the Grotto Lyx #2
Cav leans back against the wall, eyelids heavy from exertion. Now Lyx smirks. Perhaps this is the secret to keeping a captive. Give him enough work to exhaust him. Make him compliant. Enjoy how easily his guard slips —
“Are you lonely out here?”
His question lands like a slap. It’s unexpected and debilitating, worse than the first plunge into icy water after a night hunting on land. Her chest tightens in surprise. “Why would – where did –”
“You don’t have parents.” His voice is dreamy, as comfortable as if he were sprawled out in the sun. “You never talk about anyone else. Do you have anyone?”
Lonely.
She’s seen it on young sailor’s faces when they take their first watch alone. She’s seen it in the old pirates’ eyes when they recount their glory days to empty pubs. Loneliness, she imagines, is emptiness and impossible weight all at once.
Has she ever felt that? When she looks inside herself, she finds something raw and ragged buried deep in her chest. She doesn’t want to reach for it.
Sirens are solitary creatures. No matter what habitat they share, they can’t spend their lives together; they are a garden of hostile plants sucking the life from each other.
She is meant to be alone. All of them are.
“Sirens don’t feel sentimental emotions,” she manages. “We don’t understand the things you sing about: loneliness, remorse, grief —”
“Love?”
The fire pops between them. Of course she’s heard the word. Sirens use it mockingly, picking their teeth clean of their latest paramours or scavenging shipwrecks. She’s heard it a thousand times from hypnotized pirates as she drags them beneath the waves.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
“We cannot love.” The word tastes as slimy as the freshly-gutted fish. “It doesn’t exist.”
“You don’t believe in it? You’ve never loved anything?” Cav’s eyes spark like the fire. “Anyone?”
The look he gives her makes her skin crawl, but not in the way she’s used to. Less like revulsion, and more like…appetite.
Humming, she settles her weight onto one palm. She’s playing with her food, but when doesn’t she? His eyes flicker when she leans toward him and forms her lips around a single word. “Never.”
The firelight turns his eyes a warm shade of honey. “You’ve never desired anything? Craved something? Ached for what you can’t have?”
Her fingers curl in the sand beside his tail. “That sounds like something you’re familiar with.”
He looks caught off guard. Finally, she has the upper-hand again. No emotion he describes can shake her. She doesn’t feel them. She doesn’t need them. But she can read his.
She eases closer, watching Cav’s eyes follow her. “You’ve been flaunting yourself since you landed here. You didn’t care when your clothes were ruined. You hardly wanted to cover yourself at all. Why is that?”
She expects the desire in Cav’s eyes, but she’s surprised by what else appears.
There’s something heavier, more consequential, weighing down the corners of his eyes.
“Getting shipwrecked kind of throws out convention. Strange as it sounds, I like that.” A grin twitches on his mouth.
“You’ll kill me no matter who I am. There’s something nice about that. There’s no reason to hide.”
“Why would you hide?” Depths, why is she asking? She should feel nothing for this conversation, nothing for anything Cav says, but she’s so close to him now. It’s like the earth beneath her is slipping, the force of gravity pulling her closer to him.
His tongue trails over his lips. “Have you ever wanted to be two things at once? Have you ever been tired of staying in one box, acting one way, fitting one mold? You don’t want to be limited. You want to be everything that you are. Everything you can be.”
Something inside her claws to get out, a bowstring pulled taut in her chest. She can’t set it free.
It’s impossible to imagine shedding this skin, this role, this thing she’s always been.
She is a siren. Her purpose and emotions and desires were laid out before she was born.
That is what she knows. That is who she is, and no strange creature washed ashore in her grotto will change that.
Her throat feels like a vise. “I’ve never felt like that.”
“Never?”
He knows she’s lying. She refuses to admit it. “What else would I want to be?”
She is powerful. That, she knows. It makes it easy to lean into Cav’s space. No matter what else he says, he doesn’t resist her. Their mouths drift closer.
“I’m attached to nothing,” she hums. “My song brings me whatever I want. And the only thing I want? The only thing I care about?”
Their noses brush. His breath is warm.
She whispers the final word against his mouth. “Chaos.”
She doesn’t kiss him. It’s more satisfying to see him give in, sucked into her orbit, proving her right.
He exhales slowly. She can’t help but smirk.
The bowstring inside her notches tighter, pulling her toward him, but he doesn’t move.
Only now does she realize she’s the one chasing his mouth, her head inclined, her body angled.
Like he’s the siren. Like she can’t resist him.
His smile is lazy. “Then what are you still doing here with me?”
Stinging pain shoots through her leg. With a hiss, she scrambles back and sees a glowing stick knocked free of the fire. Her hip throbs from the burn. Cav reaches for her, but she rises to her feet and scrambles toward the rocky ledge.
She knew better. She’d been distracted, and for that, she’s branded herself with a new scar. A reminder of exactly what she shouldn’t be doing. A reminder of exactly what she has to do to him.