Chapter 34
Salt water surged through Yves’s veins, lightning and thunder crackling up his bones as the storm thrashed the Kraken’s Fury.
He stood on the deck of his beloved ship, letting the rain slick his skin and soak his fine clothes as Doe barked orders and his crew fought for their lives against this onslaught of nature.
It had been so long since Yves had killed. So long since the demon could slake its thirst on either blood or Rowan’s supple body. Death had its claws in his stomach, and he was ravenous.
When Rowan had foolishly sailed into the storm under some misguided sense of friendship for Splinter Zanta, Yves had no choice but to follow.
He cared little for the safety of his own crew beyond their ability to serve him.
Protecting Rowan remained his only goal.
He hadn’t expected a strange calm, almost relief, to envelop him as soon as the first drops of rain iced his skin.
But the tension inside him still held, even grew, with every league the Kraken ate up between them and the Sleeping Isles.
Demon shadow pressed against the inside of his skin, wrapped every bone and filled him so completely he felt the dark waters might split him open like an overripe fruit and consume the world.
What would happen if the demon took over completely?
Would the human part of Yves finally be consumed, and cease to exist entirely?
Yves didn’t know. And if the demon knew, it kept it from him somehow.
Perhaps this had always been its plan. Perhaps it had driven his obsession with Rowan and allowed love to weaken him enough to overpower his will.
It was a strange feeling, this paranoia toward a creature that lived within him, whose thoughts and feelings twined so closely with his own that they might as well be his, if not for their inhumanity.
Once Yves had thought them harmonious, one being, but the further north they sailed, the more the demon manifested.
A few times in the past few days he’d caught crew members, even Doe, looking at him with a perplexed expression.
As if they’d caught a glimpse of his true form, the tentacles lurking in the shadows.
So he let the wind and rain lash him. Luxuriated in the raw power of the sea, the fear it elicited in the mortals on his crew.
It was intoxicating, exhilarating. Death sent white waves to snap at their heels, toying with them before it intended to swallow them whole.
But Yves had his own prey in mind, and he would not allow his crew to flounder before he saw Rowan and the Siren safely through.
He could not lose him, the anchor to his last shreds of humanity.
The light breaking through deep water, allowing life to grow.
There was no light here. The Siren was quick, but strength was needed to weather a storm like this.
Yves could barely make it out in the distance.
The long, plaintive call of Rowan’s bosun’s whistle broke the night between crashes of deafening thunder.
The only way Yves knew his beloved still lived.
He clung to that sound like the call of a siren, ignoring any other calls that might try to catch his ear.
It tugged at his heart and drew him onward like a leash.
The Siren hurtled over the peak of a wave, disappearing from Yves’s sight.
A chill overcame him. No. He could not lose sight of Rowan.
His hand raised of its own accord, like the demon had done it, trying to take hold of the storm and bend it to their whims. It let out a frustrated growl through his mouth when his human body failed to grasp control of the waves.
Yves barked orders, his words cutting the storm like a blade.
Had the crew noticed yet, that the sea did not reach out to snatch them from the deck?
That the howling wind and waves and rain had not deigned to kill a single one of them in the endless hours of battling the storm?
Perhaps not. The storm might not obey him, but it could sense his wrath, and decided to spare his vessel.
His crew obeyed, exhausted and hollow-eyed, but when the Kraken crested the wave, the Siren was gone.
No. No. No. NO. Yves whipped around, eyes searching the storm. Ears pricked for the telltale whistle. But the Kraken was alone in the churn of unquiet sea. And all at once that calm, that sense of belonging in the storm, disappeared.
Rowan couldn’t be gone. Yves, the demon, both of them would feel if he’d been swallowed up by the sea. Every nerve in them was alive with the crashing of waves, the rain driving into dark water. They would know.
The demon surged up like bile, and Yves doubled over, biting back a pained cry.
The storm’s cacophony snapped into something like a song.
Every crack of thunder, a beat of his cold, incomplete heart.
Every destructive wave, a surge of salty blood in his veins.
The beat of the rain on his skin felt like an embrace.
Dark water coated his tongue and threatened to spill out of his mouth. And this time, he did not fight it down. Did not cling to humanity. He had to protect Rowan, and if he couldn’t, there was no point in resisting the demon’s undertow.