Selena sent me a look that might have saidcontrol your human, but I found myself somewhat at peace with my husband’s tone. I lifted a hand at her, halfway between a shrug and an apology. “Do you need help cleaning this up?”
“No,” she sighed. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Alright.” I turned to Kye, raising an arm to wrap around his neck as he picked me up. “Take me to your tower.”
“How’s this?” Kye asked, tightening the final knot over my splint.
I rotated a hip, sighing with relief at the fixed joint. “Much better.”
He dropped onto his mattress, landing beside my opposite knee and sliding his elbow across the surface, nesting his jaw in his palm. A single dark brow quirked, expectant.
I exhaled slowly. “What do you want to know first?”
“Thaan.”
I nodded. “We can sense each other when we make eye contact. Nerves fire along our spinal cord. But I think Thaan guessed what I was before that, based on what the islanders said. That I seduced and stole sailors. He took your mind before you even made it back to Neris Island based off a hunch. All to arrest me.”
“What are you, if you’re not human?”
“A Naiad. A siren.”
His mouth parted. “A sea maiden.”
“No.” I fought a small smile. “There’s a difference. Sea maidens are myth. I’m not a fish.”
“How does Thaan control you?”
“Sirens govern themselves through loyalty based on their blood. Thaan made me swear mine by slicing my thumb and signing a contract that—" I stalled to gnaw the inside of my lip. “That I’d kill Hadrian. And marry you.”
“Why me?”
“I think he sensed you had feelings for me in Leihani. You destroyed the deck of the ship when you thought I was dead. And you were already there with us, making you convenient. But Thaan had plans to wield Calder for his Naiad war. The King is…”
“Unstable,” Kye said unbothered by using a word I was hesitant to. I still hadn’t gathered how mad King Emilius was. Kye rarely spoke of him, and I’d always sensed the need to creep around the subject rather than dive in.
But I nodded anyway. “And Hadrian—”
“Can’t be sung to.”
“Yes.”
“So, I was just… next in line as his puppet.”
Something flickered inside me, a quiet sorrow at his words. “You’re not a puppet, Kye.”
The corner of his mouth quirked, crescent scar twitching with it. “Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.”
“Kye.”
“It’s over now? Your contract with him? You’re free?”
My brows knit, but I let his evasion go. “Yes. My blood is free.”
“Completely free?”
“Completely free.”
His smile grew, then quickly dropped into curiosity. “Were you…” He scratched at the stubble lining one side of his jaw. “Did you know in Leihani?”
