AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I shrugged.
“Maybe you’d rather have Renaldo?” he asked.
I folded my arms. He scoffed.
“I don’t know why you have such a crush on him,” Rhys muttered.
“A crush?”
“That’s what the humans call it. You like Renaldo more than King Melchior.”
“I don’t love anyone more than the king!” I threw back. “But Renaldo… I feel differently about him. He’s so fearless. And strong. And he has so much freedom.”
Rhys brought his thumb to his lips in thought. “You’ve thought about kissing him before.”
I shrugged again. “So what if I have?”
“Have you thought about being in bed with him before?”
I looked at him in shock. He only smiled.
“Trust me,” he said. “That’s a totally different feeling.”
“Rhys…have you…?”
I didn’t finish the question, but he understood it.
“Humans and sirens weren’t built so differently,” he replied, not looking at me.
Before I could respond, Rhys nodded to the horizon, signaling an arrival.
“It seems like Renaldo’s ears were burning,” Luc said.
Renaldo swooped in and landed next to us, a proud glow on his face as he smiled with full lips. His shoulders and arms glittered in the sunlight behind him, his smile doing something strange to my stomach. Whatever this feeling was, I liked it. Every time he was near me, I had this strange feeling, and I wanted to know what it was.
“You should have been out there with us, Astraea!” Renaldo said to me, full of life and energy. “It was thrilling!”
“You know I wanted to,” I replied, “but the king never lets me go with you.”
“We’ll fix that one day. I promise.”
He held my gaze for a brief moment, before noticing Rhys next to us.
“Rhys!” Renaldo beamed. “You finally made it back!”
Rhys stood slowly, his tongue roaming the side of his cheek.
“Yep,” he replied flatly.
“I just got back from a siege myself,” Renaldo replied, puffing his chest up as he pointed to a ship being pulled into the den.
I leaned over the side, using my wings to balance me. “Pirates?”
Renaldo nodded proudly. “Pirates, thieves, criminals…the dirtiest of the human world.”
I rolled my eyes. “They’re all equally disgusting, honestly. It’s a shame we can’t round them all up to be tried at once.”
“That still wouldn’t make you happy,” Renaldo replied, laughing. “Some of them would survive. You would hate that.”
