AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His eyelids fluttered as he laughed again. “Hardly.”
“How did you become possessed?”
“My mother was an astrologer. A lousy one. She accidentally summoned demons while trying to speak to the dead, and one of them took my body for a while.”
“How terrifying!” I said, genuinely shivering. “How can you say such a thing so casually?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” he said with a shrug. “The demon is gone, and so is my mother.”
I sighed, stomach sinking. I had figured that Jacques’s mother was dead. Bastard sons were rarely claimed by their fathers unless there was no other living family. Not only for the way it badly reflected on the status of the family, but also because women scorned by rich men were almost criminal in their revenge, demanding payment or material possessions. At least, that’s what I had heard from Lina.
There was a sudden ache as I missed her, along with my own mother.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Jacques sympathetically.
“Don’t be,” he replied with a cold edge to his voice. “I’m not.”
He met my eyes. His stare made my breath freeze, goose bumps rippling across my skin from my ankles to my ears.
“W-what are your powers, exactly?” I asked. “Can you read minds?”
He shook his head sharply. “I can see many things most humans can’t. I can see the auras of both humans and thespiritual realm creatures. Which means I can see the emotions of those creatures, as well as whether they are becoming tainted or pure.”
It took me a moment to process what those might all mean.
“Is that why you called me pure that one night?”
He paused, as if remembering the night I came to him in his cell. He then nodded.
“Also,” he added, “once your blood has been sacrificed in this realm, I can read your soul’s history on your arm.”
He pointed to the flesh of his forearm. I remembered the king and him staring at my arm only hours earlier, and it made a little more sense, yet not entirely.
Jacques stretched his arms back out in the tub, and I was glad he couldn’t read my mind. Before I was able to stop myself, all I could think about was touching the marks across his skin. I wondered what they would feel like—if they were smooth like the rest of his glowing skin, or if they were rough and jagged like the look in his eyes.
“But,” he suddenly said, breaking me from my thoughts, “I don’t need to be a siren to read your mind, Esmeralda. Your thoughts are quite obvious.”
He stood from his seat and came closer, and I scooted back from the edge of the pool I wasn’t able to come to my feet before he smiled and grabbed my foot, pulling me back toward the edge of the pool. His wet fingers wrapped around my ankles, pulling my calves deep into the water. He looked into my eyes, an arrogant smile dancing across his lips.
“Everything you’re thinking about,” he whispered, “is easy to read.”
I shivered as his fingers curled around my ankles, brushing the bottoms of my calves under the water. Everything in my head screamed to pull back and run out of there as fast aspossible, but the mischievous look in his eyes had me frozen in my spot.
He smiled devilishly.
“It would be quite dangerous, you know,” he said. “A reincarnated siren and a Judge.”
As I processed his meaning, he continued.
“I’ve had a few…offers from both incarnates and fully winged sirens. The problem is that my job is to sentence them to an eternal curse should they betray the spiritual realm. Otherwise, I’m the one who has to pay for their crimes.”
His fingers crept higher up my legs under the water, and it robbed me of my will to fight back.
“You would…pay their crimes?” I asked, distracted by his fingers.
“Yes. I would be cursed eternally just as the sirens are if I failed to judge righteously. Just as you’ll be condemned should you neglect your duties as a siren.”
I couldn’t hold back a gasp as his fingers brushed behind my knees. I jumped and pulled back, putting my hands against his arms to signal him to stop. The arrogance on his face didn’t change, but his fingers fell back to my feet.
