Page 97 of Whispers of the Water

“Well?” she asked, raising a single brow at me.

Shaking my head, I whispered, “I can’t.”

“I know,” she laughed. The sound of it made my skin crawl and itch. It was eerie, like the sound of nightmares.

She began to walk a slow circle around me. “How dumb do you think I am? I knew there was something off about you the minute I saw you. Your guise was well put together, but it was evident from your mannerisms that you weren’t Fae. You’re human.”

She came to an abrupt stop directly in front of me. Her amusement had hardened as she glared at me with a raging heat buried in her eyes. Her mouth curled as she spat, “Or at least that’s what I thought. You’re not human at all, though. You’re Water Fae.”

My throat tightened as the world began to sway. Trying to hold back my mounting apprehension, I started, “No, I’m—”

“And I don’t think you’re just any Water Fae, either.” She pursed her lips as her narrowed eyes scanned me from head to toe. “I knew there was something familiar about you, and it was never flashes of Blayze and Seraphina Bowen as you’d tried to have me believe. No, it was someone else I’d seen in you. And when I realized who, well, everything made sense.”

I held my breath as the words fell from her lips. My palms grew sweaty, and ice prickled along my skin. Even as I prepared myself for Myra’s next words, they still struck me like a painful blade sinking into my gut.

“You’re the Water Fae Princess.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

VOMIT FOUGHT ITS way up my throat, and I took a deep breath to keep it down. My brain screamed to deny, deny, deny. Myra was smart and sneaky, and while she had me figured out, I couldn’t hand over that kind of admission. I had to sway her somehow, to make her believe she was mistaken. There was no way she had actually solved everything.

Swallowing hard, I said, “You’re wrong. The Water Fae King and Queen had a son, not a daughter.”

“Yes, an excellent strategy,” she laughed darkly. Pressing her fingers to her temples, she turned and began to pace. “Spread a rumor that your only child—the heir to your kind—is a boy to throw us off your scent. No wonder we could never find a Prince. You were a Princess all along.”

Myra’s laughter grew into a cynical and bitter cackle as she doubled over. My hands began to shake by my side, and everything inside me begged me to move, to run. I took a small step backward before her head snapped up in my direction. I froze under the daggers of her eyes, and she sneered at me.

“You,” she spat. “You! Your family took everything from me! You took my Balgair!”

Her voice broke on his name, and tears flooded her eyes. For a moment, I actually wanted to reach out to comfort her. She looked so fragile and broken, displaying more emotion than I’d ever seen from her. Her heart had been shattered, and the only thing still holding it together was her bitter resentment for Water Fae.

“Myra,” I whispered, reaching toward her.

Her eyes became thin slits, and a deep guttural growl rose from her lips. Malice suddenly engulfed all other emotion within her gaze until all that remained was dark loathing. “You will pay. I will make you pay for what all your people have done.”

Her clawed hands erupted in flames, and she roared as she swung the orbs right at me. I rolled to the side as streams of fire barreled in my direction, but I wasn’t fast enough. A small flame brushed against my ankle, and I gritted my teeth as my flesh bubbled and burned.

Myra twirled her hand above her head, sending fire flying from her fingers until it circled us in a hot, flickering wall of flames. I stumbled to my feet and fought to ignore the searing heat at my ankle. Flames licked the space around us as her odious glare found me once more.

I took a deep breath and tried to reason with Myra. “I’m not your enemy. I’m—”

She was quick. In the blink of an eye, Myra stood in front of me, snapping out her arm, gripping me tightly around the throat. My words died on my tongue, and the air trying to move through my lungs got stuck beneath her palm. I fought against her grip, yanking and pulling at her hand, but even with my own Fae strength, she remained immovable.

“You,” Myra started, leaning in close to spit in my face. Her sharp claws dug into my skin with a biting sting as her grip tightened, and drops of warm liquid suddenly dripped down my neck.

I was vaguely aware that it was blood, but I couldn’t seem to focus on that. I was too busy opening my mouth in a desperate, futile attempt to suck in air.

“You aren’t my enemy?” Myra started again. “You are the embodiment of all I hate. You are the personification of all that is wrong in this world.”

She flung me back, dragging her nails across my throat as she did.

I sucked in a large breath and clutched at my throbbing, bleeding neck. Searing heat immediately flared beneath my fingertips, and I bit back a strangled sob when I felt the seeping gashes.

I looked at Myra with trembling limbs, and bile rose up my throat. She sneered at me as she ate the chunks of my skin from her finger nails and licked the blood dripping down her wrist. I swayed on my feet, both from shock and from lack of oxygen. I at least had enough clarity to notice that all-too-familiar buzz starting up in my limbs. The water called to me, wanting to come to my aid, but I held it back. I believed there had to be something, some way to reason with Myra.

I thought wrong.

Myra’s cynical smile chilled my body all the way to my bones. Her narrowed eyes never left me as she cackled, “I’m going to enjoy killing you. Your screams as I rip your life from your lungs will be my ultimate lullaby.”

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