Page 67 of Cursed By a Siren's Kiss

Breath gasped from him in short bursts as he lifted his palm to the side of my face, his irises blinking painfully up at me withtheir brown depths I’d come to love. “She was right,” he said, his voice weak, breathy. “It was the siren’s kiss that had saved me. I know that now.”

A soft smile lifted his lips. His chest stilled, and my heart sank as the light disappeared from his warm brown eyes. “No!”

I felt him before I heard his voice. “Why have you called me here, Daughter?” Poseidon demanded as he stepped off the wave he rode, letting his feet sink into the sand as he approached. He looked down to the dead pirate before me. “I will not save your human, nor could I.”

The shadows around Kipp stretched, growing as if the darkness he’d contained within him poured from him and darkened the sand where he lay in front of me. My father’s insults fell on deaf ears at my back as I watched the darkness spread, a sudden realization catching my breath. It was Thanatos, coming to claim the soul of my pirate.

I flung myself over him, ignoring everything but Kipp. I didn’t care that Camilla stood, her fingers gripping the edge of the boats we’d been so close to using for our escape. Or that Glaucus sat in one of those boats, his widened gaze on us all as he swayed with the ebb and flow of the tide. I didn’t even glance toward where the Amazonian warriors held their gold-tipped spears at Circe. All that mattered was thwarting off Thanatos.

“You can’t have him!” I hissed, my arms wrapping around Kipp’s body. He already felt colder. I threw my head up and screamed to the gods, “I, Talia, daughter of Poseidon and rightful queen of Atlantis, renounce my claim to the siren throne. I do this of my own free will to break the curse of my people. I pass the throne to Triton, son of Poseidon. Shall I die at Poseidon’s hands or under his order, Poseidon shall inherit the curse and the throne will dissolve.”

I didn’t care about any of it. The only thought that consumed my mind, my heart, was that the man I loved was no longerbreathing. I held him in my arms as tears slipped down my cheeks, dropping into the sand as blackened pearls as Thanatos closed in on us both. He loomed over us, his shadow spilling across us both as Poseidon cursed while he disappeared beneath the waves.

A deep voice that echoed behind us and around us, as if it came from everywhere and nowhere, spoke behind me. “What would you give to see him whole again?”

“Anything!” I cried, a kernel of hope flaring within me. “I’d give anything!”

Thanatos stepped into view then, a coat of shadows that coiled around his form falling from him as I stared up at him. “Oh, child, never give anything. Not even for love,” he whispered, but there was something in his tone that told me that he was happy with my answer.

He knelt next to us, reaching toward Kipp’s shoulders. My head dipped to the side as I watched the shadows of death ripple across his skin as he brushed the cold shoulder of my pirate. They seemed familiar as they coated his form, reminding me of the way the darkness had claimed Kipp.

The same inky tendrils I’d witnessed in Kipp’s eyes and forming around him, seeped from Thanato’s power. The familiar cold brush against my skin as it touched my wicked pirate’s too still form. I frowned. “He wasn’t cursed with the darkness, was he?” I asked.

Thanatos flicked a dark look my way. “No,” he admitted sadly. “But he craved power and his curse intertwined within that need. The darkness was only a manifestation of his true power, housed and controlled by the curse he’d requested. It is why, even consumed as he was, he was able to stand in the path of power meant to kill you, the siren who broke that curse’s hold.”

I blinked at Thanatos, seeing it then. The same tanned skin I’d run my fingers over so many times before, the same long dark hair hanging around his thick shoulders, the same thick brows, the same slant to his lips. There were differences too, like the eerie blue behind his gaze where Kipp’s held a warmed honey brown hue, though the inky darkness dancing within the pupil was there.

A nervous laugh lifted my lips. “Proteus had called him ‘little Thanatos,’” I mumbled as it came together. “You’re his father.”

He nodded, looking down at his son who lay dead between us. “What will you give up for him to have life?”

“Everything,” I repeated, ignoring the warning he’d given me. “I’d give it all up for him.”

Thanatos smirked. “Is it anything, or is it everything, child?”

“Can’t it be both?” My fingers tightened around Kipp.

With a low voice, Thanatos asked me, “Will you give up your power?”

“I already gave up my throne,” I replied, frowning.

“No, child,” he answered with a sigh. “Will you give up your power?”

I looked down at the hands that held Kipp to my chest, feeling the hum of godly power beneath my fingertips. The power that made me a monster to be feared. It made me stronger than nearly every being, and I knew I could claim a place as an Olympian if I wanted. I could use it to reclaim the throne I’d just given up if I so chose. It would give me anything I wanted, but it wouldn’t bring me back Kipp unless I gave even it away.

Power beyond imagination… or love.

It was up to me to choose.

Chapter 39

The Harrowing Image

The Siren

“Ichoose him.”

My declaration hung heavy in the air, my heart beating rapidly as I watched Thanatos move closer to Kipp’s lifeless body, closer to me. I leaned back, but I didn’t release my hold of him as Thanatos brought his head toward my face. Dark tendrils twisted with electric light as it fell from my lips and into Thanatos as he claimed part of my soul.

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