Page 12 of Bound By Roses

“I’ll kill you!” Erwyn says to Quinn this time.

“Then fucking do it!” Quinn shouts back, more of a taunt than an actual death wish.

He swings wide—too wide—and Quinn moves as if he was expecting this. The rage made him too reactive. Quinn switches the sword into his left hand and puts all his strength into a one-handed swing to push the knife aside. He swings with his right hand, connecting his fist into the jaw of his attacker. It’s not enough to knock him back entirely, but he falls back a step.

Quinn has a chance to bring his sword down on him and do some actual damage, but he takes a step back. “I’m not your enemy.” He repeats the words he’d spoken before this fight broke out.

The man is panting hard, but it’s more rage than fatigue. Still, he doesn’t move to attack. He brings a hand to his chin and rubs at the spot Quinn hit him. “You may not be our enemy, but you are our downfall.”

Quinn seems unsurprised by his words and I know it’s because he’s been picking up on hints ever since the ground first shook. “Tell me why.”

The man scoffs, but lowers his sword. “I did not force your mother to marry me. We were prophesied to have a child that would become Tideus’ Chosen. Our child was to reclaim the ocean and bring balance once more. Our child was to save our kind. Sierra failed to give me that child because she was too busyfucking your father. We had a chance at salvation and instead we got you and your useless brother. Your mother’s betrayal did not start with her abandoning her home to war. It began with her children.”

Quinn breaks eye contact with the man and looks out over the gathered crowd. It seems like every siren is present, none of them wanting to meet his gaze. I see it on their faces now. The emotion I couldn’t place.

Hopelessness.

The ocean is dying for reasons I can’t understand, and they had a chance to save it.

“I won’t apologize for existing,” Quinn says, dropping his sword. He jumps down from his table and moves to my side, taking my hand. “We can leave or you can let us help you in any way we can. I may not be Tideus’ Chosen, but I’m bonded to Terranous’. I’m done fighting. If you want to kill me, fine, but I don’t believe my life is worth the wrath of Terranous.”

The man curses and points a finger at Quinn. “Stay away from me or I might just risk it.” Without another word, he turns away and storms out of the room.

The loud sound Aurelia’s hands make when she clasps them together cuts through the silent tension and makes me jump. “Enough! Get this place cleaned up!” Her people obey, muttering their disappointment at possibly the outcome or just the end of the show. Quinn moves to bend to flip up the table, but Aurelia grabs his arm. “We need to speak.Alone.”

He plants his feet. “Whatever you have to say to me, you can say to my mate.”

She rolls her eyes. “I understand the need to be with each other while the bond is fresh, but you will survive an hour apart.”

“It’s fine,” I tell him, though I really don’t want to be away from him either. Even the thought of it has me feeling physically sick, but I know it’s just an effect of the magic weaving betweenus. It will settle, and Aurelia is right. We will survive. “Talk to her. And bandage that arm before you bleed all over the floor again.”

He looks down at his arm as if only just realizing it’s bleeding and puts a hand over it.‘Be safe.’

I laugh, though nothing about this is funny.‘I’m not the one making enemies everywhere I go.’

‘I’ve been awake longer than you. Give it time.’

“Are you two finished?” Aurelia sounds annoyed.

“Never,” Quinn says with a wink, then turns back to his aunt. “Lead the way.”

I watch them go until they disappear from sight, leaving me alone in a room of sirens who just might hate me as much as they do Quinn.

CHAPTER FOUR

QUINN

Aurelia leads me to the room that once belonged to my mother and takes a seat on the bed. It’s been made, and all traces of my blood have been wiped clean from both it and the floor. I can’t be certain who did it, but a good part of me wants to believe it was this woman.

My aunt.

In a matter of weeks, I went from believing my entire family was dead, to finding out my sister was alive and now I discover I have even more family I’d never been told about. I’ve felt alone in this world for so long—until Abby, of course—but this is different. The blood that runs through my veins runs through the veins of the stranger now seated on the very end of the bed, staring off into the same nothingness threatening to swallow me.

“I see my sister in you,” she says after a while, though she still doesn’t look at me. “Your eyes, your nose. You walk like her, too. Like you always know exactly where you are going, even in a place entirely unfamiliar to you. I think it is safe to say you are just as stubborn.”

She’s waiting for an answer, so I move to the side of the bed and take an awkward seat next to her, neither of us making eyecontact. “I never knew her to be stubborn.” To be fair, she died when I was nine, and given all her many secrets, I may not have known her that well at all.

“She was very stubborn unless it came to duty. She obeyed our mother in most things. Until she met your father.”

---