Page 80 of The Seer

Whole.

Singular.

Their split wasn’t gentle. It was fucking brutal.

Beside him, a muffled gurgle sounded, and he recognized it as Fintan’s scream. It echoed through their bond as it snapped and tore like a sail in a storm.

And then, silence.

Ardghal’s jaw clenched, and for a sickening moment, he feared the worst. He sent a feeler through the water, searching for Fintan’s heartbeat.

Nothing. The worst had happened.

Reaching inward, he withdrew vitality from his core and pushed it into the chest of the sightless man beside him. The chambers of Fintan’s heart pulsed once, twice, and on the third beat, he gasped and sputtered as he sucked in water. When he would’ve struggled to the surface, Ardghal gripped the back of Fintan’s neck.

“Breathe, boy. You’ve Siren blood. The water is your friend, don’t fight it.”

Panic receded from Fintan’s eyes as he processed the words. “We’re separate?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ardghal said roughly.

He didn’t mourn their separation, because he’d always known it had to come. They had walked as one for too long. Now, there would be two princes to rule again.

His fingers closed over the Bloodstone amulet, fully fused to his chest.

No chain.

No clasp.

It pulsed like a second heart.

And the grotto responded.

Stone fell away. Magic bent to him. And he rose, not swimming but ascending, propelled by elemental reverence.

As his head breached the water’s surface, Odessa turned.

Her expectant expression froze as fear claimed its place, and she faltered.

Peter had done him a service by scattering the journals—each laced with ancestral spells—to the four corners of the earth. His action, resulting from his gift as Seer with knowledge of this future event, had prevented his sister’s power grab.

The Siren rite of power reclamation was always intended to restore to Ardghal what he’d lost. With his amplified water magic, the resonance-based spells, and ancestral bonds afforded to him by his lineage, he once again possessed what he needed to destroy his enemies. Odessa among them.

“Taryn!” Fintan’s anguished cry filled the space and echoed off the rocks.

But Ardghal couldn’t let himself be distracted. He had a job to finish.

“Come to me,” he compelled Odessa. Into his voice, he wove seduction and royal decree. Her DNA made it impossible to resist. Like a marionette, with movements the opposite of fluid, she stepped upon the pool’s stone lip. “For your actions, your life is now forfeit, Odessa Sullivan.”

“Your power was supposed to be mine,” she said raggedly. Her death was imminent, and she knew it. Yet her anguish left him cold.

“It was never going to be yours,” he snapped. “Your mind was clouded by your insatiable thirst for more. But the amulet wasn’t made for you.”

Father had constructed it of his demigod blood, Siren placenta, and the enchanted waters of the grotto where Ardghal’s parents had secretly met. The amulet was always unique to him. When Elizabeth removed it from his chest, she dislodged his spirit and sent his body back from whence it came, resting in its watery grave, waiting to be revived.

With his sacred object returned, he was once more immortal and ruler of his Siren clan, as meager as it was.

“Will ya give me a chance to say goodbye?” she pleaded.

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