Page 49 of Siren's Treasure

Raggon lunged, ignoring the tearing sensation across his back. His fingers closed around her wrist, slick with steam and sweat. For one terrifying moment, her full weight hung from his grip, threatening to pull them both into the churning pool below.

Her dark eyes, wide with panic but burning with determination, locked onto his. Feeling that same wild fight for survival, he let out a primal roar that rivaled the crash of the waterfall, and bracing himself, dragged her up and over the final ledge, muscles straining against their limits.

They collapsed together against the rock face, his arms instinctively wrapping around her. He could feel her stomach move in and out with desperate gasps for air—breaths she wouldn’t be taking if he’d been a heartbeat slower.

They were safe… for now! “That was too close.” The words scraped his dry throat.

She didn’t answer, only buried her face into his chest with a ragged sigh, her fingers tightening around him. Her heart hammered against his, their rhythms matching in ferocity.

“Beware the witch! Beware the witch!” Sterling squawked, flapping frantically above them while Tobias let out a reptilian screech that echoed across the lagoon.

Now that they’d reached the ledge, they had only a moment to catch their breath before they could figure out where Undine hid her blade. “Where did our queen put it…?”

“… as far from her hand as possible,” he answered.

The stories said this blade had nearly killed her beloved. As his heart turned to Thessa, he understood—Undine would never be able to bear the reminder of how she almost lost everything.

Still holding firmly to Thessa with one arm, he steadied himself with the other, pressing his fingers behind him against the rock.

Thessa’s scream pierced his skull, making him flinch at the sound of desperation and fear.

He froze, just as she dove forward, blocking his hand from moving another hairsbreadth. Pressing into him, as if to keep him from moving, she reached around him. The cruel scrape of the blade left its hollow in the rock where it had been lodged more than a thousand years ago, where his hand had almost grazed the deadly siren strands that flicked through the air like the tongues of venomous snakes.

And then the hum from the blade as Thessa clutched it. Undine’s Blade craved blood. Blood! Was it his that it wanted?“Give me! Give me vengeance!”

He’d felt the blade’s hunger before as its presence reached for him through the dark mirror when he’d been helplessly imprisoned by the witch’s tentacles and couldn’t run! The cliff’s edge also stopped him, though the danger was very real. He could feel its ancient power as the words screamed into his soul. His ears had nothing to do with hearing its wails—the warnings transcended language.“We are to be touched only by the heirs of the Divine Sea Sovereignty!”

Was that not what Thessa was? Of course, she was… except the blade did not seem convinced as its malice prickled through him. “All else with wither at our touch! Are you ours, girl? Declare your worthiness!”The dagger gleamed in Thessa’s hands, its hilt wrapped in iridescent strands of mermaid hair that could only belong to her aunts more than a thousand years ago—silken threads of azure, emerald, and pearl that pulsed with their own light. The blade itself captured the sunlight, glowing with an inner radiance that spoke of magic they’d never known in their lifetime.

“Daughter of Poseidon… how? How can you be… with legs?”

Panic shot through him. Would the blade accept her touch? Would she melt before its power? Buthewas the one who would die if he touched it… nothing had prepared him for this twist of fate!

“Thessa,” he breathed. If they were wrong… there was still time to rescue her from this. “Let it go! We’ll find another way to bring the blade to your father. Just release it!”

She didn’t… maybe couldn’t. Her dark eyes were far away as if seeing another world.

“Are you worthy, little pretty?”the blade’s hiss was sharp as its form.“How? You have conspired with the sons of men—with this… prince? You’ve given your heart to him!”

That was it! It would kill her! He didn’t care if he died wrestling this wicked, prattling blade from her hands. Digging his fingers into the cliff’s side, he repositioned himself where he could snatch this threat cleanly from her, even as its menacing voice grated through his every stretched nerve.

“You must turn this blade on the heart of the enemy… is that you, little damsel? After you’ve betrayed your people, your sisters, your father? Or do you have it in you to run me through the heart of another?”

She turned to Raggon. Her hands tightened on the hilt. Horror knotted through his gut as the blade’s triumphant shriek wormed its way through every instinct that told him to battle for his life, and he wouldn’t. He’d save her from this! He got ready to block her strike, if he could without hurting her.

Her lips firmed, her shoulders going taut, every part of her stiffening, even that cute little furrow between her delicate brows. Her breath turned ragged as she fought… for what—against an order to kill him or against the blade itself?

“The enemy of our people is near! The enemy! You will sss—”The blade was silenced with a “hiss.” Her hand lowered. Relief scorched into blotches of red standing out against her pale cheeks as she let out a sigh.

What had happened?

“Only the heirs of the Sea Sovereignty can tame it,” she whispered.

He realized how hard he was breathing at the near-fatal plummet to his death, and then… at the magnificence of Thessa holding the blade, her red hair flowing around her shoulders and looking every bit as vibrant as what colorful strands belonged to her ancestors.

And he was a sick, sick man. Why was he thinking of how pretty she was at a time like this? She’d almost run him through.

And she hadn’t. That told him everything he needed to know. Of course, that didn’t stop him from having to fill up his depleted lungs again with forgotten air. “What now?” he asked through shaky breaths. “How do you bring this… blade to your father?”

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