Page 101 of Rise of the Siren Queen
“You do not know what that does to a siren,” she murmured, her voice hollow and tired. “What that kind of rejectioncosts.”
I swallowed hard. My mother—Princess, liar, traitor to her kingdom,saviorof my father—had once drowned a man and betrayed her crown… all because some stranger looked at her like she wasn’t a monster. And now I was standing here, the product of that choice, staring into a future that felt more like a void.
I looked between them, my gaze flicking like a blade between mother and mate, if I could call her that. A slow, sinking weight dragged in my gut, cold and corrosive.
“What a rejection does?” The words tasted bitter in my mouth. I turned toward Iryen, who had been a goddamn statue through this entire conversation. “What would it do toyou?”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t flinch. She didn’t even look at me.
Just shifted her gaze to some point on the far wall like it held all the answers she refused to give. My chest tightened, breath catching in the space between rage and heartbreak. That silence… it said too much. And not enough.
My mother exhaled slowly, her voice laced with something jagged. “If a siren survives a forced rejection, her powers weaken. Her soul…” she paused, eyes hollowing out like she’d lived it, or watched someone else die from it. “Shatters. What’s left is a shell. Breathing, moving, but barely alive. Haunted. Empty.”
Iryen’s head snapped up, as though the pain in the words hit too close. Her voice, sharp now, tried to deflect. “But… how did I not sense you five years ago? Even with your power masked, I would’ve felt something. Even a faint echo.”
“My presence remained hidden, but Isensed you,” my motherreplied, voice softened with memory. “That is why I left. His father and I… we traveled, vanished for a while.”
I froze.
Fuck.
I remembered that year, my parents dropping off the grid like it was some second honeymoon. And now it clicked. That was when Iryen had come to Thalassa.
“We left the children behind,” my mother continued, almost as if it were nothing. “Because their hybrid sides were dormant, you wouldn’t have felt them.”
And just like that, the bottom fell out.
My thoughts scattered, slipping through my fingers faster than I could grab them.Hybrid sides. Hidden powers. Lies buried under layers of silence. And Iryen, she knew more than she was letting on. Every second she kept her lips sealed, the storm inside me churned louder.
She was holding something back.
Why?
What the hell was she afraid of?
“You’re mates, aren’t you?” My mother’s voice sliced through my spiraling thoughts.
“Yes,” Iryen said, too fast, too sharp. Her walls went up so quickly I nearly staggered from the weight of them.
Just like when I first met her, closed off, untouchable. A ghost in her own skin.
“I came here to maintain an illusion for my council,” she said flatly, refusing to even glance at me. My mother’s eyes widened with alarm.
“They don’t know he’s a hybrid,” Iryen continued. “And once I leave… this secret dies with me.”
My mother looked at her as if someone had just released her throat. And I…I felt like someone drove aknife through my heart.
“When are you leaving, Your Highness?” my mother whispered, barely breathing.
“Tomorrow. At dawn.”
Her words detonated inside me.
My head snapped toward her so fast my neck popped. “What?” The word came out sharp, panicked,angry. “You’re leaving?”
Just like that?
Like I wasnothing?
