Page 106 of Rise of the Siren Queen
Cryptic nonsense. I almost laughed. Almost.
Instead, I swallowed another breath, like it might stop the turmoil inside of me. “Why… why did you meet me out here?” I rasped, desperate for anything to dull the sharpness carving through my chest. “Is everything alright?”
They both glanced away. At the same time.
Dread, cold and metallic, slid down my spine like a poisoned blade.
“We need to talk,” Elora said finally, her voice flat now, eyes like shards of turquoise ice as they locked onto mine. “But not here.”
Something in her tone twisted the air.
“Let’s go to the palace,” I said quickly, forcing myself to move, to stand, to pretend I could function. “We can talk in my study—”
Then pain.
White-hot. Ripping. Total. Pain.
My body buckled. A scream clawed its way from my throat but never made it out. My hands trembled violently. My vision fractured, spinning, flashes of the sky, the water, their faces, and then it all blurred into chaos.
Voices muffled, frantic, distant. But I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. My heart pounded so hard it felt like it might shatter through my ribs. Blood boiled beneath my skin, each vein a conduit of flame. My lungs wouldn’t draw in air. My mind… exploded.
And then, amid the agony, a pulse. Not mine.
His.
Grief, raw and molten, bled through the bond, his sorrow crashing into me like a tidal wave, searing hot, unbearable. I felt his pain branded into my soul. Like itwasmine. And just before the darkness took me completely, just before everything went still, I realized…
He felt me leave. And it broke him, just as it broke me.
***
Rushed voices drift around me, muffled like I’m underwater. The soft weight of blankets presses against my limbs, but I don’t remember lying down or fainting, for that matter.
“She’s too weak,” a grave male voice cuts through the haze, sharp, controlled, and utterly unyielding. Ronan. Only he would speak like that to Elora. “Between the spell and the goddess’s wrath, she can’t take more stress. This news will break her. You know that, Elora.”
News?
The word slashed through my fogged mind.What happened?I search for the last clear thought. Thalassa, the border, Sienna and Elora, the tension wrapped around their shoulders like a second skin. Their insistence that we talk. That something was wrong.
“She needs to know, Ronan,” Elora snaps back, her voice like cracked fire glass. “He’ll come for her. She needs to know he’s back.”
He.
That single word sends an involuntary chill down my spine. My body tightens beneath the sheets, though I stay still. Listening.
Elora’s voice lowers sharper now. “Besides, he’s not the only threat anymore. It’s embedded in this very palace. In her council.”
A long pause.
“We always knew that,” Ronan mutters darkly. “We just weren’t sure how deep it went. Now we do.”
“And she needs to knowtoo,” Elora snaps, unrelenting.
“But—”
“Enough.” Sienna’s voice cuts through the rising storm, calm, controlled, but firm. Unmovable. “It doesn’t matter. She heard you. Didn’t you, Iryen?”
I draw in a slow, rattling breath and sit up against the headboard, blinking at the three of them gathered in my chambers like a tribunal. I feel like a corpse at my postmortem.
