Page 117 of Rise of the Siren Queen
I knew something was wrong. I knew it. But this? This is worse than anything I could’ve imagined. The way they’re standing there, their bodies chained to the whims of monsters, it breaks something in me, something I didn’t know was still salvageable.
I can feel my anger coiling tighter, but it’s colder now. Detached. I have no choice but to play along, but I’m sick to my core. Sick of Draven, sick of Thalor, sick of everything they’ve taken from me.
Tonight? It will scar me in more ways than even the memory of my parents’ murder ever could.
24
Erinyes Island
Adrian
I woke up to silence. Not the kind that soothes, but the kind that claws at your insides. The apartment was empty. Not just physically. Spiritually. Like every breath I took was missing something. Missing her. It felt hallow. Off. Like I was inhaling absence.
Iryen was gone. And in her absence, something inside me rotted.
The air still carried her. My bed, the couch, my car. They all reeked of her, like some cruel ghost. Two days. That’s all it took for her to root herself in every cell of my existence. She was still here somehow, everywhere. Except in the one place I needed her most.
With me.
The ache wasn’t just emotional. It was physical. A crushing weight behind my ribs. My lungs refused to work right. My skin burned with phantom touches. And my heart, no, the thing pretending to be a heart, couldn’t stop spasming in this sick rhythm of missing.
And worse?
I could still feel her. Faint. Like a memory I couldn’t relive. Her presence still lingered in the bond like a dying ember refusing to snuff out. The string between us, stretched thin andquivering, refused to break.
The shrill ring of my phone sliced through the stillness, dragging me back to the surface. I didn’t want to answer. I wanted nothing but to lie between the sheets, smelling her faint jasmine scent. But the name on the screen made something in me snap.
My mother.
I didn’t want to hear her voice. Didn’t want to see her name. The dishonesty still simmered under my skin like acid. She’d lied. Kept the truth about who, what, we were. From me. From Malia. My little sister still did not know she wasn’t fully human. And gods help me, I prayed she never would. That she never had to feel what I felt. That she never came face to face with death.
Still, I swiped to answer as I made my way to the whiskey cart and served myself a generous dose. Neat, just as is my humor.
“Adrian,” she breathed, and the sound of her voice set my teeth on edge. Desperate. On edge. Not good.
“Yes?” I answered. Cold. Flat. Controlled.
“You need to do something, and fast.”
The hair on my arms stood on end. My heart raced with imminent dread.
“About what?” My voice turned sharper.
I didn’t have the patience for games. Not today.
“You haven’t seen the news?” she demanded.
“Not yet. Why?” I asked in a dry tone, but what I really wanted to say was.
No, Mom, I haven’t seen the fucking news. I barely got out of bed this morning. My chest is aching with a dull pain that has become my companion.
What a fucking mess.
“Lorenzo filed a petition to explore marine life inErinyes. He wants to turn it into a tourist dive site.” She continued for my delight.
That fucker, always meddling in my life, always poking in my business, interfering in anything and everything. Any other day I would leave him be, not engage in any attempt to ruin my work, but not today.
Today, I will gladly interfere in his. Ruin his plans of exploring a precarious life.
