Page 50 of The Withering Dawn
“The moon?”
She nodded. “My people believed it to be a giant, each blink of her eye taking a whole month to complete.”
“What do you believe?”
She sighed, gathering her hair and pulling it all over one shoulder. “I believe in nothing. The few memories that I have of my mother, she was praying, and no god ever came to her aid.”
I sat up, resting my arms on my knees. “Perhaps she was not praying they come to her. Maybe she prayed they come to you.”
She turned her head toward me, her eyes like colored glass under the moon’s light.
“Why would she pray for me?”
I shrugged. “It is something a parent would do. Or so I’ve heard.”
“Did you ever know yours?”
“No. My first memories were in the orphanage. Leonardo recalled our parents, but he never spoke of them. Said there was nothing good to say.” After a moment of letting those words fade from my tongue, I turned to Aeris. “You have mentioned your mother many times. What of your father?”
She shook her head. “Yri do not have fathers. The sea blesses us with children when we are ready.”
“And you know that for certain?”
She pinched her brows together like no one had ever asked that question before. Then her eyes strayed like it had gotten her thinking. I wasn’t sure if sirens could breed with humans, but it seemed less farfetched than being impregnated by a body of water.
Then again, they called themselves “daughters of the sea.”
Perhaps I was the one who didn’t understand.
Aeris seemed to fall deep into her thoughts for a while, her fingers playing with the fabric of her dress as she gazed off into the darkness. Something was on her mind. Something that was making her uncomfortable.
“How did you move past what Antonio did to you?” she asked.
I sucked in a lungful of the fresh sea air. Many years ago, that question would have bothered me, but I had come to terms with it in many ways. Then again,howI did it was not something I expected to discuss with Aeris.
I had never truly talked about anything I did with anyone in the sixteen years I’d been out of the bastard’s clutches. I wondered if I could even find the words, but when I looked at Aeris, I could not see even a spec of judgement in her gaze. Just pure desire to learn. To understand. And perhaps a need to figure out if her own burdens could one day be relieved.
“Moving on was forced on me,” I admitted. “Like most other things in life. I could not afford to have that man and what he did looming over me. I was not eating. I was skittish,” I smiled, though nothing about what I was explaining amused me. “And I was mourning a brother. So, one day ashore, Denham took me to a brothel.I was seventeen. He told me to choose whatever woman I liked. So I did. I chose the largest woman holding her chin the highest. Denham paid for a night and she took me to her room.”
My smile wilted, my eyes wandering to the moon’s undulating reflection on the black water. Shame coiled its bony fingers around my heart, but I continued anyways, determined to reveal all of myself to Aeris. She’d revealed so much of herself to me. She deserved my utmost honesty, no matter how grim it was.
“The moment the woman wanted to be on top, I grew distraught. I threw her off of me. I shouted at her. And then I cried like a fucking child,” I laughed again, astounded the words were coming out of my mouth. “And she cradled me like a babe against her breast. That, too, made me angry because I was not a child. I was the age my brother was when he freed us all and died for it. But Denham had paid her well and she was eager to please. She asked what I wanted and… I told her to lie on the bed, face down, and I fucked her that way until morning. I was… rough. I wanted to be in control, but I did not want to see her face. I wanted to be cruel. I wanted her to beg me to stop.”
“Why?” Aeris asked softly.
“Because I needed her to be nothing to me. I needed her to feel what I felt. To know what it was like to be afraid.” I hissed and lowered my head. Hearing my own words made me sound monstrous.
Her eyes wandered toward the beach, but I did not see the shock or repulsion in her that I’d seen in the women I’d used.
“You do not seem appalled,” I said.
“Why would I be? I know there is something dark in you. The darkness in me recognizes it. What you did to me with your mouth, that was more shocking.”
“It was surprising to me, too,” I chuckled. “When I am with women, it is not usually so…” I could not think of the word.
“Gentle?”
“Yes. And… selfless, I suppose.”
