Page 64 of Female Fantasy
Then she sniffs me. Wrinkles crease her nose.
“Your scent wafted all the way to my dais. It is most peculiar—ancient and foreign. Almost…human. But not entirely so.”
“I have shifter blood in my lineage,” I tell her.
“Hmm.” She turns to Ryke. “And you, sir? Are you a shifter as well?”
I open my mouth to answer for him. “He is—”
“He can answer for himself,” she snaps at me, her fanged canines breaching her bottom lip. She leans in, her lips a mere breath away from the tendons in Ryke’s neck. “Can you not, princeling?”
Before I can process this turn of events, Ryke has Talassa flipped, his forearm braced against her neck like a restraint, his other hand holding a dagger to her heart.
“Bold of you to assume I would forget the scent of your blood when I tracked it for more than a century,” she snarls.
That is when I see it.
The bead of crimson decorating his bottom lip.
I touch my teeth. Did I put it there? If so, I may have accidentally ended my lover’s life.
“Bold of you to speak so brazenly when my knife is at your chest,” Ryke retorts.
Faster than the speed of sound, Naia and Nix are at our side, their teeth bared at Ryke. From every corner of the room, siren soldiers emerge. They are carrying green-tipped spears, painted in something that resembles the venom of a viper. Eyes as red and vacant as the queen’s mar their otherwise-exquisite faces.
“You did not think you could take me alone, did you?” Talassa taunts. “Your time rotting away in hiding has clearly impacted your judgment, prince.”
She saysprinceas if it is a curse.
“You did not think I would come here alone, did you?” responds Ryke with a grin.
Dylan, Guinn, Kai, and Mira drop their pretenses and line up behind us.
Kai cracks his knuckles, his sullen mouth twisting into a menacing grin.
Mira twirls her hair, as if bored by our antics.
But that is not all.
Other mer join our friends, linking arms. Members of the resistance, making themselves known to the sirens.
From what Ryke has told me, this can end only one way: with bloodshed.
“Have it your way then.”
Suddenly, the water around Talassa starts to boil. Angry, tempestuous whirlpools explode, pushing everyone in her vicinity back until they are meters away, an invisible circle of protection around her.
I gasp. Are these the powers Ryke has spoken of? The special abilities the sirens gain from taking human lives? Do weeven stand a chance against them?
“Do you know the easiest way to expose a false prophet?” Ryke asks, raising a brow.
Talassa only squeezes her hand closed, causing a tidal wave that strikes fear into the hearts of all the guests watching. Around us, mer flee the ballroom in terror, their tails flashes of brilliant color.
“Introduce her to her gods and watch them deny her prayers,” Ryke continues.
With one brutal slap of his tail, he cuts through the chokehold of the water. Then his huge calloused hand is around the false queen’s neck.
“Any last words?” he whispers.
