Page 73 of Dare
Mother. Father.
A desperate body splashed behind me, rushing to get near. I heard feminine panting and someone wailing my name. One of the queens. One of my grandaunts. Silvia.
She shrieked, “Jeryn!”
A knight bellowed, “The prince!”
The siren shark might have snarled, “You!”
I screamed for my parents without making a noise. My heart screamed that they weren’t there. I was going to die, and they weren’t there. I wanted them to slay the shark, but they weren’t there. They loved me, but they weren’t there.
So much hysteria on the beach. Too much.
The shark leaped, its teeth reminding me of icicles. Deadly in their clarity. Painful to behold. The sea monster lashed out, aiming for my jugular.
No. Aiming for her.
My vision cleared, jolting me to the present. I manifested once more in the grotto, witnessing the scene I’d stormed in on.
The siren shark charged with a screech. It whisked toward the hypnotized figure who awaited its approach, her petite limbs immobilized by the sight. Astonished. Spellbound.
I knew the feeling. I also knew wrath.
If the creature touched her, I would tear it to shreds.
I moved, cutting swiftly into the pool. As my arm slung around the woman’s bare waist, memories replayed themselves like a reenactment. Years ago, one of my grandaunts had wrested me from the siren shark. Now I swerved my former captive from the attack, spinning us around so that my frame blocked her from harm, her naked spine aligning with my chest.
Shielding the female, I ripped my scalpel knife from its case and flung my free arm behind me. The blade punctured the shark’s armor, a plate of scales that sprayed crimson into the air. The creature writhed in grotesque fury, its tail thwacking the pool’s surface. With a shriek, it vanished into the depths, strings of blood trailing in its wake.
We stood there. Half-twisted toward the sight, we gawked over our shoulders at the water, oxygen pumping from our lungs. The monster would die soon.
As I swallowed, the acid pungency of vinegar assaulted my palate. Loathing. Disgust. Confusion. For the shark, for myself, for this woman.
And for the stinging sensation across my wrist. The quick invasion seeped into my skin like fluid … or venom.
A sickening feeling lunged through my stomach. I dropped the knife, which hit the water’s shallow end with a splash, then I shoved the woman away. She stumbled to face me, her eyes falling to where I clutched my fist. I covered it with my free hand, unwilling to look.
My throat constricted. I swiped my blade from the pool, rammed the weapon into my sheath, quit the grotto, and fled to the ruin’s cupola while trapping my wrist in a vise grip.
From a distance, the scent of ocean brine suffocated me. In the vicinity, I saw nothing but rainforest ferns instead of frosted alpines. The infernal fucking flora, which confined this infernal fucking wild. Now I knew what it was like to be imprisoned, with this floating woodland caging me in.
I contemplated screaming, unsure how to achieve such a decibel anymore. I had not done so since that day. Grappling my chest, I searched for the vial but remembered I’d lost it in the whirlpool. I seized the ledge, bent over, and dry heaved into the understory.
Staggering upright, I retreated to the opposite side of the cupola, but it didn’t feel right. No place in this hellhole felt right. This wasn’t home, much less Winter.
Balling my hands into fists, I squeezed bones, muscles, veins, tendons. Patience, I told myself while pacing.
It would not happen to me. It would not.
“You will be fine,” my grandaunts had vowed that night.
“You will be fine,” Silvia had said, cradling me although I’d been thirteen, too old for that.
“You will be fine,” Doria had repeated, patting my hair as I wept.
Countless times growing up, I had envisioned the opposite. The siren shark’s bite turning me into a deranged being for three days. Usurping my sanity. Killing me gradually.
I had read the tomes and accounts. I had studied the imported corpse of a siren shark. I knew.