Page 58 of Hymn of Breath and Bone

“And you love him?”

I laughed a little incredulously. “Of course I do. I would not have risked the wrath of my parents and my people for anything less than true love, Sereia.”

“No one back home will believe this,” Sereia marveled, looking around at sirens and selkies and dwarves and demons all living their lives amidst each other with the only arguments being those over the price of fish. “How does no one know about this?”

“Caspian says they do. We’ve been lied to, Sereia,” I added. “About a great many things.”

As we walked, I told her of what I had learned in Caspian’s library. Of the story of the Exile and what Theia had confessed. About Melusine and the kelpies and the sea dragons. By the time we were seated at the tavern withglasses of ale before us, Sereia’s eyes were wide for a completely different reason.

“A goddess,” she breathed. “And your lungs. The sirens healed them?”

“Treated them,” I corrected, sliding into the booth across from Sereia as the males slid in next to us, a shield from the Stormcrow whenever he arrived. “I have medicine that helps a great deal.”

“And you think more of us might have siren mates?” she asked. I pretended not to notice her surreptitious glance at Astraios, who was staring unabashedly down at her with a look in his brown eyes that told me he had noticed, too.

“We do,” Caspian said, picking up the thread of conversation as he laced our fingers on the table. “This is the kind of world we are hoping to build, Sereia. Our people living in harmony with each other and the peoples around us; not isolated from the world, but part of it.”

Sereia was about to reply when a musician began to play on a small stringed instrument. It was different from Caspian’s lyre, a long neck with strings attached to one end connecting to a wider body with a hole in the middle. Sereia covered her ears, looking around in panic.

“It’s just a fiddle,” Astraios said with a smirk, pulling Sereia’s hand from her ear. “It won’t hurt you.”

Sereia listened, entranced by the music as Caspian and Astraios discussed the plan for when the Stormcrow arrived in hushed voices.

I watched my friend, wondering if I had looked as small and scared and bewildered by the world as she did when I had first experienced it.

“It gets easier,” I said gently as the song ended. Sereia looked at me with wide, awestruck blue eyes. “Feeling like you are just experiencing the world for the first time.”

“It’s so beautiful,” Sereia said, her eyes lined with silver as the fiddler began another song, this one a slow ballad. “But it’s forbidden, Marina.”

“I know,” I replied. “But what if it wasn’t?”

“You’d need to bring the whole population of the Isles here to get them to believe it,” she muttered, looking around and taking in every drop of the scene as if she might never experience it again.

“At last, you see reason, fledgling.” A burly siren male with a wiry black beard interrupted our conversation by sliding into our booth. His hair was streaked with gray, his face lined with years of experience, and one of his storm cloud-colored wings was bent at a horrible angle.

He grinned widely at Caspian, then nodded toward me. “This must be her.” He took my hand as Caspian growled in warning, bending to kiss it and bowing over the table. “Ilya Stormcrow, my lady. I am so pleased to meet you at last.”

“She’s your queen,” Astraios growled, scowling as he attempted to shield Sereia from view with his body. “And Caspian is your king. Show some respect.”

The Stormcrow laughed, ignoring Astraios completely as he peered around Astraios’ broad shoulder. “And who is this little dove?”

“She is none of your concern,” I snapped, drawing Ilya’s attention away from my friend as Caspian snatched my hand back from the treacherous former-general. “You came to meet me, did you not?”

“I like this one, Cas,” Ilya said, grinning widely and showing off his yellowing teeth. “She’s got some spirit in her.”

“Tell me what I want to know, Ilya.” Caspian was glaring at the former general in a way that would have melted my bones had his glare been directed at me.

The Stormcrow just grinned appreciatively. “First, we drink.” He raised a hand to signal one of the wait staff and ordered a round of ale for the table. “And I want to hear the thrilling tale of your romance. How ever did such a thing come about, I wonder?”

“That wasn’t our deal,” Caspian growled.

“It’s fine,” I said. I placed a hand on Caspian’s bicep, and he looked down at me, amber eyes wary.

“Are you sure, Urchin?”

I nodded and launched into the tale, beginning from my kidnapping and recounting the shipwreck, the kelpies, and Morar. Then the false betrothal, the attack by Ilya’s men, to which the Stormcrow smirked in a superior sort of way that made me want to slap him, and our realization that we were mates.

“And here we are,” I finished with a shrug, noting Sereia’s wide eyes. This was the first time she had heard the story from me, and she looked a bit stunned at my storytelling. I turned to Cas. “Did I miss anything?”