Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 144411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
It wasn’t until much later that I was able to understand English and learned how to write it that I was able to tell Aerik and the others my story, one I had spent a long time creating in my head. I had been kidnapped from a faraway land called Limonos by pirates, who had cut out my tongue and threw me overboard, leaving me for dead. With pirates already terrorizing the seas and shipping routes at that time, my story was wholly believable, and most of the world contained faraway lands that no one had ever heard of. What else could have explained it? From what I had gathered, Syrens were called mermaids and were stuff of myths and legends, things that only the crusty old sailors seemed to believe. They would have labeled me insane had I told them the truth about where I’d come from.
Turns out, I’d soon push my luck within the realms of what’s possible. Within a year of being unable to talk, my tongue started to grow back. It slowly regenerated, just as a Syren’s tail would if it got sliced off, until one day I was able to speak again. By the time we reached the continent, Aerik’s doctor considered me a miracle, and I was able to slip into the royal family with nary a blemish to me. Edonia may have taken my voice for her own, but she didn’t prevent mine from coming back.
“All that wondering won’t do much for ye except bring ye sorrow, I say,” Daphne laments. “Better to accept the lot that god gave ye.” She pauses and gives me a pitying smile that fills her round red cheeks. “No matter the hardships.”
And yet all I’ve done for the last decade is accept it. I don’t want to accept it anymore. I want to fight back, fight my way to freedom. But this world above the seas is cruel to women, no matter their rank, and it’s a world that isn’t my own. I will never fit in here among the humans because, at the heart of me, I’m not one.
Yet I’m not a Syren either. I just exist in this space between the worlds with nowhere to belong to. My soul is adrift.
All because I believed Edonia’s lies.
Suddenly the door behind us swings open and in the mirror’s reflection I see Aerik stumbling into the room.
“There you are,” he says to me, his words slurring, his black periwig askew. Obviously drunk. My pulse starts to race, thrumming in my veins, my hand going over Nill’s tooth and clasping it tightly. “My split-tongued she-snake,” he says with a snort. He eyes Daphne with a disdainful jerk of his head. “Go along now, I need a word with my slippery wife.”
Please don’t leave me, I think, my heart sinking as I watch Daphne scuttle out of the room. I already can’t breathe.
“You’re late,” he says, stopping a few feet away and peering at me in the mirror. “Ferdinand and I have already been through a bottle, waiting for you. Food is getting cold.”
Oh, damn it.
“I was told the dinner was at seven,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady and calm, but submissive. I give him the softest smile that I can and relax my gaze so I don’t seem like I’m challenging him.
“I highly doubt you were told that,” he says with a sneer. “You were told the correct time, but your pea-sized brain couldn’t comprehend it, could it now?”
My smile falters slightly and I fold my hands demurely in my lap. He’s already stepped back into the bitter man he was. “My mistake. If it pleases you, I’m ready now.”
He frowns at me in the mirror, his eyes going to my chest. Before I have a chance to cover my necklace his hand is shooting out and grabbing the shark tooth.
“What have I told you about this foul thing?” he says, ripping it off my neck, the chain snapping in two. “I’ve told you not to wear it, it’s what a savage would wear, not a bloody princess.”
I cry out in horror, twisting around to try to grab it from him. My fingers curl around his hands, trying to pry his fingers open. “No, please don’t, you know that’s special to me, you know it’s all I have of home, I—”
“Oh, sod off,” he says and I know he’s about to backhand me seconds before he does it. The crack sounds like dynamite, my face thrown back and erupting in flames from the sting of his palm, but if this is all he’ll give me, then I’ll take it.
But then he’s storming over to the fireplace and throwing the necklace in and I’m yelling, staggering out of the chair, running clumsily to the fire to save it.