Ch. 44
Wake’s power fills the cave, and I can feel the energy thrumming in the air, but there’s a shift—an almost imperceptible tremor in the fabric of his spell. His breaths come faster, more labored, and his skin, usually so vibrant and full of life, begins to pale. I watch in alarm as he falters, his shoulders slumping, his eyes losing their fierce glow. The water around us quivers as if uncertain, and then it begins to drop.
“Wake?” My voice barely breaks above a whisper.
He falls to one knee, the strength draining from him visibly, and with it, the spell collapses. The sea creatures that had been suspended in the water tumble back into the pool, splashing and thrashing as they land. Below the surface, I catch a glimpse of the sharks converging on an eel, tearing into it with a savage hunger that makes my stomach twist. Wake’s breathing is heavy, ragged, his forehead slick with sweat.
Without thinking, I rush to him, dropping to my knees beside him. My heart is pounding in my chest as I reach out, wiping the sweat from his brow with trembling fingers. “What’s wrong?” I ask, the words rushing out in a panic. “Wake, what’s happening to you?”
He grimaces, shrugging me off with a rough jerk of his shoulder. His pride is a palpable barrier between us, but I don’t back down. “My power should be much greater than this,” he says through gritted teeth. “But I suffer the longer I am away from my homesea.”
“Homesea?” The word is foreign, unfamiliar. “What’s a homesea?”
He takes a deep breath, his chest rising and falling as if the act itself is a struggle. “It is the water of my birth. All sirens have a homesea, the place where we were born. We can leave, but we must always return.”
I can hear the weariness in his voice, and it tugs at something deep inside me. “What happens if you don’t return?”
His eyes, usually so piercing and sharp, cloud over with something I can’t quite place—something close to fear. “As long as we remain in the sea, there is a compulsion to return, a call that cannot be ignored forever. If we resist… we go mad.”
I swallow hard, the gravity of his words sinking in. But there’s another question burning in the back of my mind, one I’m almost too scared to ask. “What happens if you’re on land for too long…? What will happen to you?”
His expression tightens, almost as if he’s in pain. “If I remain on land too long, I will lose my ability to transform. And after that… my homesea will cease to call to me.” He swallows, the motion tight and forced. “I will begin to age, rapidly, like a human. To my people, I will be as good as dead.”
The weight of his confession hits me like a punch to the gut. My eyes burn with the tears I’m trying desperately to hold back. I want to scream, to demand why he didn’t tell me sooner, why he kept this from me. But deep down, I know it’s my fault he’s here in the first place. He won’t leave without me, but I physically can’t join him.
He’ll die here unless I find another way.
Marina’s face flashes in my mind, and I grasp at the only solution I can think of. “Why can Marina still shift? She’s been in captivity for decades, right? Why hasn’t she lost her ability?”
Wake’s eyes darken, and he rockets to his feet, turning away from me in a swift, angry motion. “What they have done to that female is repugnant. She’s an abomination.”
I scramble to my feet, desperate to keep the conversation from spiraling into something beyond my control. “What happened to Marina wasn’t my fault, Wake! But she’s alive, isn’t she? That has to count for something.”
“Does it?” He whirls on me, his voice sharp, his expression fierce. “Do you think Marina believes that to be true?”
I freeze, unable to find the words to respond. In truth, I don’t know how Marina feels about her predicament. I haven’t seen her since Wake nearly killed her. Shame washes over me, a cold, suffocating wave. Maybe Wake is right. Maybe I am more like their captors than I want to admit.
Wake’s voice cuts through my thoughts, rough and bitter. “She will never be accepted back into her clan. She’ll be a pariah, the worst shame our people can bear—to be excommunicated. I should have put her down when I had the chance. It would have been a mercy.”
His words hang in the air like a death sentence, and I feel my resolve crumbling under the weight of it all. “I don’t know what to do,” I admit, my voice small, almost lost in the vastness of the cave. I feel like a child lost in the dark, fumbling for a way out.
Wake’s frustration is palpable, vibrating between us like a taut wire ready to snap. “I cannot stay trapped in this tank, Pho-ebe. I won’t accept it much longer.”
I want to reach out to him, to offer some kind of comfort, but my hands stay at my sides, clenched into fists. “Just… please, wait a little longer. Let me figure out what to do.”
For a long, agonizing moment, he says nothing, his gaze burning into me, weighing my words. Then, with a slow, reluctant nod, he begins to relent. But before he can speak, something in him snaps.
Without warning, he closes the distance between us, his hands gripping my arms with a fierce intensity. His touch is rough, almost bruising, and before I can react, he yanks me toward him and crushes his mouth against mine.
The kiss is not gentle. It’s not tender. It’s raw, desperate, filled with all the frustration and need he’s been holding back. I’m caught off guard, my breath stolen by the sheer force of it, by the way his lips demand everything from me in that moment. My mind is spinning, reeling from the abruptness of it all, but my body responds instinctively, heat flaring in my core as I kiss him back with equal intensity.
I can barely breathe, can barely think, but I can feel the intensity of his emotions, the raw power that thrums through him, the same power that had filled the cave just moments before. His anger, his fear, his need—all of it pours into me through that kiss, and I’m swept away by the tide of it.
When he pulls away, his gaze is hard and unreadable. “You have until the next full moon.”
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