Page 21 of Hymn of Breath and Bone

“They’re just alone forever?”

“They find companionship, like Mira and Astraios. But they never mate.”

“That sounds lonely.”

Caspian steered me down an unfamiliar tunnel. “I agree.”

“Where are we going, exactly?”

“Well, since you can’t train today, I figured we’d do the next best thing,” he drawled, giving me a smirk.

I was about to ask what that meant when I heard a faint melody floating up the tunnel. I moved to cover my ears on instinct, but Caspian caught my wrists.

“It’s not siren song,” he promised, bringing my fingers to his lips and kissing them with a bemused smile. “At least, not the kind you’re worried about. Equally magical though.”

He winked at my puzzled expression, drawing me closer to the music. I didn’t feel like I had in the library when the song muddled my senses, but I didn’t relax my vigilance until we rounded a corner to a curved cavern that opened to the sky.

A chorus of siren children was singing, their winged backs turned to us as they watched their teacher. She moved a baton higher, and their voices rose with it; lower, and they dropped to vibrate through the space.

It was only when the instructor, an elderly female judging by the gray tones of her hair and wrinkled face, looked up to give Caspian a delighted smile that the children turned.

“Cas!” one screeched, and the whole chorus fell to ruin as children ran for my mate and practically piled atop him.

He laughed, greeting the children by name, and my heart squeezed. He was the Siren King, yet he knew each of them, offering hugs to the younger ones and handshakes or shoulder touches to the elders.

Seas, there was something primally attractive about seeing him scoop small children onto his back and laugh without restraint at their antics. It made my core ache.

The children seemed to range in age from very young to early-adolescent. Perhaps twelve or thirteen at most. The younger ones didn’t pay any attention to me, but a few of the older children glanced at me warily as I waited, standing somewhat awkwardly a step away from their king.

Caspian looked up with a grin, his eyes sparkling gold. My heart lurched with affection.

“Marina,” he said, trying and failing to sound serious as children hung from his biceps. “These are my most precious subjects. And this,” he gestured to the cavern and instructor, who nodded politely to me, “is where they learn to sing.”

“Come sing with us, Cas!” called one of the children clinging to hisleg.

“‘Cas’?” I asked, raising a brow.

He shrugged, ruffling the child’s hair. “They don’t swear fealty until they reach maturity,” he explained. “So I’m ‘Cas’ until then.”

The children were already tugging him toward the stone circle where they had their lessons, and a small girl with big blue eyes was looking expectantly up at me and tugging on the hem of my skirt.

“My mommy says you’re a princess.”

“I am,” I laughed, more nervous around these children than I had been around all of the adult members of Caspian’s court. “But you can call me Marina.”

“I’m Viola,” she said, dragging me by the hem toward the circle and tugging me down to sit next to her. “You can sit with me, Rina.”

I smiled at the nickname as a few other children sat beside me, their downey wings flapping in uncertainty.

Caspian was sitting, surrounded by giggling children, and the instructor had to whistle sharply to get their attention. He winked at me as the children began to sing a little song about rowing a boat, and I muddled along as best as I could with the rest of the lesson.

The children eventually relaxed around me and took pity on my clear lack of training. By the time the lesson ended, I had a small girl sitting in my lap, her soft feathers tickling my nose each time she turned, and another hanging on my arm.

When the teacher dismissed them, the children devolved into chatter and shouting, all semblance of order gone.

“Will you sing with us again, Rina?” Viola asked, tugging on my skirt as I tried to extricate myself from the other clinging children.

“Rina would love to,” Caspian replied for me, grinning down as he held two children aloft in his arms, one on his back, and two more hangingon his biceps. He made a show of flexing before lowering the whooping children, and they ran off with their friends as he offered a hand to help me up. “How did you do, ‘Rina’?”