Page 68 of Hymn of Breath and Bone
“Are you and father–”
“No,” she smiled sadly. “But it does not mean I don’t love him.”
“And what if you find your true mate after forging a bond? What if I had mated Vitulus, then found Caspian anyway?”
“The first bond is always permanent,” she replied. “Your fate would have been rewritten without Caspian in it.”
“Did Father know?” I whispered, understanding dawning. “Is that why he was so anxious to tie me to Vitulus?”
“He had seen the painting,” my mother nodded. “He didn’t really believe it, but he also didn’t want to take chances.”
I felt another surge of betrayal. My father had known, or at least suspected, that Caspian was my mate, and had planned to execute him withoutever telling me. Had planned to bind me to another to hide the truth—that Caspian and I were fated to be bound by our very souls.
“Help me,” I begged. “Help me convince Father. Help me save the male I love. Please, Mother.”
“I will try,” she agreed, a tear sliding down her cheek. “But you must run, Marina. Leave the Isles with your mate, and do not come back.”
I balled, taking a step back. “What?”
“Your father will not rest until the Siren King is dead,” she pressed, grasping my hands again in desperation. “He thinks he can trick the gods and save you by tying you to Vitulus, but I know he cannot. So you must run. If you wish to live and be happy, you must leave.”
“No,” I said, pulling my hands back again. “We came to save the Isles. To reunite our people. To save all of us.”
“We do not need to be saved, Marina.”
I laughed as another crash of thunder shook the keep. I remembered saying almost the exact same thing to Caspian once.
“You think the storms, the earthquakes, the weakened crops and magic are a coincidence?” Mother blanched, and I nodded. “Iknow. I know that it was our people who cursed us, not the sirens. That it was the selkie king who killed his eldest son and used his death to banish the sirens. That Father and his father and his father before him lied to our people about raids and blockades and painted the sirens as our enemy to excuse our hardships. To blame them on an enemy who was far away and unable to protest. And that as our people have suffered, so have Caspian’s. Their magic weakens, and their bodies sicken. The gods punish us, not the sirens, and it is because we refuse to right our wrongs from five centuries ago.”
“What do you mean, he killed his eldest son?” my mother whispered, a hand over her heart and her brown skin so pale, it was almost the same shade as Caspian’s.
I told her the rest of my story then—Theia’s story. About her prophecies and warnings. About how Caspian killed his own father to save his people and ours, about how the Stormcrow betrayed him and would betray Father as soon as it suited his plans.
“There is no other way, Mother,” I finished, gripping her hands as if I could make her understand through sheer will alone. “No way but together. And I can’t do it without your help.”
She nodded. She still looked pale, but a familiar fire lit her blue eyes, the same fire that burned within my own.
“I believe you,” she agreed. “I can speak to your father. I’ll help you, dearest.”
“You will do no such thing.”
The hope that had blossomed in my chest died a swift and terrible death as I turned to see my father standing in the door.
Chapter 25
“Break their wings.”
The Selkie King’s order had been the last words I fully comprehended before pain became the majority of my world.
Pain and panic.
They had taken Marina, and the part of my brain controlled by our bond and by the primitive beast inside me could think of nothing butgetting her back.
“Are you alive?” Zephyr croaked from the cell next to me. A stone wall separated us, but I saw her hand reach out through the iron bars. “Cas?”
“Barely.” The word came out as a groan, and I tried to block the pain from lurching down the bond toward Marina. Based on her responding jolt of panic, I’d failed. “Wings?”
“Broken.” A choked sob came from my first mate as I heard her shift in the cell, and I balled my hands into fists. “Skies, Cas, it hurts.”
