Page 24 of A Reckless Indulgence

His head tilts back. Above him, the rocky ceiling is solid, but light leaks through the natural holes worn into it. One beam shines a few feet from him and glints off the glass bottles. The vials are a variety of shapes and colors with faded labels, but he recognizes them, classic medicines and potions found on nearly every ship.

Behind the bottles is a jug of fresh water. His tongue scrapes his lips like sandpaper. It takes some maneuvering, but once he reaches it, he has to restrain himself from downing the whole thing.

Lyx doesn’t return all day. Eventually, the air around him grows chilly, forcing him to burrow beneath a few massive leaves. He wants to be awake when she arrives. He fights sleep like a child, but eventually, the soothing sounds of the ocean send him off.

In his dreams, he assembles Lyx with what pieces he knows. Her skin is slippery like a jellyfish. There’s a solid weight to her, her body far from frail when she sat atop of him and threatened to strangle him.

His fingers flex. His dream changes. This time when she pins him down, his hands move to her thighs. She lets him touch her until he reaches the width of her hips, and then, she closes her hands around his throat once more.

Beside Cav, something splashes. He ignores it and tries to sink back into the dream, but the splashing continues. It takes a while to realize what he hears are footsteps drawing closer and stopping next to his head.

He doesn’t want to wake up. He wants to keep dreaming about Lyx, but when his eyes flutter open, he half-believes he’s still asleep. The woman standing over him looks like an illusion. Her hair falls in wavy ribbons, colors shifting in the light. The milky skin of her torso glows nearly translucent, darkening to blue and purple at her hips. Scars wind around her arms and chest like thin ropes raised beneath her skin.

So this is a siren. She looks as divine as the stories say, but it’s strange seeing her walk on two legs. All the tales depict sirens with tails that restrict them to water. Is that a lie created for comfort, an assurance that some place is safe from sirens? Or did sirens spread the fiction themselves, an easy way to move about unnoticed?

The siren watches him with a look that could almost be concern — until she catches him staring. Instantly, her expression shifts back to distaste. “You’re still alive.”

He can’t help but smile. It is Lyx. He knows that voice, the one that kept his mind afloat when his body tried to give up. “As long as you will it.”

She rolls her eyes and turns back to the ledge. Her skin has dried impossibly fast, leaving only traces of water behind. That’s when Cav realizes she’s as naked as him. He watches her movement, following every curve and ripple of her flesh. He wants to take in all of her, but when she turns back to face him, he forces his gaze to the ceiling.

She dumps out a new bag of supplies before she notes the bottles beside him. Her lip curls. “I see you’ve helped yourself to my bag.” She pulls a rag from the pile and sits to clean each bottle’s rim.

His laugh is rough. “Afraid you might catch something from me?”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she spits. “Next to me, you’re an anchovy. You’re chum.” Indignantly, she reaches into her pile and tosses something toward him. “Here, you little fucking plankton.”

It lands with a wet slap beside him. He has to roll over to reach it, but the string of small fish is a welcome sight.

“You gutted them for me?” He doesn’t concern himself with eating politely, using his sharp teeth to rip meat from the bones. Raw fish wouldn’t normally be his first choice, but he’s ravenous. Before long, he’s polished them off, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand with a long drink of water. “Thank you.”

Lyx continues cleaning the bottles, monitoring him from the corner of her eye. “Are you a dragon?”

For the first time, there’s no threat coming from her, besides the steely sheen of her eyes. “Half,” he answers.

“Half-what?”

“Half-dragon, half-human.”

“Are you half-man and woman, too?”

A laugh startles out of him, but Lyx’s expression doesn’t change. Her words are neither a joke nor an insult. Most people prefer to see him as one or the other, but Cav has never done well with constraints. No one’s ever put it as concisely as she does. Slowly, he nods. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“Do you breathe fire?”

He clears his throat to stir the weakened ember in his chest. “Not when I’ve swallowed two gallons of sea water.”

She lifts her chin to scrutinize him. “You don’t have wings.”

“And you don’t have a fishtail.”

Her eyes simmer, but then his stomach rumbles loud enough that it can’t be ignored. Without a word, Lyx rises to her feet and moves away. He wonders if he’s offended her, if she’s leaving already, but she returns moments later with a bundle of flora picked from the bank. Cav relishes the sea peas and samphire, and when he finishes them off, his stomach remembers what it’s like to be satisfied.

The whole time, Lyx watches him, repolishing the same bottles over and over. “You say you don’t hunt sirens.” She speaks like she doesn’t believe it, eyes following him like a hawk. “So what do you do?”

“Curious about me?”

That gets under her skin. She pushes to her feet, leaving Cav scrambling to answer.