Page 39 of A Reckless Indulgence

“Your parents.”

Her knife moves easily through the fish now. “That’s not how we’re born. There are no progenitors. There’s just a collision of sea foam and chaos, a bolt of lightning, a hurricane…”

She doesn’t realize how much she’s told him until the silence that comes after. It’s the first time Cav has been quiet, carefully considering her words. Her skin is tight. No one else knows how sirens come to be, and here she is, foolishly spilling secrets like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

It doesn’t matter. He won’t get a chance to share anything she tells him.

Resolutely, she rises to her feet and moves further down the bank. A strand of dead vines climbs toward the top of the cave, straining toward the sun. She cuts them down and returns to the shore, dumping the leaves onto the bundle of sticks like she’s seen land dwellers do. Expectantly, she looks at Cav.

He looks confused.

“You promised me fire,” she reminds him.

Another smile cracks across his face. “I did, didn’t I?” He lowers his chest to the ground, packing dead leaves between the sticks. Once it suffices, he curls his hands around the base and curves his mouth to blow. At first, nothing happens. His brows knit before he tries again, producing a faint wisp of smoke.

“That’s fire?” Lyx snorts.

Cav grits his teeth and shuffles lower. “Are you the expert now?”

Something about his taunting makes her teeth drag into her lip. She can’t tear herself away from the focus in his eyes, the pucker of his lips, the steady breath that finally bursts into flame. It’s short-lived, but it’s enough. The dead leaves catch and spread to the sticks, leaving Cav with a smug smirk aimed directly at her.

Her nose tingles at the foreign scent, and she stuffs a stick into each fish to lean them into the fire.

Cav leans back against the wall, eyelids heavy from exertion. Now Lyx smirks. Perhaps this is the secret to keeping a captive. Give him enough work to exhaust him. Make him compliant. Enjoy how easily his guard slips —

“Are you lonely out here?”

His question lands like a slap. It’s unexpected and debilitating, worse than the first plunge into icy water after a night hunting on land. Her chest tightens in surprise. “Why would – where did –”

“You don’t have parents.” His voice is dreamy, as comfortable as if he were sprawled out in the sun. “You never talk about anyone else. Do you have anyone?”

Lonely.

She’s seen it on young sailor’s faces when they take their first watch alone. She’s seen it in the old pirates’ eyes when they recount their glory days to empty pubs. Loneliness, she imagines, is emptiness and impossible weight all at once.

Has she ever felt that? When she looks inside herself, she finds something raw and ragged buried deep in her chest. She doesn’t want to reach for it. Sirens are solitary creatures. No matter what habitat they share, they can’t spend their lives together; they are a garden of hostile plants sucking the life from each other.

She is meant to be alone. All of them are.

“Sirens don’t feel sentimental emotions,” she manages. “We don’t understand the things you sing about: loneliness, remorse, grief —”

“Love?”

The fire pops between them. Of course she’s heard the word. Sirens use it mockingly, picking their teeth clean of their latest paramours or scavenging shipwrecks. She’s heard it a thousand times from hypnotized pirates as she drags them beneath the waves.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

“We cannot love.” The word tastes as slimy as the freshly-gutted fish. “It doesn’t exist.”

“You don’t believe in it? You’ve never loved anything?” Cav’s eyes spark like the fire. “Anyone?”

The look he gives her makes her skin crawl, but not in the way she’s used to. Less like revulsion, and more like…appetite.

Humming, she settles her weight onto one palm. She’s playing with her food, but when doesn’t she? His eyes flicker when she leans toward him and forms her lips around a single word. “Never.”

The firelight turns his eyes a warm shade of honey. “You’ve never desired anything? Craved something? Ached for what you can’t have?”

Her fingers curl in the sand beside his tail. “That sounds like something you’re familiar with.”