and the words that leave it.”
“I can’t read him when he isn’t looking at me,” Isolde chides. Atarah lets me go with a shove, but I’m more disappointed that I didn’t get to see Davina’s face while I finished my remark.
I’m met yet again with Isolde as she continues her strange ogling of me.
“His father sent him here,” she immediately states, sending my body rigid. The girls suddenly move closer, encompassing me in their circle, and I can feel their anticipation seeping into my skin.
“What else?” one of them asks impatiently.
“He was asked to come here,” Isolde continues, her brows drawing together again in concentration while I meet her eyes with defiance in my head. I will lose every ounce of trust with Davina and all my work will go to shit if Isolde spills the truth.
“For what?” Nesrine prods from behind me. Then her voice is closer. “You better hope it’s for adventure, Viking, because my eldest sister has been wanting to rip into you since laying eyes on you.”
I’m not afraid of death, not fully, dying in paradise at the hands of seven women might be a feat for some men, but me, I’d rather die on the battlefield with my pride still intact—which might be in a few minutes from now.
“To observe the land,” Isolde recites. “To see if this island held any good soil for farming.” I stare at her, listening to the words that leave her mouth. I repeat them once because it’s what I wanted them to believe so how good are these so-called powers that this Siren has?
My mind begins to slowly reel at my luck, how she didn’t just out me in a room full of beings that want me dead.
“You told the truth.” My concentration is broken the moment Davina speaks, my eyes immediately falling on her. She gawks at me, appearing taken back that I spoke the truth. I can’t say that I blame her because I’d never believe me either, I would’ve been buried in the ground somewhere.
“That’s absurd,” I hear Atarah upbraid. “We’re on an island. Why would he make a trip back and forth such a long ways for farming? It makes no sense.”
“It doesn’t,” Isolde replies calmly. “But—” Atarah rounds the stone slab I’m sitting on and stands in front of me, blocking my view of Isolde.
“Can you be wrong?”
“I never have before,” Isolde states. “It’s what I saw and heard.”
“But it makes no sense,” Atarah argues, clenching her hands into fists.
“Give it up,” Nesrine asserts. “You just want to kill him.”
“Because he’s not supposed to be here.”
Nesrine shrugs. “Something is wrong with the veil then.”
“I’ll have to summon Taysa,” Isolde chimes. “There has to be a reason.”
“What did you girls find out?” a male voice booms through the room, changing the air and adding some testosterone.
They all remain silent for the first time, heads bowed and averted from telling him exactly what happened here.
Except Davina.
She’s still studying me with confusion and relief plastered on her face, while I feel a small twinge of remorse that she isn’t rallying with her sisters and believing it.
“Well?” King Triton persists, stepping deeper into the room.
“He’s telling the truth,” Davina voices with a small smirk to her lips.
“The truth?” I feel his hesitation land on me, and I tear myself away from his daughter to him. “What are you?”
I perk a brow. “What?”
Shirtless with gray chest hair and his trident in hand, King Triton strides toward me as his daughters step away to allow him room.
“You have something special about you,” he stresses through deepened brows. “You’re not just a Viking.”
“I can assure you I am.”
His beefy hand lands on Isolde’s shoulder, who is still sitting in front of me. “Go rest.”
She instantly does as he asks, striding out of the room while taking a few of her sisters with her. The king takes her place and swallows the chair with his compact body. Davina takes a step toward him, followed by Atarah, remaining silent behind him.
“You know this changes nothing,” he tells me. “I don’t trust you, and letting you go free is out of the question.”
“So even though I’m innocent of the crimes you’ve accused me of committing, you’re still going to kill me?”
“I’m a just man but not a stupid one.”
“Then where do we go from here?”
Atarah crosses her arms. “He won’t be missed. His ship won’t be able to wait around forever.”
“Is it still there?” her father asks.
“It arrived yet again the other day.”
“How many