Siren - Hazel Grace Page 0,88
she greets, picking up a silver knife and cutting into a stick of butter. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Yes,” I manage to force out, but I stay planted close to the entrance of the room. The hairs on my arms stand on end, warning me to watch her and that something is off with her presence.
“You must be hungry—” She nods toward the various fruits and loaves of bread that lay on the table. “—help yourself.”
“I just came here to grab and go,” I reply. “I have to take off today.”
She nods, patting her chin with a maroon napkin. “Of course. Davina said you don’t stay for very long.”
The mention of her name out loud by someone else hits my gut. I don’t want to hear it nor do I want to even think about the shit I discovered yesterday.
“I’m Taysa,” she offers.
“The sea witch.”
She grimaces at the name but quickly recovers. “I’m called that, yes.”
“I apologize. The girls speak highly of you.” She smiles at that, looking down at her plate as though she’s recalling memories that she’s had of raising them.
“I consider them—” She looks up at me, and goosebumps shoot through my whole body. “—special.”
Movement catches my peripheral, and I glance up to see the Viking standing in the door frame of the other entrance into the dining room. A sharp “shit” escaping his lips as he tries to quickly exit but stops when my eyes pin him with a glare.
“Ah, the Viking,” Taysa beams, peering over her shoulder to discover the third body in the room. “Take a seat, we have much to discuss.”
“I’d rather not,” he retorts, mirroring my displeasure of him in this room with a scowl.
“But you need to,” Taysa counters. “Both of you.”
We share our focus on her, but she ignores it, popping a berry into her mouth as she continues to enjoy her meal.
Dagen doesn’t pry from his spot and neither do I, but I know we’re both thinking the same thing besides strangling the fuck out of each other.
“Quickly, boys,” Taysa urges with her hand. “It’ll only take a moment.”
Delaying for another minute, Dagen moves, rounding the table but stands a few feet away from me, waiting expectantly on her to speak so that he can flee the room where I’ll follow right after him through another exit.
Peering up into my eyes, she glances at Dagen then back to me and smiles. “Tobias, congratulations, you found your brother.”
My brows immediately snap together as I watch her chew another berry, casually and collected as though she just told me the sky is blue.
“What?” I snap.
She points an index finger at Dagen. “Your brother. Dagen, meet Gathan, your younger brother.”
“He’s not my brother.”
“He is your brother,” she defends. “And I would know because I'm the mother to the both of you.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Dagen thunders. “My mother is dead. I heard her screams.”
“You thought you heard her screams,” Taysa notes with her fork pointed in his direction. “It’s amazing what magic can do to make the mind think one thing. Especially a small child’s.”
He violently shakes his head. “Bullshit. Both of my siblings were taken with her as well.”
She nods at me. “That would be him.”
“Then where is my sister, Kelaya?”
Taysa averts her gaze, lips pressed together into something I can’t put my finger on. “She’s dead.”
Dagen takes a lofty step forward. “How?” His tone is venom, shaking the tension in the room to new heights while my mind is reeling at her revelation that the man standing beside me is my Lorne.
“She was, in fact, killed by the Highlands while I was trying to get Tobias and Kelaya out of the village.”
A harsh silence fills the room, engulfing us together in some odd trance of truths, or lies, and I’m confused. I don’t believe her words. Not when there isn’t an ounce of authenticity in them.
Dagen the Blood Axe, he’s not my brother. Mine is lost to the world, and I can’t find him.
The woman who made me squirm the last time we met was mad. The tall, lanky little shithead that stands next to me is not my brother.
He isn’t Gathan.
Everything about him screams stranger. Besides the medium-brown hair and shitty looks we’ve been giving each other, we have nothing else in common.
I’d know if Gathan was alive, I would feel him. The first moment I laid eyes on the little fool next to me, it would’ve sent something coursing through my body. If he