Siren - Hazel Grace Page 0,91

those odds out very well.”

“That, and how would we know that you’ll stay true to your word?” Tobias asserts. “You’re betraying the girls you raised.”

“A contract,” she says softly. “You rule above the sea—” She looks at me. “—and you’ll rule the land. Beneath the sea is mine while you both rule under me.”

Tobias scoffs. “You’ll have to go through Triton first.”

She waves a dismissive hand. “Let me worry about that. Together, we’ll rule the world.”

“I think the asshole next to me and I can agree that we’re not following you anywhere,” I reiterate.

Taysa lands an impassive look onto me. “I heard your cries at night, Son. You missed what was taken away from you but be careful who you trust. Your father knew I was alive, as well as your brother—still living and breathing while he let you believe otherwise. So when I tell you he’s weak, he is. You’ve grown up into everything I could’ve hoped for. Winning over your clan will not be a problem, especially when the dragons are under your power and control. You’ll save your people from the Highlanders and become a hero, a legend.”

“I won’t betray my father,” I growl, clutching my hands together to keep from ripping her across the table.

“Even after what he’s done to you?”

I shrug. “I don’t believe you.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

Pressing her lips together, she bows her head. “Your upper left arm, there is a birthmark. It looks like a triangle with a straight line going through it. You were a stubborn child who loved leaving pinecones under the elders’ beds and a little blonde girl kissed you at four and told you that she thought you would grow up to be a burly man with no skill as a fighter.” She averts her gaze to Tobias. “At least she got the last part right.”

I don’t shake my head, but I want to.

Everything she says is true. That little girl is married now to one of the fiercest warriors in the clan.

“You, Tobias or Gathan—whatever you want to be called now—you followed Dagen around like a shadow. You broke your right wrist while jumping off a small cliff thinking that you could fly because your brother said that you could if you got enough height.”

On cue, Tobias and I look at each other—we’re brothers.

Both of us know it, those small details would only stem from a mother who knows and tended to us—who was there. My father couldn’t and didn’t give much information about the dragons to the elders because apparently there was more to the story.

He made a deal with a sea witch, and that would’ve never gone well with the clan. I knew my father was desperate for a solution but not to the point where he’d send me on a suicide mission with the possibility of never coming back.

“Dagen,” Taysa digresses carefully. “To keep Davina and her sisters safe, you will obtain that second cuff for me. Betrayal can be looked at from so many different sorts of angles, but there is only one validity to it. Yours will be to save her after I kill her father for the whole sea and take what I’ve been working for, for over two decades. The cuff or the death of all seven.”

The look on Davina’s face is slowly splintering every fragment of my heart.

My body begs to pull her into a hug, but I refrain from touching her. From letting myself fall back into her because I can’t for my own sake and because Dagen stands next to me, wearing a stoic expression on his face.

I’ve always had a soft spot for her. Always put her ahead of myself, and I want to keep doing it, no matter how many times the vital organ that keeps me alive breaks, but there has to be a point to where I stop throwing so much of my heart at her for my own sanity.

We’ve told her and her sisters everything Taysa told us, down to every last detail. Davina advised that the cuff was in a cave of some sorts, safely hidden, but it was still a dangerous place for it to be in. Especially since the sea witch still resided peacefully on Merindah and even telling the girls is a risk all on its own.

A chance that Dagen and I decided to take because they needed to be prepared rather than blindsided.

And he and I knew what had to be done.

We’re linked to a witch that, with