Muireann.
Midnight.
I am in my sanctuary now.
A vast room in my home, sealed, guarded, forbidden to every soul without my consent.
This is where I retreat when the world becomes loud and fragile around me.
When the world becomes undeserving of my restraint.
This is where the darkness in me is not contained, not softened, not apologized for.
This is where I let it breathe.
A glass of amber brandy rests in my hand, warm against my palm.
Its burn familiar and grounding.
My gaze is fixed on the photo before me.
A floor to ceiling photo, impossibly large and impossible to ignore.
A photo of Tarian Sawyer.
I had it commissioned deliberately.
Every detail bare with painstaking care.
The curve of his mouth.
The sharp intelligence in his eyes.
The arrogant tilt of his head.
A cold laugh scrapes its way out of my chest now, as Lar’s voice echoes in my memory.
“He insists on meeting you…”
Another laugh follows, bitter, hollow and edged with all the venom inside me.
I step closer to the photo, my fingers hovering just shy of the photo’s surface, as though touching it might scorch me.
“Oh, Tarian,” I murmur.
“You are not Lysander Daorheche…And yet you wear him like a ghost.” My lips curve, cruel and aching all at once.
“The same face.
The same mouth.
Those same lips that once kissed me into surrender.”
I press my mouth to the portrait’s lips, a mockery of intimacy and memory.
Of everything he will never understand.
Then I shove myself away from the photo and stalk toward the sofa, never breaking eye contact with it.
Red engulfs me from every angle.
Red silk curtains pooling like spilled blood, red velvet sofas.
Walls kissed with crimson and gold.
The room is decadent, excessive and intentionally beautiful.
At one end stands the floor to ceiling aquarium.
Its waters beautiful and watchful.
“You were cloaked in magic,” I say, lifting my glass of brandy toward the photo as if addressing a physical man.
“You and your forefather, Sawyer Daorheche or Sam Sawyer, as the world knew him before he died.” My smile sharpens.
“But the Daorheche pride still poisons you.
It leaks from you.”
I hurl the glass and it explodes against the photo frame.
Brandy splattering like rusted blood, glass crystals raining down.
“You think you’re better than them.” I snarl, my voice slicing the air.
“Better than the ones I slaughtered before you.
Better than the other Daorheches.”
Silence answers me.
Rage rots inside my chest, thick and corrosive, just like acid.
“You are no better,” I whisper, shakily.
“You will die the same way they all did.
By my command.
By my hand.”
A loud wail tears out of me before I can stop it.
Pain claws its way up my throat as memory crashes over me.
My family, slaughtered.
All for our tears.
If the Daorheches had asked, we would have given our tears freely.
Our tears were sacred, yes, but not worth our lives.
They killed my mother first.
Collected what fell from our eyes as we screamed.
Used our grief to extend their bloodline.
Then they finished our clan.
My body folds in on itself as the past drags me under.
I see Lysander again, years ago.
The sea was restless that day.
Gray and endless.
I was young, distracted, meant to be learning how to coax pearls into existence.
Instead, I saw the shadow of a ship passing overhead.
Curiosity betrayed me and I followed it for days.
Silent beneath the waves.
Pirates found the ship before I did.
And they cornered the ship against rocks as the storm rose, mercilessly and suddenly.
It was then I saw him and his crew.
Lysander Daorheche and his crew.
The pirates escaped the storm.
But Lysander did not.
His ship broke.
His Men screamed.
“Help!
Help!” Lysander and his men screamed on top their voices.
Panicked and untrained, I clutched my conch and summoned the merrows of the Eastern seas.
They arrived in force.
Guards, warriors, watchers.
“What is it, daughter of Amran?” One of them demanded.
“These humans need help.” I pleaded.
“Pirates damaged their ship…”
“That is not our concern.” He snapped, cutting into my words.
“Let the lesser beings…Humans drown…”
“That is not what we were taught.” I cut in, furiously.
“What would the Merrow King say when he learns an Eastern guard defied the daughter of a Northern ruler?”
Rain lashed at us.
Waves roared.
After a long moment, the guard nodded.
Together, we bent the sea.
We pulled the ship free and lay it gently on the shore of Faghorn.
The men fled as soon as they touched ground.
Only Lysander remained.
And it was then I rose from the water in borrowed limbs and flesh of man.
Completely naked and unashamed.
“By God!” He gasped, turning away.
“Please…Cloak yourself.”
“I only wished to know if you were unharmed.
We’re merrows…We saved you from the storm.” I told him softly.
Shock stole his words when he realized the truth.
“Merrows?” He breathed.
“They’re real?”
He stepped closer.
Curious and areful.
His finger trailed along my face.
I flinched.
Fear snapped through me, and I plunged back into the sea, ordering the guards to retreat.
But before I left, our eyes locked again.
Innocent intrigue.
A mistake that eventually damned us all.
“If you keep brooding like this, Muireann.” A voice drawls now, “You will lose your beauty before we are wed.”
My head snaps up instantly at the sound of that familiar voice.
The aquarium ripples.
“What are you doing here?” I demand.
King Zafron Lionedes steps through the water as a portal blooms, bold and commanding.
Infuriatingly beautiful, blonde hair cropped to precision.
Black tailored blazer.
Power coiled beneath elegance.
That’s King Zafron Lionedes, the Merrow King that has lived for as long as I can remember.
“I felt your anger,” he says lightly.
“The water trembled around me.”
“You look well,” I remark coldly.
“Who were you entertaining tonight?”
His eyes flick to Tarian’s photo, then back to me.
“A gala in Manhattan,” he says.
“And you?”
“That man,” I say sharply, pointing at Tarian’s photo.
“He wants to meet me, before he can do business with me.”
“You planned to kill him,” Zafron says.
“On his twenty ninth birthday, so why did he need to meet you?
Why the need to do business with him?”
A dark smile curves my mouth.
“Where is the fun in that, if I just go ahead and kill him?”
His gaze narrows on me.
“You never meet them before the kill, why now?”
“I grew bored.” I admit, slyly.
He rises slowly and studies me.
“You want to play with his heart,” he says.
“Because he looks like Lysander.”
I bristle.
“And if I do?
I am not yet your wife.
You take lovers freely.” I snap, coldly.
But inside me, I’m bristling, because this man, Zafron always terrifies me, even though he has being loyal to me and my thirst for vengeance.
His prowess widely known.
A cold grin climbs his face now.
“Touché, my beloved.”
Then he turns back to the photo.
“Give him what he wants.
Take what you need.” Then, softly, he adds.
“But do not give what I would never surrender.”
Confusion flickers I’m my face.
“And what is that?”
His fist tightens suddenly and agony explodes in my chest.
I scream, collapsing as my heart twists like it’s being crushed from the inside.
“Your heart,” he says calmly.
“It belongs to me.
And only when it stops, will the curse on the Daorheches end.”
The words carve me open.
Cold, final and unforgiving.