Over my fucking dead body. I wanted her nowhere near that viper’s nest. The djinn weren’t the only danger there; my family was just as vile, just as poisonous. And the second they found out she was my bond? All their animosity and hatred would carry onto her. My soul might be stained enough, but she didn’t deserve an ounce of that.
“She knows nothing about our world or her own kind!” I shouted, as if the tribunal could hear me. “They can’t make her do this.”
“They can, and they will,” Cova argued, resigned. “For all that she was a human only a couple of months ago, she’s a siren now. They don’t care. Sooner or later, she will be brought before them. Whether it’s by force or by choice remains to be seen.”
CHAPTER 15
Rani
“I still don’t see why I can’t keep practicing from right here,” I argued.
I was this close to screaming. This. Close. But no matter how hard Cova shot those eye daggers at me, I was not going down to that beach. He couldn’t fucking make me. I would kick and bite and claw to keep away from that scorching sand and the waves that reached so far upon it.
The ocean was dangerous. There would be no saving me when that undertow caught hold of my presence. I’d be sucked out faster than I could scream for help.
No. My training would continue onmyterms, and I said the pool was good enough. The fact that I was standing next to it was a damned miracle. Mixed with a heavy dose of desensitization. I spent the entire day in it yesterday—and byinit, I meant as far as the first step. But I never would have been able to even go that far if it weren’t for what happened in the bathtub the day before, with Ezra.
Something changed between us. Something I wasn’t quite ready to take a closer look at, but I felt it every time he was near. Like there was a small part of me ready to jump out of my chest and go after him if he wandered too far away. Even now, I knew he was watching my latest outburst from the bay windows.
It was like a string of molten lava stretched between us, through air and glass and mortar, and no matter where I moved, it stayed attached to him. It was why I could stand to be this close to the pool and why I was able to go ankle deep on the first step. Ezra was here. Nothing would happen to me while he watched.
I felt it in my bones.
“You can’t very well talk to fish in apool, Rani. They’re out there.” Cova flung his hand in the direction of the cliffs. “Musteverythingbe a battle with you?”
The smile I gave him was anything but kind. It was razor sharp.
“If I have no intention of ever going near the ocean again, then I have no need to talk to Flounder and his friends.” My arms were crossed, hiding my clenched fists in an attempt to not mash them into his face.
“It’s not that simple.”
I threw my arms up. What was with this guy? He wasted the entire morning yesterday arguing with me about training by the pool, wasting what he called “precious time”. It made his attitude even worse when it took me an embarrassing amount of hours to actually learn what he wanted me to.
The whole day, he lectured me about how the saltwater of the ocean was easier to manipulate and how I was only making things harder for myself. Or, that I wouldn’t have to strain my magick so hard if I actuallysubmergedmyself in the pool. Apparently, working with a large body of water was difficult. More difficult than the bathtub, that was for sure; my miniwhirlpools did nothing to impress my stern tutor. He actually rolled his eyes and mumbled something about child’s play.
The dick.
Now here we were, starting the day with the same formula. Goodie. Cova pinched the bridge of his nose, beyond exhausted with my arguments. Tough shit. There were plenty more in my arsenal.
I glared and pointed up at my window. “You got saltwater all the way up there, into the bathtub, just fine. Why can’t you just do the same with the pool and drop a few fish in?”
Sure, it was a lot more water, but at least then he wouldn’t have to fill my bathtub from so far away anymore.
“I am not some errand boy who performs tasks at your whim,” his tone was laced with more than annoyance this time. It was threaded with hints of exhaustion, desperation, and pure fury all woven together. “I am the heir of my people, nowyourpeople, and you will damn well listen when I give you an order.”
Wrong fucking thing to say. I took orders from no one. Not the bastards who killed me. Not the being in the sea who made me what I was now. And sure as hell not from an oversized troll doll who didn’t like being told no.. To my right, the surface of the pool turned choppy. A giant whirlpool, large enough to suck down, say, a blue-haired tutor, formed in the middle.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Cova dared, his own hand rising, and a column of water lifted from the pool behind him. “Parlor tricks won’t protect you the next time the djinn come calling.”
Magick churned in my gut, ignited by my outrage. It was easier to call upon now and easier to set to tasks. I pushed the water to do what came natural, into what my instincts said the molecules could become or control. More often than not, it wasn’t what my tutor wanted me to do. Too damn bad. That whirlpool grew with a single thought and the pissed-offwaves splashed over the sides. Cova only shook his head in disappointment.
“It’s like you want them to take you again. I guess drowning isn’t such a worry this go round, but what will they do next time?”
Fuck. This. Guy.
The air around us grew heavy and thick with moisture. It weighed on me, pushing against my skin like a signal; an answer to my silent call of rage. I sensed the individual droplets, each sodden atom hovering around us, and wished for them to do more. For them tohurt. To slice and stab and explode.
The back door to the house opened and rushed footsteps sped across the grass toward me. I didn’t need to turn to see who it was. My chest was burning, in complete contrast to how the air felt around me.
