Mermaid Tear (The Fated #2)

45 | The Encounter

Consciousness came to Iliana in a flash of panic.

Opening her eyes did little to lessen the black world surrounding her. Instead, it only seemed to deepen the darkness. Her breathing grew ragged as unreasonable fear overtook her senses. Her lungs ached. Her neck burned.

Suffocating pain clutched her chest. It strangled her senses and drove a stake of fear through her aching body. Her hands scrambled for something that would help her place her surroundings and found only cold stone.

She couldn't catch her breath. Her fingers flew to her throat, clutching the ache as if it could ease the sharp intakes of breath that came quicker and quicker by the second.

The tower. Somehow, that single thought made it past the mounting panic, easing some of the confusion buried within her fear. She was in the black tower.

Iliana's breathing slowed even as the fear settled deeper and heavier into the pit of her stomach. It bound her chest like chains as she shifted her hands over her head and pulled it down to her knees.

Slow. In. Out. Breathe.

She was in the tower. Zuher had bit her and at some point after, they must have tossed her back in her cell. One hand dropped from her hair to feel her neck. Dried blood caked her skin, as well as a concerning amount of stickiness. Was she still bleeding? How long had she been out? Should she be worried?

Was Del here?

"Del?"

Silence coated the darkness and she almost fell into panic again. It took everything Iliana had to reign in her frantic senses and slow her breathing to a normal pace.

She was alone. That was fine. It gave her time to think.

What had happened in the ballroom? How had a simple piano song enchanted a crowd?

It wasn't as if Iliana had meant it to, and there had been no hint of a siren song in what Inna gave her. The melody had been simple, harmless even. So how had she lost control?

She dug her fingers into her hair and some ended up brushing the feathers at her neck. It sent a chill down her spine as Eumelia's words clutched her mind in a vice. 'The second feather, the Song of Desire, enchants every person that can hear it. The cost, if I remember correctly, was the siren's ability to control their song.'

In the mess that had followed the mountains, the cost of Iliana's choice had completely escaped her concerns. Now, however, she realized how desperate of a situation it might have placed her in.

Why she wasn't like the other sirens on the island, with her speech as alluring as the hum of melody, she wasn't certain. What was clear, however, was that she had pulled the feather. And her music had enchanted everyone without conscious effort.

She needed answers--and to escape the dark. Iliana dropped her hand to the fox charm around her chest. With an unavoidable edge of desperation, she called his name. "Koun."

The second her free fingers brushed the anklet, the tower cell was gone. The white shocked her senses, and for several seconds she was blinking away the fuzziness in her vision, but it also eased the remaining panic from her chest.

If nothing else, she had this escape from the darkness. It was dangerous in its own way--as being unaware of her surroundings was never good--but, in the end, it would keep her from falling into a pit of fear and madness.

"I want to talk to you."

For a moment, she thought he wouldn't respond. But then, within the breath of a second, Koun was there. He studied her with those unsettling, godly eyes, and as always, she felt as if he were seeing more than just her.