Twenty-Three

 

Margareta slammed the door behind her, then put her back to it, breathing hard. She wasn't sure if it was because she'd sprinted from the library to Penelope's chambers or whether it was the strange siren heat that still coursed through her that made her heart beat so fast within her chest that she could scarcely catch her breath.

"That good, was he?" Penelope asked calmly, wetting the end of her thread before inserting it through the eye of her needle. "I would have thought you'd have taken your time, but it's hard to savour your first."

Margareta tried to calm the jumble of images in her head so that Penelope would understand, for no one could be so calm in the face of what she had just experienced.

"I remember the day I first kissed Godfrey," Penelope said dreamily, as if she wasn't paying attention to Margareta at all. "We'd met at some of my father's feasts, but I'd never been able to exchange more than a few words with him. He'd told all sorts of stories about war and what he'd seen, stories I could listen to for hours, but my father never allowed me near enough to tell him so. But our eyes met across the hall enough times for him to start seeking me out, or find excuses to visit my father at home. One day, he brought an urgent message for my father when he was out, and only I was home. As was proper, I offered him refreshments, and suggested he wait for my father. He paid me some pretty compliment about how he'd wait forever for me, or some such thing, and he stumbled over the words as he never had in his stories. That's when he first kissed me. Well, I pushed him against the wall and kissed him, actually. Didn't take more than a moment before he was kissing me back just as eagerly. We kissed for quite a while, long enough for him to get good and excited so I could assess the goods, so to speak, which I admit were quite impressive, before my father's arrival interrupted us. The bustle at the door was enough for us to straighten our clothing and for me to whisper an invitation to meet me in the garden later that night, and the rest, well..." Penelope laughed. "By morning, I wanted no other man for my husband. Though from the way that man looks at you, he might be cut from the same cloth. My advice is to make sure he's as good with his hands as he is with his mouth before you agree to more. A good lover should give more pleasure than he receives."

Margareta's mouth hung open. Penelope had to be jesting, surely. No woman...

"No woman wants a bad lover," Penelope finished for her. "I'd rather join the nunnery permanently than share a bed with a man who doesn't absolutely adore me, or at least love me."

A fleeting memory of her mother's people, and what they did to men who didn't please them, fluttered through Margareta's mind. She didn't want to see sharks devour Erik. She liked him. At least a little. He spoke to her face instead of her chest, and seemed to care what she thought. No one else except Penelope did that – not even her father. All he cared about was getting his sons back, her bawdy brothers who would go back to their violent ways the moment they regained human form, she was certain of it. At least she could save the people of Beacon Isle from them, if the island belonged to her. Or her husband, which was almost the same thing.

"Your brothers don't deserve the sacrifice you're making for them," Penelope said sadly. "But the prince you left in the library? Why don't you give him a chance to show you what kind of husband he'd make?"

Margareta regarded Penelope for a long moment. She might not want to admit it, but her friend was right. Her brothers didn't deserve what she was doing for them, but that didn't matter. She had given her word, and the people of Beacon Isle would suffer if she broke it.

But if she hadn't given her word...then she could speak to Erik, and tell him why he couldn't possibly be in love with a sea monster, for that's what she was to him. A creature in a book that sank ships and killed the prince she now knew was his brother. Who could kill him just as easily if she lost control and gave in to her siren nature.

One thing was certain: she didn't want Erik to suffer his brother's fate. She didn't want to watch a man she knew and perhaps even liked be ripped apart by sharks.

Never mind that she'd wanted to rip his clothes off earlier. It was a small miracle she hadn't ripped off his head, or any other part of him.

Margareta turned on her heel and left the room. She knew what she had to do.

There was only one thing that would stop her from turning into the most lascivious siren ever to step out of the sea: immersing herself in the ocean for a swim. Surely that would cool her desire.

She hurried down the stone steps to the now deserted great hall, making her way out the gate with her head held high to forestall any questions. None of the guards would dare stop her – they knew who she was.

A flock of ravens flapped over the high walls of her father's house as she left its shelter, but Margareta paid them no heed. The only ravens she cared about were her brothers, and as long as she maintained her silence, she was doing all she could for them.

Her private cove was empty, as it should be. Margareta lost no time in removing her clothing – all of it, this time.

The waves kissed her skin as she trudged through the sand, until the water reached her waist. Then she lost all pretence of humanity and shifted into her true form, extending her fins past what had been her toes as cool skin enveloped her legs, turning them into a powerful tail as blue as the deep ocean waters where she was headed.