9

A PROPOSITION

PART II

🙜

"What—wait!" Ember scooted his chair back from the table, standing up and taking a full step back. His heart thudded. With an effort, he calmed his voice. "We're not going—I'm not going anywhere tonight. Or tomorrow, or the next day, or any day! And definitely not to the Sisters."

"Why not?" She reached into the pocket of her trousers and pulled out the glowing stone that Ember had left on the doorstep.

He recoiled.

She placed it on the table and blinked at it, her eyes flitting back and forth as she absorbed every shifting color and swirl of light.

"Sisters is no place for decent folk," Ember muttered, glaring at the stone. "Haven't you heard all the stories about that mountain?"

Ky pushed a strand of wet black hair away from her forehead, staring up at him with her buggish eyes, but made no reply. Either she was ignorant or playing at ignorance.

Ember crossed his arms and glanced away.

"Travelers go missing on the mountain trails more often than any path through the valley, and the ones that make it back can't stop jabbering on about floating lights and pitfalls and venomous snakes and tainted spring water and… and ghost paths that look real until you take a step and fall right through to the bottom of some ravine," he added, remembering a few of Hunter's old stories. "Those forests are full of mirages and magic. Nothing good comes from that mountain. Ever."

Ky idly picked up the stone and smoothed it between her fingers, cupping her hands around it. Even in the morning light, the glow played across her face in angular patterns as she turned it this way and that. "Why shall I fear such things?"

"Because—!" He paused to lower his voice. "Because those things can kill you."

"You, perhaps." Ky turned her cupped hands slightly, examining one of her claws and frowning at a thin scratch. "Not me."

Ember braced his palms on the table, waiting for her to make eye contact and—when she failed to do so—muttering, "Precisely. So if I were to accompany you, it’s not hard to guess which of us would die of a venomous snake bite first."

"But I will be there to keep you safe," she said calmly, as if that should have been obvious. She set the stone between them on the table and tilted her chin up to look at him squarely.

"From broken bones and magic?" Ember scoffed, rubbing his hand across his face to dispel the blurry haze of a sleepless night.

Ky wiggled her fingers at him in response.

"I am not like you, Ember. Sirens are very familiar with magic. Perhaps you will use the word 'proficient.'" She smiled wide, clearly proud of her vocabulary.

"Listen, Ky—" He stumbled slightly, unnerved by how casual his manner had become. "A proposition is a proposition, and I've chosen to turn it down. No, no, and no."

"Wrong."

The hair on the back of his neck and both arms stood on end.

"What do you mean, 'wrong'?"

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"I mean," Ky said, tapping the stone, "that you will assuredly come with me. I need not force you. You will come to your own conclusion."

Ember leaned away from the table and watched her suspiciously. "Why is it so important that I come with you?"

Ky pressed her lips together and hummed a tune that sent shivers crawling all over his body, avoiding his gaze.

"I absolutely will not go with you unless you tell me."

She appraised him for a moment. "I need you to open a door."

Ember glanced at his own open door, taking in the golden morning light which crossed the river path, and then back to Ky.

"What?"

"I need you to open a door." She squinted at him. "Can you read?"

"Not very… er… yes, of course," he said, his ears growing hot. "Well enough. Can you?"

"I read the runes of my own people," she said primly, pinching a strand of wet hair and tucking it gently behind her ear. "Not of yours."

"Your people—" Ember bit his tongue, but curiosity got the better of him in the end. "Your people, the river folk, have a written language?"

"And a speaking tongue the likes of which you will never hear among your people." She rose, placing both palms flat on the table. "You can read. This is good. You will come with me to the mountain, Ember.”

"You've been there before," he surmised.

"Many times. It is a two-day journey if we walk quickly.”

"I'm not going." He shook his head, distant emotions that he did not like forming a lump in his throat. The look in her black eyes reminded him of the way he felt sometimes watching birds fly south for the winter, or snow melting off the mountains in the spring. It was a restless feeling—one of curiosity and peculiar excitement—and he banished it with a tired yawn. "Find someone else to read your runes."

"There is a part of you, Ember, that will follow me no matter where I wander." Ky turned toward the door.

"Wait." Ember snatched the stone from the table and held it out to her stiffly. "Take this. Take it far away from here, I don't want it in my house."

He could have sworn he heard an echo of his mother's voice in those words.

Ky's mouth turned down at the corners, making the lumps of her fangs more obvious, but she reached out and plucked the stone from his hand. "If you would prefer it."

She left his cabin without another word.

Ember found himself begrudgingly drawn to the door again. Unlike yesterday, she still stood in the middle of the river path, half-turned toward him. Her head was bowed low, the stone glowing on her neck and hands. When she looked up, he glimpsed that same hungry expression that had frightened him so badly the day before.

A yearning.

For what Ember did not know.

After a short pause she continued down the river path, humming that odd melody, and Ember watched until he could no longer see her shadow on the packed dirt, or her long black hair swaying above the stalks of summer grass.

❧

Ember carried on with the day as usual (after sleeping most of the morning away), but it was hard to ignore the presence that followed just a few steps behind him everywhere he went. Several times he caught her scent on a breeze, or turned around quickly and thought he saw movement behind some bush or in the tall grasses, but he could never be quite sure he had spotted her.

He called to her, asking her to come out of her hiding places, but she did not. Whether she delighted in his consternation or truly thought he was stupid enough to believe she had left if she just stayed quiet was a mystery to Ember.

Once, while digging around in the cool earth with his hands and pulling up weeds from the garden, he caught himself humming a frighteningly familiar melody. Ember never hummed to himself while he worked, though he did talk a great deal. Disconcerted, he stopped humming and dug his fingers into the soil—a grounding, tactile motion that tethered his mind to his work again.

Regardless, her words that morning were taking root in his mind.

And he had to admit she was right—there was a part of him that would follow her to the ends of the earth and back, out of simple fascination and the allure of… something. There were aspects of Ky Veli that he found hideous, certainly. Her big black eyes, her fangs, her clammy skin.

But her body was the body of a young woman.

And she smelled like flowers.

Ember wearily rubbed his eyes with the back of his wrist.

If that's all it takes to win my trust, I have some thinking to do.