Page 81 of The Nightbound Soldier

It’s secluded and quiet and just what I need after confronting three powerful and important males in my life. My brothers fessed up and confirmed that Nottuza spoke the truth.

One night, a merman caught sight of me swimming with my tail, but before he could report it to his people, El’jah, who was with me at the time, silenced the male by erasing the male’s desire to tell anyone. He told Et’enne and my older brother whispered into the mermale’s mind so that the male thought he dreamed it.

But my brothers knew it wouldn’t last.

My parents, who were both powerful and who had spies everywhere in the court, found out about the sighting. They also knew they couldn’t silence or control all the merfolk that could come upon me when I secretly swam as a siren. But they didn’t turn me over to the merfolk right away.

At first, they forbade me from swimming with a tail, but I was too young, and controlling my nature was impossible, so they forbade me from visiting the beach or the pools or any bodies of water since I only presented as a siren on the bottom half and while in water. I did not have gills or other merfolk characteristics, but my parents seemed to think those could develop if I swam more.

A few cycles after that, I was becoming weaker and weaker, until I fell sick in bed with no energy to even walk. Nobody knew what was wrong, except, according to El’jah, my parents. They knew that sirens needed water, but wouldn’t let me in the water, thinking the sickness would pass. When the healers didn’t know how to help me, my parents decided to call the merfolk.

They didn’t have a choice. Their child was getting sicker by the span.

My brothers fought against calling in the merfolk, and in their struggle to overpower my very powerful parents, who didn’t want a conflict with merfolk, my brothers violated the boundaries of nature.

The night before the messenger to the merfolk was sent out, El’jah unleashed his magic. It was a magic of desire, and every male and female out there had something they wanted or needed. He tampered with my parents first, then he moved on to Et’enne, who worked hisvocamagic on me.

He locked away the siren parts of me.

The ones Nottuza freed.

When I asked my brothers why they never told me about my siren half, they said it was because they feared it would disable whatever magic Et’enne set up. As I grew, the part of Et’enne’s magic inside my head grew with me and became so interwoven with me that Et’enne feared that undoing the lock would damage me.

For all their faults, my brothers had no idea it could impact my fertility. We still don’t know for sure if that’s the case, and I’m not interested in testing it. Certainly not when a certain vampire who can’t have kids either keeps visiting me.

I’m sure Nottuza thinks I’m unaware of his nightly visits, because he doesn’t leave toy soldiers on my nightstand and because he’s a savvy shadow user, but the scent of crushed lavender in the small room of a farmhouse in a village nestled among the trees in the Summer Court is unmistakably his.

“It comforts me, you know,” I say out loud.

“What does?” Evie asks from across the table while using a small wooden spoon for stirring honey into her tea.

“Smelling him every morning. Knowing he’s coming around.”

June and Augusta’s sister Julie turns away from the sink and wipes her hands on an orange apron. “Is it just me who finds the most powerful notturno creeping around my house a little scary?”

“Not just you,” Evie says.

Julie sets a large metal bowl of potatoes on the table. Three small knives stick out of it.

Evie grabs one, Julie another.

“His visits tell me he thinks about me. Maybe not as much as I think about him, but hopefully even more. I hope he thinks about me so much”—I snatch a potato and a knife and get to peeling the skin—“so very much that his head hurts.”

When they don’t reply, I continue, “Fates, I enjoy peeling potatoes. Slash. Slash. Slash.” I toss the peeled one into the bowl and grab another one by stabbing it. “I don’t know how I’d live my life without this kitchen activity. When I return to the court, which, by the way, might be never, since my brothers are liars and I don’t wish to live with them anymore, I will request potato peeling times.”

“You are welcome to stay for as long as you please,” Julie says.

I sigh. “The fates have blessed me with the best of friends. Thank you.”

The small and cozy, recently remodeled farmhouse is modern and warm, and Evie and I are loving the reprieve from the courts. Evie petitioned with the king. My brother declared her inheritance safely hers with or without a male companion. But, behind closed doors, he gave her three seasons to find a male of her choosing before he picks one for her.

But all reprieves come to an end when you’re a princess.

And I am still the Summer princess.

Thanks to my brothers, who didn’t let my parents give me to the merfolk. I have so much to thank them for and so much to resent them for that going on a retreat was the best thing I could do at the time. Perhaps the only thing. I took the invitation to the farmhouse as a sign from the fates. June suggested I visit with Julie, after all.

And Julie is now nudging me to read the fifty-fourth letter Augusta sent me.

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