we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea
He is so different from Ivar, although she knows that could both be categorized the same. Monsters. Beasts. Creatures that are so deeply unlike her. Ivar though, is so certain in his ferocity. He has no qualms of his brutality—even though it likes so prettily hidden beneath all of that beauty. She is lucky, she thinks, in that she has never needed to be convinced of it. She does not mind the danger of putting her life beneath the sharp teeth of the kelpie and has never tried to tell herself that she feels anything more.
She has never thought that she was capable.
But Jamie—he is different.
His teeth are sharp. His darkness profound. But he does not seem to savor it. There is a weakness in the halted breath that rattles his lungs and, were she a predator, she would be turned away by it—or enticed by it in all of the wrong ways. Instead, she finds that it doesn’t matter to her. Not at all.
Instead, she is fascinated by the theoretical questions he poses to her like he cares about the answer that she might provide him. It stretches her imagination in ways that it has not stretched since she was a young girl. It forces her to think, to consider, to wonder at what is beyond the shadows that tie around her legs and pull her closer to him. To the strange nothingness of being tangled with him, to the weight of it.
He pulls away and she wonders how she can miss something that she can barely feel at all.
“Evia,” she says easily, not knowing that there are those who may not want to answer.
“My name is Evia.”
She studies the darkness of him, the yellow of his eyes.
“Can I see you again?”
How would she find him? She has no idea.
