Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 144411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Instead I see a pair of pale legs from underneath my shift.
I let out an astonished cry. “Gods!”
I stumble backward but Ramsay’s arm is there, holding me back. He stares down at my legs with the same amount of disbelief. “Maren? What the devil?”
“I don’t know.” I gasp, shaking my head. I hold out one leg, then the other. They’re both wet, faint traces of shimmery scales left on my skin that seem to slowly evaporate into the air. I flex my ankles, toes, stretch my calves. They feel weak, perhaps even more so than before, but everything seems to work.
“My legs,” I say quietly as I marvel at them. “I have legs again.”
But even though I’m overjoyed to have them back and more so with what having legs represents for me, I do have a faint pang in my chest over losing my tail. I feel like I didn’t really have a chance to enjoy it again. But I suppose you can’t have the best of both worlds, something I’ve known from the very start.
“Was it the kiss?” Ramsay asks, looking so hopeful that I almost laugh. “True loves kiss, right?”
“Don’t be daft,” I tell him, trying to bite back my smile at the crestfallen look on his face. “We’ve had plenty of those so far.”
Then I think to what Nerissa said.
You can make any world your own.
“Wait a darn minute,” I tell him, sliding out of his grasp. “I have to check something.”
“Maren?” he asks as I start running across the deck, hope rising in my chest. My strides are short, my gait uneven as always, and I can’t move very fast but still I run across the Nightwind until I’m to where the railing has been smashed away by the Kraken.
I take in a deep breath and I jump off the side of the ship, diving straight down into the water below, the Kraken having already disappeared into the depths.
I dive deep and the moment I do so I feel a current of electricity around my body. My gills start to work again, rising from my neck and when I look down at my legs, I watch as they fuse together, turning into a tail. Into my tail.
I let out a squeal of joy in the water and start swimming for the surface just as Ramsay launches himself overboard and into the waves. He lands with a splash and swims over to me and I flip around, raising my tail in the air for him to see.
“Behold!” I cry out, laughing, making the sun shimmer on my scales, shifting them from teal to lavender and back again.
He laughs too. “What does this mean?” he asks, pulling me into a kiss.
I press my forehead against his, my tail swishing beneath me. “Nerissa gave me another chance, another spell.”
“You saw Nerissa?” he asks, his dark brows raised.
“How on earth do you think I was able to control the Kraken?”
He lifts his shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe a Syren thing I wasn’t privy to.”
“Well, now that Edonia is dead, they’ve been released from her spell. They’re free agents, they just happen to listen to me now.”
“And they did a lot of your dirty work,” he says as he treads water, kissing me on the head. “For which we are all fucking grateful, in case you couldn’t tell.”
“Oh, I could tell. And best of all, Ed Smith could tell too. Your cheers were the last thing he heard. Well, aside from me telling the Kraken to tear him apart.”
He gives me a devilish grin that makes his eyes gleam. “I have never wanted you more.” He kisses me again, deep and hard, then pulls back. “But this still doesn’t explain your legs and your tail.”
“Nerissa had chanted some kind of spell when she found me,” I tell him. “Then she kissed me, as if that sealed the deal. She wouldn’t tell me what it was, other than that I could control the Kraken now, but she did say that I could make any world my own. I guess this is what she meant.” I wave my tail around for emphasis. “She gave me the ability to live with you above and in the sea below, able to choose which ever world I should want.”
“And do you still want mine?” he asks, his brows shadowing his eyes.
“I want yours and I want you,” I assure him. “That is always a given, Ramsay. But isn’t it delightful that I can return to being a Syren any time I wish? I don’t have to give up that part of me anymore.”
“Of course, cearban,” he says to me, a look of heat coming across his face. “And I don’t have to pretend I didn’t want a chance to bed you on the ocean floor again.” His expression hardens slightly. “What about the book?”