Brows bunching, she worried that already he was becoming possessive of her. It was a side effect of constant exposure to a siren’s charms. But he was giving her something she wanted, a willing ear to listen.
“He was fourteen. A friend, or so I thought.” They’d been playing by the stream. Mother had warned her not to go too far, and never alone with a boy. But Hamish wasn’t a boy, he’d been her friend. He used to play with her and tickle her and make her laugh. He was sweet, covered in freckles, and with a wide gap between his front teeth. Large ears and wild brown hair, he’d been so perfect and she’d loved him as much as her nine-year-old heart could manage.
And then that day…
“What happened?” His voice was calmer, had less bite to it, but it still made her shiver.
Pursing her lips, she leaned her hip against the rail and turned so that she was looking at his profile. “I was bent over, catching a frog, when his arms wrapped around my waist and he tossed me to the ground. He was so much bigger than me, but I fought. I kicked and I screamed for my papa, and Hamish clamped his hand over my mouth and told me it was my fault, that I was making him do this. I was scared, and I bit his finger so hard I cut it off at the knuckle.” She could still remember the taste of the iron in his blood as it coated her tongue. “He struck me, right here.” She tapped her right temple. “I blacked out. Doctor said he crushed my skull.”
Rumpel’s jaw jutted out. “No man should ever lay a hand on a woman, let alone a child. I should kill him for that.”
Flicking her wrist, she turned back around and tapped her foot on the bridge in a staccato beat. “It was long ago. And…” She shrugged. “Father beat you to it. He nearly killed the boy. Hamish hasn’t been right in the head since that day. He can barely walk, and now everyone in that hamlet hates us. But me especially—they believe I beguiled the boy with my succubus ways.”
“You were nine, are they daft?” He glowered at her.
A little awed by the fact that Rumpel honestly did seem to care, she gave him a ghost of a smile. “They were scared. Of me. Of Father. Of Mother. It is easy to hate what you do not understand. I do not blame them. I do not like them,” she asserted quickly, “but I do not blame them. In one fell swoop my family destroyed the peace and sanctity of the hamlet. After that night and the long recovery I had afterward, I knew I never wanted it to happen again. It is why I snuck out under cloak of darkness to the crone and demanded she weave me a spell to protect me from that event repeating itself.”
Nodding, brushing his fingers through his hair, he turned to her and the amber of his eyes trapped her, made it so that she could not look away. “I am sorry for that.”
Unsure what to say, how to act, she huffed a curl out of her eye and tried to ignore the kamikaze dance of butterflies diving inside her belly, making her knees feel weak and like jelly.
“Why didn’t your father move you all? Get away from there and start fresh in a new village where no one knew of—”
“He did.” She thinned her lips. “Where we live now is a hamlet fifty miles from where the attack occurred. He believed he’d taken us far enough away. But gossip travels like wildfire and by the time we arrived there, all knew who we were. In the end we realized there’d be no escaping who we are. Fairies talk to their charges, and they all warned the people to stay far from us. Because somehow I must have begged for the attack on my person.” Disgust leaked into her words, and snorting, she watched as a blossom drifted along the current, being taken beneath their bridge and disappearing to only Goddess knew where.
She wondered if the sting of that attack would ever lessen in severity? How much time was enough to blunt its sharp edges and make it less painful to remember? She’d hoped by the time a decade had passed she’d be over the worst of it, but the smell of crushed grass, her own cries mingling with his grunts, the taste of his blood… all of it was so fresh that sometimes it felt like it’d happened only yesterday.
As if sensing her desire to change the subject, Rumpel grinned. “I’ve been racking my brain since discovering your true origins, trying to figure out how you even became a siren, as the blood is inherited from the mother’s veins. Betty is from Earth, no magic.”
Giving a small groan because she really hated talking about her father’s former sexcapades, she grimaced, but the thought of ending their conversation wasn’t one she wanted to entertain just yet either.