Dear Tempting

Sober

Reid stayed under the water motionless, thinking for the first time that she wished she could drown. Her eyes were open but fixed upon nothing. Staring as if she could imagine a different outcome for this turn her world had taken. Begging to whatever goddess would listen to take it back, reverse time and keep that little one's beating heart instead of hers.

Her insides were beginning to put the pieces back together, stitch her up like something in need of saving. She knew better. She had watched other sirens in the city lose their fingerlings at birth, watched them slowly die in the days that followed. Husks - that's all they were.

He was gone.

Not Xavier but that child she never got to hold. How could she look at him now knowing what he had done? That he had chosen her life over the one thing she had left that was still worth living for. That chance, that maybe one day she could have what her mother had. What all of them craved.

She was broken, shattered all over like grains of sand at the bottom of the pool.

Xavier had held that little creature to his chest, not knowing what to do now. In saving Reid, he had only lost her in the end. He could feel that pain in her soul and that pain would never cease. Sure, she was alive, but she would never live again.

He still stood waist deep in water, clutching that form to him, wishing he could take it all back. Or at least, somehow change what had been done.

He pulled the small face away from his chest, looking down at it. His face was wet, tears, her tears. The corpse didn't move, face still in death.

He didn't know what to do now.

Reid didn't move under the water, face blank with pain and fury.

Xavier looked back at the form in his arms. Female, it had been female. He quickly looked away as something closed around his throat like a vice. It caused him to choke.

Something stirred in the trees. He smelt nothing.

And she emerged - that terrible, terrible creature that he had met in the church - jowls jutting out from her mouth, tentacles crawling along the sand. She stopped across from him, Reid between them.

A hiss like a sigh came from her mouth, eyes glancing at Reid under the water. Reid didn't even seem to notice her.

Xavier moved a fraction of an inch, his foot hitting Reid's tail under the water.

She didn't even flinch, just stayed there in the sand at the bottom unmoving, eyes fixed on nothing and no one.

"Reid," he said to her, tone flat, boot tapping her again.

Her eyes flicked, focussing on him. Venom. Her gaze was pure vibrating venom.

Xavier just looked away, back to the creature standing on the bank.

Reid flicked her tail, careful to keep herself and her gaze away from Xavier, away from the corpse in his arms.

Reid's gaze was blank as she looked upon the cecaelia queen. Void.

"Queen Reid," Artheena said quietly, black eyes tracing her healed torso.

Neither of them said anything. Reid barely even blinked at her.

"It seems that something is missing from your knowledge," she said, running a flinger like appendage along a spiked canine.

It was a long while before Reid even dained to speak. "And that is?" Her voice was hoarse as if she had forgotten how to use it.

"Queen Natalia has been busy."

Reid nearly lunged from her spot. "You come to me now to speak of Queen Natalia? How dare you." Xavier knew in that moment that the angle of Reid's voice could have killed hundreds. He had never heard such quiet venom.

Artheena raised a taloned hand. "I grieve for you yes, young queen, but there are matters you need to know of."

"And whats that," Reid snarled teeth gnashing.

Artheena only reached a handout, towards Xavier, towards the corps in his arms.

Xavier took a step back, and Reid snarled low at him, the water vibrating around her. She wouldn't even look at the thing in his arms.

He stepped forward, walking the length of the water to stand before Artheena. He swallowed as the tentacles reached out, looping around the form in his arms, pulling it from his grip.

And then he was moving back, almost involuntarily back to Reid, to stand at her side.

"I commend you for trying to save them both," Artheena said looking only at the small babe in her taloned hands, but Xavier knew the statement was directed at him. It cut him like a knife, right down his chest.

If only he had actually succeeded.

"Do not blame yourself," Artheena said glancing up to look at him, a look of cool distain on her face. "She would have died anyway."

Reid lunged forward. "How dare you -,"

"Hold your tongue girl," the queen said leveling Reid with a glare. "The water under the church had been tainted."

Reid stumbled, tail faltering.

"Queen Natalia was the one who killed your unborn, not the vampire. She was dead the moment you fell into the water."

Rage. Pure unending rage poured out of every cell in her body. She had never been so angry, never so savage.

But it wasn't only her own.

Xavier's chest was rising with that familiar urge. Kill, slaughter, tear and shred. His training, his upbringing, his morphed genetics screamed death.

They were twin killing machines. Beautiful and terrible. Capable of leveling a country on their own.

Artheena felt it like a slap, that shift in them both. It rolled off of them in waves, like a hurricane coming home to tear apart anything and everything it could.

That little shrike had murdered her child, nearly killed his mate...

Death.

Corpse.

"That is a heavy claim to make," Reid said trying to keep the venom from her voice. She failed.

Artheena didn't care about her lack of control anyways. Anyone of the sirens would have reacted this way, even more so with a royal born.

The water was shaking around them both, power power power.

"It's not a claim," Artheena said, running a finger over the corpse's skull.

Truth.

Reid's hands were talons, canines glinting in the sun. Xavier's eyes had gone black. They swirled like the deepest parts of the ocean, the creature down there looking for blood.

She was ripe with a killing urge. But she wouldn't kill him, no. He would help her take their revenge, help her kill that young pretty queen. Tear the organs from her body and drape them around themselves like prized jewels.

"As I speak, Natalia and her people charge your city. They have called war on another city, she has murdered a fingerling, attempted to assassinate a queen and I have had enough.

"I give you judgment and I pass it now. Free, and a Queen. Take your rightful place with that miserable guppies head. I want it on a spike, Queen Reid."