Pretty Stormy (The Fallen Gods #3) - K.A Knight Page 0,1

back tonight, I’ll be punished, and I can’t afford that. He needs them, the humans, and I give him what he needs.

It’s not massive, just a small fishing vessel with enough bad luck to be caught out here during the storm, but it’s enough for what I need. Sadness fills me, as does guilt, for the lives I will take. Their blood will stain my hands. I wish I didn’t have to. I used to fight it, used to rage against it, but that did nothing except get more innocents killed and me hurt. Now, I accept it.

However, one day, when I’m free…will I be able to live with the taint on my soul?

The simple answer is, I don’t know. Their screams, the fear in their eyes, and the utter hopelessness they all experience when they realise what’s about to happen, keeps me awake at night. I try to only take the bad people, but my choice is limited, and truly, how do you choose who deserves to die? Who’s bad and good? Is there not a grey line?

These thoughts keep me awake at night, but then the next day, I’m right back on this rock because I have no choice. Like them, I’m trapped, a prisoner to my destiny. One coated in death, blood, and my song.

Climbing higher onto the boulder, I let my melody flow from me, pouring my emotions and the pain in my heart into it. The boat turns towards me, and like always, I wish it didn’t. I wish they could resist, but they can’t.

It’s fate.

I see them, their yellow rain jackets doing little against the downpour as they zombie walk to the edge of the boat, trying to reach me. Their eyes are clouded, with waves crashing in their depths, as my song takes over their heart, mind, and body, until they are mine.

A splash sounds close, one that wasn’t made by the fish or predators lurking in the deep, I know those sounds. No, this was something else. My song cuts off, and I watch the sailors shake their heads before looking around in confusion as I glance to the left to see the man, the one from the cliff, there.

His dark brown hair, which is hard to see at night, is slicked back from his face and hanging in wet tendrils down his shoulders. His chest is bare, the waves bobbing him in their hold and showing me flashes of golden skin glimmering with water. He appears to be at home in the waves, like the gods of old I used to see as a child.

He floats there, watching me, his eyes as misty and dark as the turbulent sky, with flashes of lightning in those depths—is he the storm, or is the storm from him?

I can’t tell, but I want to know. I want to know everything about this man. An urge so profound pulls at me to move closer, to discover what else lurks in the deep waters that are him, but I can’t.

My duty pulls me one way, him the other.

He observes me, staring at me like I’m staring at him. Something arcs between us, an electricity like the lightning streaking across the sky. I struggle to breathe as that space inside me where my song, my power, resides sits up and takes notice, aching for this man, but I know better.

No man can help me, so I turn away.

He calls something out to me, but the wind swallows it. I begin singing, letting the notes pour from my mouth and wrap around the sailors once again. It’s more powerful than ever as I put on a show for him, though I don’t know why.

I cringe from knowing he’s watching and seeing me for exactly what I am—a killer.

I ignore him as much as I can, but my every molecule is aware of him, aware he’s trying to get closer, so I dive from the rock and into the water, cutting through the waves with ease before throwing myself onto the deck of the ship.

My hair fans out around me, the long, red locks floating with my power. My dress swathes my figure like it usually does when I’m human, the white fabric floating behind me and exposing my pale legs. They turn towards me, the three of them, and step closer. I slide across the deck, moving my feet in almost dance-like steps as I stop before them, my hands raised and hovering over the first man’s face.

His