Lydia the Siren's Arc

Chapter 17 of 37

The first potion had quieted her hunger. Lydia lay still on the torn blanket, waiting for Bastion to fear her at last. He did not. He rose, crossed the cabin, and returned with a second vial. It was smaller than the first, and the liquid inside glowed faint green. "Drink this too," he said. "What does it do?" "You'll see." She took it because she was tired of fighting him. The liquid was sweet, not bitter. Warmth spread through her chest. Then her skin pulled again, but slower this time, without the tearing pain. Feathers pushed up along her arms. Her fingers curled into black claws. She braced for the hunger to follow, for the scream and the need to feed. It did not come. The beast stood in her skin, and her mind stayed clear. She was fully her true form now, the fierce harpy with the auburn crest and the hooked beak, and yet she felt no wish to kill. She turned her taloned hands over and stared. "The first potion stops the shift," Bastion said. "This one brings the beast without the hunger. I wanted to see the real you. No danger to either of us." Lydia opened her beak and closed it. No man had ever asked to see her true shape. They saw it only at the end, when she fed. Bastion pulled a stool near the bed. He took a scrap of parchment and a stick of charcoal from a shelf. Then he began to draw. His eyes moved from her crest to her wings to her clawed feet. He made quick marks, then studied her again. He measured the span of one wing with his hands held apart. "Hold still," he said. "Your wing keeps twitching." She held still. He hummed while he worked, low and even, the melody that pulled at her the way her own song pulled at other men. She let it. She watched him fill the parchment with lines of her body, her feathers, the scars the arrows had left. He wrote small notes beside each part. He was not afraid, and he was not hungry for her either. He only wanted to know her. When he finished the drawing, he reached for a third vial on the shelf and pressed it into her claws. "Last one," he said. "This brings you back." She drank. The feathers sank. Her hands were hands again. He set the parchment aside and knelt to her arm, where an old wound had reopened in the thrashing. He cleaned it and wrapped it in clean cloth, humming the whole time.