CHAPTER 520: THAT’S ALL?

At Shelby’s statement, their joy was cut short, and their attention went back to the nuisance and terror that had plagued them for months.

Currey would have usually sought silent permission from Ian in the past, but after they had returned from the Fae-land, he regarded Shelby as an equal superior. Without any hesitation, he snapped his finger, and the bind that had held Aliya started to fall off.

Shelby slowly got up from her seat, and Ingrid held on. She was afraid that he Mummy would get hurt.

She gently patted Ingrid as a form of reassurance, and that small gesture riled up Aliya, who was still bound. Though Aliya appeared not to care for the kids, it did not mean that she was okay... on a deeper level.

Seeing the child that she had borne herself being so close and loving to her nemesis broke something inside Aliya’s already dead self.

Her eyes were like daggers as she stared up at Shelby from her position on the floor. The room was colder then, and Aliya in her natural glory may not have noticed it, but she was almost as defenceless as a human then. Curtesy of the same child she was now pining for, Ingrid, she felt things sting deeper, both emotionally and physically.

It was as if Ingrid’s little display of power had awoken something that had long been dead in Aliya. She saw Ingrid in a new light, and therefore, all the intimate moments with Shelby drove her insane!

Not the sharp bite of seawater or wind, but the slow, creeping kind of chill that clung to your spine like regret.

As Shelby approached her, Aliya scrambled back in fear! This was so unlike her, but Aliya was not herself. Aliya moved back until she couldn’t move again. She was angry at herself for being intimidated by the seemingly harmless human. But Aliya was also wise enough to recognize a bit of the power that oozed out of her and the baby in her womb. Shelby was not an ordinary human as she seemed!

Aliya sat slumped against the wall, skin shimmering faintly under the bindings around herself. Her eyes tracked every sound with wild, seething precision. But her body... sagged. Hungry. Withered, but not physically, not yet.

Shelby crossed the room with slow, unhurried steps, like one inspecting something already defeated. She didn’t flinch at the growl Aliya loosed. Didn’t break stride when Aliya’s lips pulled back in a smile full of coloured teeth.

Shelby crouched low, supporting her belly, and looked her in the eye.

"You recognize the signs, don’t you?" Shelby said, voice cool. "The hollowness. The ache in your throat that singing doesn’t soothe... you’ve known that for years, and that’s why Ingrid’s luresong affected you so ..."

Aliya snarled, but her eyes flickered—just slightly.

"The craving," Shelby went on, almost bored. "That low, gnawing need, hunger, want, that doesn’t answer to flesh or feed anymore. I hear it manifests in different ways from your kind that turns to the other side... but I don’t need to guess.... You know it!"

Her gaze dropped to Aliya’s chest, where her breath hitched in short, ragged bursts.

"You thought you had it all, didn’t you? The power, the worship, the feast of every man who ever looked at you too long or even the ones that did not bother with you."

Shelby smiled.

"But you still lost it in the end. You tasted something else... just once. And now?" She leaned in, voice dropping.

"You can’t even remember what satisfaction feels like."

Aliya stiffened.

Her mouth opened, but no song came—only silence.

"It’s not hunger for the usual anymore, is it?" Shelby whispered. "It’s the longing that’s killing you—the wanting. You crave what you cannot feed on."

Shelby stood. Her voice was gentler now. But crueller for it.

"One man in your past does not define all men, Aliya."

This time, even Ian raised a curious brow. Aliya stiffened. It was not subtle at all as her body jerked back, especially as it was when Currey had unbound her too.

"You- ho-w d-"

Shelby smiled,

"Every merperson that falls is usually due to some failed love. I thought it was the same for you .... I guess I was right!"

"Y- you..."

"You don’t even know how to live without one single man, and you thought that you could play around with mine?"

Shelby turned, leaving her back for Aliya, but for a brief moment, the siren was shocked into immobility and did not even notice that she had been unbound.

Aliya didn’t scream. Didn’t lunge. Just sat there, shoulders trembling under a weight that wasn’t physical. It was as if she were under a flood of memories.

She was in the room with them, but her mind was long gone into another place, and another time, but similar words:

"One man is not the definition of all, Aly. He is undeserving of you. Don’t make him get the best out of you. You must rein in your emotions or you will tip over to the dark side..."

The words fell from the woman’s lips without venom, without heat — just quiet certainty, making Aliya flinch. Her eyes darted up. Her breath caught. And for a heartbeat, she faltered as the woman wrapped her arms around her.

’How did you know?’ The younger Aliya didn’t say it aloud — couldn’t. But the question was visible in the trembling of her lip, the sudden glassiness of her gaze. A flood rose behind her eyes.

"Hush, child, rein it in. Everyone knows!"

Then the scene in her mind’s eye changed:

She, her younger self, was running barefoot across the beach, sunlight dancing in her dark hair, her laughter wild and careless. The wind caught her skirt, and behind her, the man gave chase — that man. The only one she’d ever trusted. The one to whom she had given all of her love. The one that she had fallen for. He caught up to her, his mood matching her exactly.

He scooped her up with a laugh of his own, spun her around, and kissed her like nothing else in the world mattered. Sand clung to their skin. Salt clung to their lips. She thought he saw her, not just the shine, but the soul beneath it.

He’d once whispered, "You are not like them. You could burn the sea down, and I would still walk beside you. You make me complete..."

And then another scene flashed by. Though none of the people in the room saw Aliya’s thoughts, the emotions were clear as day on her face.

Later, under moonlight, she waited where they always met. He didn’t come. Their love was brief, but intense in ways that the young siren had never felt.

When he finally did, he wasn’t alone. Another woman clung to his arm. He didn’t even look surprised to see her. Just guilty. Then bored. Then the final blow.... The same lips that had sung her praises and whispered loving words to her.

"You thought you were special because I listened? I just needed someone to help me on my journey, and you were the perfect naïve one." His words pierced deeper than any blade, and to make it sink even deeper, he smooched the new girl right in front of her, with no regard for her emotional state.

"You’re all the same. You sing, you lure, you feed. It’s what you do. I just wanted to see if you’d bite." The tide screamed behind her. She didn’t. Not then.

He was human, too. It didn’t take long before Aliya snapped and he and his new partner, as well as their whole family, were her first feed!

The feeling of savouring his soul brought Aliya back to the present, but she wasn’t fully in it. Her mouth opened — but no sound emerged.

Nothing. Not a hum. Not a curse. Not a scream. It was as if she had lost her voice!

Not by magic, nor force, but by memory and grief.

Aliya tried again, throat flexing, desperate for sound, but the memory of being mocked echoed in her mind, taunting her. And worse — the softness of Shelby’s voice now, mirroring what she once heard, what she once believed.

"You’re not the first woman to be betrayed, ... " Shelby said quietly as if to emphasize. "... and you won’t be the last, but what did you do? You chose to become the very thing that broke you. You ... YOU BROKE YOURSELF!"

Tears spilt silently down Aliya’s cheeks — not because she’d been silenced, but because, for once, she had no idea what she would have said even if she could speak. She was trapped by the truth she had buried for centuries.

"Although I sympathize with your past. You’re not the only one with a sob story. Many people also have and... You touched my children! That.... You shouldn’t have! You should not have set eyes on my husband!"

As Shelby talked, an invisible power rose around her and started to suffocate Aliya.

Just then, as Aliya gasped, she started changing. With the gasps around the room, Shelby slowly turned, but contrary to the horrific faces of the humans in the room, Shelby smiled. It was a very unusual reaction to what was going on!

Aliya’s skin tore at the corners of her mouth as it dropped open and gaped nightmarishly wide, canines lengthening as her lips peeled away from her teeth. Her shoulders jerked and twisted, hunching up and growing wider at the same time, her clothes stretching out while her body grew more hunched.

Her fingers lengthened, talons extending from the tips until her hands were spread as wide as could be, and a fetid smell of decay and worse flooded out.

With one focus in her eyes, Aliya lurched at Shelby, hands stretched, aiming at her throat, but then as she moved, she found herself slowing down, as if she were passing through a membrane. She never got to her target.

Someone asked, "That’s all?"

___

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