Cedar Sweep Deep within you til you will not want me any other way

She was not his to hold.

The blood of witches was never meant for his tongue, but she would let him taste the scent of it. Let him linger a moment at the shores of the unknowable, reaching for those fathomless depths as if he might ever truly see them. But these things were never made for his eyes, these horrors and wonders reflected in her own.

Her song ebbed like the tide to a hum, and then to nothing. The tears had all been wrung from her, the taste of salt a new grief in itself. How could she be so far from her precious shores? How could she live this way?

Perhaps the secret was that she wasn't alive at all.

If you take me to the sea, Whispered, wavering; the ancient words a Sea-Snake should never speak, not again, not again, and yet — If you take me there, I do vow that my children and my children's children should never leave yours; that their magick will belong always to your blood, as will mine. By the moon and sea, I do vow.

Servitude: the fate of their proud bloodline, again and again. Alara trembled. She hated herself. She wanted this. She hated that she wanted this.