Micca sighs deeply, places his fork on the table, and looks directly at me.
'You can remember that I have a daughter?' I nod. The portrait of the blonde girl is engraved in my memory.
'Joyce, my daughter, is a nymph, just like her mother.' My eyebrows shoot up.
He takes a sip of his whiskey and looks only at me.
'I was born as a siren in the Whispering Depths. If you thought the castle and the dead forest were eerie places, you should take a look there. It's pitch-dark, monsters whose names you don't even know swim around, and rules don't exist. The sirens are a group that supports each other in some aspects, but that's where it ends.'
Legends about that place have been circulating for a long time. Those who go there hardly ever come back. The area around the pitch-black lake is always misty, and the plants that grow there are dead or withered.
It dates back to ancient times. It is said that the bodies of the many wars were thrown into that clear lake, formerly known as the Silverblood Lake. The souls, seeking revenge or rest, mutated into the many monsters and sirens. The lake turned black from all the black magic, the mist caused by the souls that sometimes found their way out of their prison before being pulled back, and the death that infinitely damaged nature.
'What you learn about sirens is nonsense. They don't lure sailors to the shore out of boredom. Sirens believe that each of these lost souls contains a small piece of their own original soul, lost in a long-forgotten era. By collecting and integrating these lost fragments, the sirens hope to restore their complete and true selves. None of them succeeded, black magic has its price. Before they could find all the souls, they turned into one of the many monsters.'
Micca takes a sip, and Elien's eyes widen.
'Let me guess, you succeeded?' Novak asks more suspiciously than he should. Micca grins and shakes his head.
'We say you need twenty, I got to twelve.' Novak laughs scornfully and mockingly but says nothing.
'You can call it a cliché, it is one, but I fell in love. A girl named Jade was standing by the lake. It was considered normal to stalk and drag such 'drowners' into the darkness. However, I couldn't. The white hair, the blue eyes so blue they looked white, and the innocence. I saved her from one of the other soul-seekers and brought her to the shore.'
Everyone is silent and looks at Micca.
'If I wanted to leave for her, to meet her with a normal body, sight, and voice, I needed the souls. It was never specified which souls I needed. In three days, I killed eleven other sirens and monsters before I could leave the prison.'
Alisha observes with a suspicious look that I can't immediately place.
'I got legs, a normal body, eyes that worked weeks later, my magic, and a voice that took a year to develop. Nevertheless, after obtaining clothes and finally learning to walk, I was strong enough to visit Jade. Fortunately, she didn't recognize me until much later. Initially, I pretended to be a half-nymph, half-elf, and she fell for it. We fell in love, and after a few weeks, we conceived Joyce. Nymphs don't get pregnant; it's a rarity. Male pure-blooded nymphs are infertile.'
'Night riders too,' Alisha mutters before giving me a sidelong glance. That's also the moment when Elien observes me with a look of knowledge about the past.
'True. When I accompanied her to her village, it turned out her mother had a high position in the group. The moment we wanted to get married, Jade found out she was pregnant. Her mother immediately knew I had lied and stopped the marriage. That I had been a siren became clear three days later, and a week later, I was banished. I've seen my daughter three times; she's fifteen now.'
'How old are you?' Elien asks astonished.
'127.' Elien immediately chokes on his first glass of whiskey. Novak pats his back and doesn't even look surprised. It's Alisha who calmly places her fork on the table, clasps her hands together, and looks Micca straight in the eye.
'Sirens, even after stealing the twenty souls, will never become a pure soul. The magic you carry is not magic driven by nature or lifelines; it's black magic.'
Novak's eyes shift from Alisha to Micca and finally to me.
'Correct,' Micca replies before casually taking a sip of his drink.
At first, I don't realize why Alisha and Novak wear a suspicious look until Alisha makes the following remark.
'Black magic can only be purified with enough white magic, approval from the gods and nature, or a very high sacrifice.'
In the corner of my eye, I look at Novak. The red seems to tell me the whole story without exchanging a word. It's a story I don't want to hear, yet I know in the back of my mind that it's true.
'Correct,' Micca repeats nonchalantly.
'Would you want that?' Alisha asks. Micca sniffs and scoffs.
'Would you?' I stand up from my chair, giving Novak a sidelong glance.
'Excuse me,' I say before heading towards the hallway.
Inaudibly, I walk towards my bedroom, open the nightstand, and retrieve my dagger from the drawer. I tuck the thing into my sock and walk back to the rest.
'A hundred souls, would that be enough for a complete purification to see your daughter?'
So quietly that Micca doesn't hear it, I walk behind him through the dining room until I'm a few meters away from him.
Even Elien, who doesn't follow any of this situation, keeps quiet.
'Yes.'
Along with the flames, my anger kindles. My hand wraps tighter around the dagger, listening to the people at the table.
'Why don't you do it then?' Alisha's voice sounds emotionless.
'It's a burden.'
'A burden that's easier to let someone else carry, isn't it?'
'Probably, I wouldn't know.'
Lies, a lot of lies. Micca's heartbeat betrays his true intention without him realizing it.
I was never someone for him to protect, help, or support. I was not a friend, not even a potential lover. To him, I've never been anything other than a pig for slaughter, ready to be finished once the dirty work is done.