Siren's Song (26 page)

My blast of thunder ricochets above the common house and abruptly the tension in the air is increasing, snapping.
Warning.

A few faces look around, then a few more, until a hush of whispers floats about the room asking what's going on. “Is she angry?”

“Why is she calling a storm in?”

A hand touches my arm. Tannin.

I ignore him and narrow my gaze at my previous owner. “If you are too weak to fight in this war with a woman, then perhaps you should join your sons. As I recall, they waged their own perverted war upon half the women in this village before I put an end to it.”

A gasp goes up. A snarl from the man, and for a second I think he'll lunge for me except—

One, two, three women step between us. They're followed by a few youngish men—the expressions on each of their faces saying my accusation hit home deeper than I realized.

“But what about us?” another man's voice rings out. It's one of the slaves seated toward the back. He stands. “Why should
we
help any of you?” He looks around at the room full of owners. “So that we can, what? Allow you
your
comfort? So we can continue with life as you know it—as
your
slaves? I say in that case, perhaps Draewulf would be a better master.”

The other slaves in the room lend their voices in support while the peasants glare expressions of insult or anger at them.

“I agree! Don't fight for
them
.” I rise to the balls of my feet and make my voice louder. “Fight for yourselves. Fight for your land. No matter what, you'll be freed. But fight for your future.”

“What does that mean?” a young mother whispers in front of me.

“King Sedric has given me his solemn oath that equality is to be given to peasants and slaves alike!”

Lord Myles sputters nearby as the place breaks into pure energy.

“What?”

“Is this true?”

“You have my word,” I call out over their heightening voices.

“Did you hear that?”

“The Elemental wouldn't lie!”

Cheering mixed with shouts and drunken excitement explodes in waves throughout the space. I scan their faces. Most are pleased, from what I can tell. The clapping and approval grow louder until it sounds like the thunder I create. It's shaking the floors and ceiling and the very air around me until a tugging on my arm alerts me Tannin is trying to get my attention.

“Miss, we need to get you out of here if we're going to leave tonight. Otherwise they'll want to detain you for their own worship.”

Or to burn at the stake.
I eye owner number nine. Then lift my hand to give him a single, delicate wave and a smile that says he and
his kind will never touch me again. And if they do? I scan the room. The people here will tear him to pieces.

Without looking back, I step down from the chair and turn to be immediately enveloped by Tannin and the Faelen guards.

“You can't do that,” Myles snaps as we duck out the rear door and head for the horses before anyone realizes we've gone. “That decision hasn't been fully approved—it hasn't even been signed by the High Council.”

“I told the council that was my offer in the War Room, and Sedric agreed.”

“He may have, but approving it and deciding when to announce it are for the Court to do, not you.”

I turn on him. “Why? So they can go back on it as soon as the war's over?”

His face pales.

“Just as I thought.”

“You ssshouldn't have done it.”

I give a caustic laugh. “Which is exactly why I did.”

CHAPTER 25

THE WORLD IS FADING IN AND OUT, BLENDING INTO ONE OF MYLES'S visions. The same he fed me a million times last week when we were training. Images of bodies and blood and the almost-end of the war.

I reach out with a final lightning cut to destroy the monster who would own this world—would own all of us. Except before I can reach him, he shreds through Eogan's skin, and I don't have time to scream or feel horrified because I am slitting both their throats at once and they are falling falling falling dead at Myles's and my feet because we have fought and succeeded. We have saved the Hidden Lands.

And just like always, we are standing over the multitudes of people and they are cheering and screaming for us, their saviors. I shudder at the sound of it even as Myles steps forward to embrace it, hand raised, with a black mist swirling around his wrist and fingers.
What the—?
As he does, a movement beneath him snags my attention, but I'm too slow as suddenly Draewulf reaches up and somehow he's still alive. I catch the flash of an eye opening, its black pupil glinting in the sun. “No—”

My warning comes too late. Draewulf's hand flashes up and with it a knife that slides across Myles's stomach, slitting open his gut.

Myles's face pales and a gurgling sound bubbles from his mouth as he jerks from Draewulf, then swerves his gaze to latch onto mine.

Oh hulls.

He stumbles as Draewulf pulls himself up to stand at his full wolf height and peers down at me. His face ripples, as if his body is groaning beneath its skin—hungry, strengthening. His real man's form coming to the surface as his wolf image fades away. I watch the slit in Draewulf's throat mend and heal and seal itself shut.

He's healing? How?

I look down at Eogan's shredded skin.

Too late. Draewulf reaches for me and his hand is more sinewy and stronger than it ever was in wolf form. He leans over me.

I whip down a flash of lightning, but it's feeble and pathetic against the mixture of Uathúil abilities he's absorbed.

And I am the last.

His jaw opens to snap down on my neck.

I shove an ice pick against his skull, but it bounces off as—

Crack.

I awake to pitch black, drenched in sweat and shaking. I can't stop shaking.

The night fire's gone out and the cold is seeping up through the ground, making the embers smoke.

Crack-crack.

I freeze.

The sound comes again, but rather than indicative of Draewulf breaking my neck, my hazy brain recognizes the noise as branches crunching underfoot. Someone's walking.
Thieves?

Worse.
Did my owner stalk us?

I roll over and squint through the dark to where Tannin and both Cashlins are sleeping around the fire and near them five guards lay snoring. So is Kel beside me. I look farther in search of the other five soldiers standing watch, only I don't see anything
but the thin trunks of a nearly stripped fir tree and the starlit sky beyond.

I slip my knives from my ankle belts, then slide out from the bedding and onto my haunches. Voices are muttering now to the right of me, talking to each other while someone kicks things around.
What in—?

Two men come into focus, creeping toward the fire, arguing about something. I lift a blade as the first man stops right above Tannin's sleeping head as if unaware the guard is there. His face is set toward the second man, who's clearly upset about something. Then they're ducking down as a third body approaches.

I squint. This one has the shape of a man but—bleeding hulls, he's larger than humanly possible. I grip my knife tighter and prepare to throw it—at who I'm not sure yet. The two men near Tannin appear to be trying to scramble away.

I almost lunge to keep them from stomping on his head.

There's an odd roar, and the man stalking them emerges from the shadows. I see why his size is so strange. He's not a man—he's a wraith.

Litch.

I keep my body between it and Kel and aim for the undead's head just as the two men cry out—until it occurs to me the sound is coming from my right again rather than from their open mouths. Next thing I know they're falling and crawling over Tannin and the fire, but without disturbing either.

I am about to throw my knife anyway. Keeping my eye on the wraith just in case, I glance around for Myles.
Really? Again?
It takes less than a moment to locate him at the base of the tree, but when I do it's clear the cries are coming from him. And the cracking noises aren't from feet. They're him peeling bark off the tree.

Blast it all, Myles.

I stand and storm over to shake him, but although the whites of his eyes widen, he doesn't respond. I smack his cheek, which does nothing besides alert me to the fact that his body is shaking heavily beneath my hand. And he's burning up.

Placing my hand on his forehead, I blink and peer through his created visions to locate Mia.

“Mia!” My whisper is loud enough that the guards on watch outside the perimeter are promptly striding through the trees.

“Miss? Is everything all right?”

“It's Myles. Wake Mia.”

The guards recoil even as I say it, and when I look to see why, the vision is showing the wraith gutting both of the frantic men now splayed out on the ground. I turn away. “Ignore it and do as I said.”

One of the guards goes to get Mia up as I continue to press my hands against Myles's shuddering body and forehead.

Mia murmurs from her blanket even as her eyes light up red. She glares around until her focus locks on me.

“Myles is having another of his visions.”

“Can you jolt him out of it?”

I allow static to rush down my skin from the sky and send the shock straight into his bones. He jumps and utters a cry, but the vision continues. Until a moment later, when he blinks and suddenly looks around. At me. At the Luminescent and the guards standing with their swords out.

“He was seeing his past again,” the Luminescent says.

“Can anything be done for him?”

She gazes hesitantly from him to me. Then closes her mouth. She nods to Gilford, who promptly lifts his wristlet with the potion he used on us back in Cashlin.

“As I recall, that seemed to make my visions worse.”

He shrugs at me. “That's a possibility.”

“Will it slow the poison in his blood?”

He peers at Mia, who pulls her gaze from Myles to stare straight at me but says nothing.

“I encourage you to speak freely lest we lose what valuable time we have pampering him,” I say.

“There is nothing
you
can do.”

“That's not what I asked. Can anything be done
for
him? Lady Isobel seemed to think so. I had this power before he did and it was released. Can't he release it too?”

“Your body was made to handle strange and strong elements—hence the weather. However, with him, his body is rejecting it. Or rather, the more it attaches to his blood and becomes him, it is rejecting his body because his mind doesn't know what to do with it.”

“You're saying it's going to kill him.”

She nods.

“I mean no offense, but we already knew that. What I need to know is—”

“Lady Isobel is right—there is another option.” Gilford looks at the Luminescent as he says it. As if prodding her to spit it out. “Two, in fact.”

When she refrains, he continues for her. “A swift death being the first and most logical.”

I shake my head as the words of my father slip into mind.
“Never destroy what simply needs taming . . .”

“But otherwise, it is our belief that while he can't get rid of the dark ability consuming his blood, due to his Cashlin heritage he could possibly learn to control it. Because it's not his actual blood that's rejecting him. It's his mind that is fading and will lose control completely. When that happens, he will be gone and the ability will be all that is left. Until . . .”

“It kills him.”

“Until it begins killing others through him.”

Just like it would've through me.

The queen's words come back.
“Lord Myles stands on the edge of a decision. One choice will send him over a precipice and turn him into a lesser Draewulf. The other will most likely cost his life but will help the Hidden Lands survive.”

Mia nods.

“So he might survive because he's Cashlin—
if
he can be tamed. So how do we do that?”

She peers over at Myles, who's huddled up against the tree staring at us. Whether he's listening or not, I can't tell. He already looks more than gone.

The guard leans in and murmurs, “A stronger Luminescent would be able to help him learn to control it.”

I glance at Mia.

“Not me. It'd have to be either the queen, one of the Inters, or . . .”

“Princess Rasha.” I study her as if to say I'm no daft fool.

She nods. “The question is, how do we rescue her?”

At first dawn we pack up our bags and horses and leave for the next town. The fog has come in heavy, surrounding us so thick it's hard to see anything but the road in front of us—and even that is only visible for a number of feet. Thus, the pace is a bit slow, lending to our already quiet moods.