Siren's Song (6 page)

“Didn't you hear your queen? Her daughter and I are friends.” I eye his hand and notice the tiny, almost imperceptible glass circle on his wrist. Keeping my distance, I tip my head toward it. “What are you doing to us?”

“This?” He hardly glances at the wristlet. “It knocks you out.”

“I gathered that.”
But I'd much prefer to stay conscious, thank you.
“How long will its effect last on them?” I jut my head toward the three he's attacked.

“Long enough. But that doesn't matter. What are you planning to do about the princess?”

“Rescue her. Which is more than I can say for her own mother.” I keep my stare on that wristlet catching the candlelight and refracting it on the wall. “So how about you don't use that on me and we discuss what Rasha would rather you and I be doing to save her.”

He shrugs. “The Luminescents in the hall will know if I've not used it. Besides, it'll be better this way. Less painful.”

I choke. “What will be less painful?”

He doesn't answer, just lashes forward as I clench my hand into a fist and call down the nighttime sky. A crack of lightning goes off somewhere nearby and I start toward the window, but next thing I know I'm sliding to the floor in front of it as the awareness hits that the skin on my neck feels prickly.

Firelights flicker in the distance, illuminating the dark kingdom beyond the window and Castle.
Such lovely lights
, I think.
Like fireflies. Like the firefly trees at home in Faelen . . .

The lights in the room seem to be dimming. The yellow glow from candles fading odd-like, and the guard is standing over me.

“What . . . do with us?” My lips feel thick as my head hits the floor.

“Interrogate you,” he says just as a door opens and the red hue of the Luminescents' glowing eyes fills the hall.

CHAPTER 6

DRIP DROP GOES THE SNOW, LIKE LITTLE LACE BUDS TWIRLING ONTO THE garden. The wind is swirling, humming, scattering the puffs beyond the breath-fogged window. “Look at the flakes, Father.”

“Aye.” He ducks his head near mine. “Lady Weather's jealous. She's trying to match your hair. Just like she's tryin' to match your harmonious voice.” He tweaks a white lock near my ear, and I glance up at his pockmarked face and dark curls cut short by Mum's dainty hands.

I frown. “But I don't want it white. I want hair the same as yours.”

He pauses, then pulls me onto his lap. It's the first time I've mentioned such a thing, even though I've tried to stain my long locks dark with Fendres dirt many times when he and Mum weren't looking. “Now, why'd you want to have a plain mess like this?” He brushes his curls up so they frizz out over his head like a burberry bush. “You want to look like a bolcrane? Is that it?” And before I can move, he's curling his hands into pretend claws and tickling my sides. I scream and jump away to find my small wooden sword carved by those hands.

“All right, then! If I can't eat
you
, I'll go after your mum!” he roars, scampering on all fours toward the soft-faced angel currently knitting a Solstice gift in front of the fire.

He snarls until she bats him back with her needle. “Tegan! You'll
make me drop a stitch and then the poor child will catch cold.” She laughs.

“It's all right. I'll save you, Mum.” I plant myself in front of her to face my father.

“Save her? Impossible! You can't defeat me!” He swipes the air with his taut, thick arms.

“I don't want to defeat you!” I giggle and toss my blade aside to throw my hands around his neck. “I want to tame you so I can ride on your back!”

He stops and stares at me a moment before leveling his face to mine. And plants a kiss on my pale nose. “That's my girl,” he whispers, scooping me into the rich scent of his earthen skin. “Never destroy what simply needs taming, Nymia. Mercy grows hearts more than bitterness.” He presses his hand against my heart. “Like this one in here.”

I pucker my lips. “How do you know, Father?”

“How? Because I have you. My gift of mercy who's grown this old heart right big. Good thing, too, 'cuz your mum's cooking isn't much for growing the stomach.”

“I heard that,” Mum murmurs.

“A gift?” I frown.

“Sure.” He tucks back another lock of my hair and settles a stare at me. “When you were born, you survived, though you weren't supposed to.” His smile is soft. “I like to believe it was for your mum and me. For our hearts.” He sits up straight and clears his throat. “Now, how 'bout we sing something beautiful for your mum, eh?”

Except . . .

Except three hours later I open my eyes to discover that he was wrong because mercy cares little for the heart of a five-year-old girl. Nor does it do anything to douse the fires or death screams of her parents as she rouses to the awareness that she's standing out in
the blood-drenched snow, watching her home cave in. In the freezing mist, and ash, and horrific dark.

Always that dark. Even more terrifying than any of the nights with the human monsters that would follow.

Deep. Freezing.

Suffocating the song voice I'd all but forgotten.

Always whispering, “You survived. Even when you weren't supposed to.”

I survived.

But wasn't supposed to.

I gasp awake, only to choke and reach for my face—and find tears there at the ache of a memory long forgotten. My dad's face. My mum's hands. Our last night together as a family before their deaths.

Except we weren't a real family according to Eogan. Not by blood relation, anyway.

I cough and wince at the red lights splitting through the fog of my mind. And overhead—that sound of rain. It's hitting the glossed-over glass walls and ceiling with a harsh
tap tap tapping
.

I curl my fingers to force it to stop, but it just keeps going. Harder, louder than before. Pounding into my brain as if it can punch holes to get in through my skull and gain access.

Access to what?

Images of my owners, one, two, three, flash before my eyes. I blink as the memories of beatings and mocking voices play in fast increments through my head.
“You'll do as I say or Draewulf will come to eat your brains.”
My first owner's words flip around, drawing up recollections of washing his clothes. Then his son's.

I shudder, and somewhere within my chest a cry pushes up and out at these faces I cannot bear. These people who destroyed me.

These people whom I then destroyed.

“Make it stop. I don't want to remember,” I hear my voice gasping over and over. “Please make it stop.”

Something pricks my neck and the drumming raindrop voices fade, along with my mind.

I'M IN EOGAN'S BRON CASTLE NOW, SPEAKING WITH SIR GOWON. EXCEPT he's not listening to me. He's refusing to understand that Eogan has been taken over by Draewulf. I reach my fingers for his waist-shirt and twist. “What does the Elegy 96 say?”

He grips a hand over mine. “You'll kindly unhand me.”

I step closer. Squeeze harder. The hissing from the wraiths outside the room grows louder. “What does it say?” I demand. “What does Eogan think has begun?” Suddenly my arms are crawling and my veins, my chest . . .

“Nym, stop!” Rasha says.

“Read his intentions. What do you see?”

Her hand tugs at me. “You're going to kill him! We'll find it another way. We'll ask Isobel! You can't do—”

Can't I? I stare at her as the heat from my fury floods the ice in my blood. I am beyond finished with this man's uncaring for the world going to the pit of hulls all around him while he stays in his comfortable fool ignorance. I pull, yanking the energy from his chest bones. Like marrow I can taste.

Sir Gowon wheezes and stumbles forward. He opens his mouth and I sense it—the words on the tip of his confused, tormented mind. I will make him speak or else—

Then he gasps:

“When shadows are sewn to sinew and bone, and darkness rules the land,

Let storms collide and Elisedd's hope arise,

Before the beast forces fate's hand.

Just as from one it came and to five was entrusted, to only one it can go, to rule or to seek justice.

If his demise is to be Elemental,

Interrupt the blood of kings in each land.”

I stare.

“Elegy 96 is a prophecy,” he slurs. “Handed down for generations of Bron kings. It's a foretelling of what is to come.”

Twenty seconds go by as every vein in my body is curling up like roots around my chest.

And then my mind is flashing backward to the witch's house. “He's taking the blood in order,” Draewulf's wife says. “He needed Eogan first. Interrupt the blood of kings, and whatever you do, don't let him take the final one.”

Come on, Nym. Wake up.

I try to pry my eyes open but they're too heavy.

And now my memories are moving forward to Eogan.

ON THE AIRSHIP, HE'S STARING AT ME, TALKING TO ME BECAUSE AN Elemental will be Draewulf's downfall.

The airship shudders, and the sensation is answered by a matching shiver beneath my skin, in my veins, as Eogan's voice emerges again through the wind and sea salt and snowcapped air. “When Draewulf comes to Faelen, it'll be for you. Because your Elemental ancestors were the original rulers of Faelen. And you're last in line, Nym.”

The red raindrops are back, pounding my head again. I try to duck. To get out of the way, but their piercing glow follows me.

“The prophecy,” one of the red drops says.

“The queen knows of the prophecy,” another answers. “Reach back further. To the beginning.”

“I don't want to go back,” I tell it. “I need to move forward.” Always forward.

“We need the past,” the hammering drops say. “To help see the future.”

What future? “There is no future if he can't be stopped.” Doesn't the bloody rain know this?

“Exactly.”

STICK WALLS. SLATTED LIGHT. HEAT AND STENCH AND SWEAT COATING the air, coating my lungs, which can barely breathe. I'm gasping as if they don't know how to work yet. They squish and ache and, oh, my body aches. I sneeze and blink and suddenly I'm staring up at a face that is brown.

A pair of stormy gray eyes blink back. I smile. They smile. Then drop water on my cheeks—and I wail because it's startling and frightening and I don't want to see this woman cry. This woman I don't know but somehow I must be a part of. Must have come from.

And from the man hovering behind her.

Why does he look so sad too? With that white hair and those sea-blue eyes that are beautiful.

Are they mad?

Footsteps outside. Tromping. Making angry sounds. And more cries are coming from somewhere.

Why are they so angry? Is that what's making this couple sad?

“It's time,” a whisper says.

The woman holds me closer, and I can feel how small I am. She squeezes me to her breast, and suddenly I want to stay here. With her. I want to nuzzle against her and sleep.

“If we're going to get her out, it has to be now,” the blue-eyed hovering man says.

“I know, I just . . .”

The lovely woman is crying again. Then she's handing me to an old lady in a scratchy cloth that makes me want to wail. Before I can, she pops a thumb in my mouth and swishes us out a small door while the sad lady stands, watching and crying, and the man holds her.

The angry footsteps are growing closer.

The old woman runs faster, weaving around hovels and trees.

“Hurry,” a male voice says.

And suddenly I'm being shoved through a tiny dirt hole beneath a tall stone fence that looks made to keep people in permanently. “Poor child,” the old lady mutters. “May the Creator spare her.”

“Halt!” a voice yells, but it's too late because the new male hands that have taken me from the woman and already strapped me to their chest are working to mount a horse to take me away.

“To the Fendres Mountains,” the male whispers. “I know a man and his wife you'll be safe with there, far from this blasted internment camp.”

I lean forward and blink and try to catch my breath, but what the hulls was that?

It's no use, though. I can't find the air. I don't know if I ever will. I need to cough. I need to inhale and escape these memories and these red pelting raindrops that are abruptly fading fading fading.

I choke and squint and stare around me as the darkness lifts and the raindrops slow.

Not raindrops. Voices. Questions.

Red Luminescent eyes dull around me at the same moment the throbbing in my head stops.

I frown.
What in—?
“What have you done?” I demand of the three Luminescents in front of me.

They don't answer.

They don't have to.

They are the Inters.

And now they're finished.

CHAPTER 7

A
CREAKING SOUND ERUPTS BEHIND ME
through the red-illuminated dark and someone's poking my shoulder. “This way.”

A door opens, sending in a candlelit glow over my shoulder to light up the heavily curtained room and the three elderly Luminescents all seated in a row. They're so old it appears as if their skin is decaying. I cough, and it's as if I'm inhaling that scent of dead bodies on ice again. I gag and shove off from the freezing chair I've been sitting on. I am done with this place.

Out of the dim, the dancing Cashlin guard's hand reaches for me. I shift away before he can prick me again, but he just says, “If you behave, I won't use it now that they're finished.”

Is he jesting?
I look from him to my interrogators. “You invaded my mind without my permission. You invaded my memories!”

“Memories you could not have given us if we'd simply asked,” they say in unison.