Such a Daring Endeavor (30 page)

Three sirens congregate to one side, knocking into the moving cars in succession. The vehicle tips up, driving on only two wheels, until it crashes over, rolling to land in a plume of flames.

“Was that the one Gwynn was in?” I ask, coming to Ren’s side and helping him to his feet. He’s disheveled and dirty. Blood drips down his chin. He grips the sides of his head. I was affected by siren song once—enough to knock me woozy and render me basically unconscious. I can only imagine the impact it has on a man, especially the shrieks.

“Didn’t look like it,” Talon says, coming to my side. He’s panting hard, hands pumping at his sides. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I snap, harsher than I intend to, though it’s not him I’m upset with. My anger quickly fades at the sight of Ayso and Zeke bent over Cadie’s fallen, blackened body. The nymph looks more childlike than ever, small, frail and unmoving.

“What happened?” I ask, hurrying over to them.

“Jomeini,” Zeke says. “She...”

Cadie’s eyelids flicker. She’s still alive, but just barely. Her fingers twitch, and steam rises from her, giving off the smell of charred flesh. I don’t know the nymph all that well. But the sight of her injury fills me with both revulsion and sadness all the same.

“Jomeini!” Ayso calls, jerking the small girl toward the nymph’s lifeless form. Ayso’s hand startles the smaller of the two girls. Jomeini’s eyes widen at her.

“I didn’t mean to,” Jomeini says, plunging her face in her hands. “I didn’t mean to.” Her knees buckle, but Ayso shakes her out of it.

“I know you didn’t hurt her on purpose,” Ayso says. “But can you heal her? We need you to try.”

Jomeini bends around them, muttering feeble apologies. Closing her eyes, she fans out her hands over the nymph, and I turn away.

Smoke fills the air from the wrecked vehicle. The bodies of several soldiers lie on the ground, their blood pooling and darkening the dirt. I’m hollow inside. The tears are gone. We failed.

How could Gwynn have done it? Sawed the siren’s wing off, drunk her blood? Both Ren’s insistence and Talon’s suggestion that she truly has changed begin to ring clearer than I’d like. The same stubborn streak I’ve felt for her breaks through their arguments. If she really is doing these terrible things of her own volition, I have to help her see sense. Because if the tables were turned, I’d want her to do the same for me.

The sky is clear of sirens, save two, and I offset my feet, waiting for them to land. The small band of people around me gawk, but I’m so livid I can hardly breathe. Estelle’s beauty is violent and burdensome to anyone who looks at her. Just one glance into those pink diamond eyes will mesmerize anyone. But instead of admiration my blood boils.

“Ambry Csille,” says Estelle, chin high, “I warned you to stay out of it.”

“What have you done?” I ask.

Estelle folds her arms. “We granted you friendship and sisterhood. You should know we come to the aid of our sisters. Including you.”

“Not at the risk of the world!” I argue, hating the fact that they took me away right when I could have helped.

“Watch yourself, Ambry,” Solomus warns from somewhere to my left. The reprimand chides me. I remember a time where Talon gave me a similar warning, and I lost my temper. I argued with the wizard and acted like a petulant child, and it got me nowhere.

I take a mental step backward. The wizard is right. I can’t go around losing my temper the way I did before.

Estelle ruffles her wings. “Would you rather I abandon Elodia and allow the torture to continue? They drank her blood. They removed her wings. Nothing worse can befall a siren.”

The loss in her voice softens me. “I wish you had told me,” I say, the fight draining out. There was a time I would have argued, the way I did with Solomus. But after what I’ve witnessed, I can’t discount her despair. “I could have helped you! I was in the palace, Estelle, I could have found her. Gotten her out. And now you’ve just handed the Arcaians their most dangerous weapon.”

Estelle raises her chin. A hint of regret, of worry, streaks across her eyes.

I place a hand on her shoulder. After seeing Jomeini so pained, even seeing Shasa’s hurt, I can’t blame Estelle for this.

“We all have our own battles, Estelle,” I say. “That doesn’t mean we have to fight them alone.” And I walk away, fully aware that I’m abandoning my friends to be alone with a siren. But for some reason I know Estelle won’t do anything to them this time.

T
alon carries Cadie back toward the van, hidden deep in the brush of the forest. Jomeini walks behind, wringing her hands and muttering under her breath.

“I hope it was enough,” she keeps saying.

I jog to catch up and put my arm around her. Jomeini jerks at the touch, shrinking away and hugging her arms around herself. Sunlight spears through gaps in the branches, but Jomeini meanders to avoid them, sticking to the shadows.

“You okay?” I ask.

She wrings her hands and continues walking, not looking at me. “I tried. I tried to help—I got—”

I touch her shoulder, pulling her to a stop. This time she doesn’t draw back. Her eyes are wounded, as though worried I’m about to strike her.

“It’s okay,” I say.

She shudders. “I froze up. I—I destroy, I burn everything I touch.”

“You tried,” I say, the depths of me aching for the sorrow in her voice. I reach to put my arm around her again and then think better of it. “You agreed to help us. That means more than anything.”

”Everything I do is wrong. I kept you from getting the tears.”

“No, you didn’t,” I insist, meeting the void in her black eyes. “The sirens wouldn’t have given the tears back to us anyway, not with their wounded sister there. You did what you could.”

Jomeini dips her chin. “A lot of good it did.”

I sigh, lacking the strength to argue with her.

Zeke opens the van’s door and climbs in, offering his hands. Talon passes Cadie over. The nymph’s weak chest rises and falls. Her eyes remain closed, her clothes dull and dirty, but at least her skin is back to its normal appearance, no longer blackened and charred.

No one says much as the van of Black Vaulters drives off, or as Talon, Shasa, Ren and I make it back to the cycles.

I stew over it all the way back to the house, holding onto Ren’s shirt as he navigates our way back. Wind whips through my hair, but the ride passes in a blur. I thought Tyrus was the main contender, but here is my best friend on the front lines, calling the shots, making the bold moves.

Why send her? What is Tyrus up to?

Planning a war, that’s what. Training soldiers, traveling the country and garnering new recruits and subjugates. Not for the first time I wonder how the Arcaians think they can possibly manage ownership of that many people’s magic. It’s not like they can bring a caravan of people wherever they go just so they can use it. They can’t access the stolen magic unless its owner is near.

That’s just it, though. Once he finds a way into Angel’s Basin, he won’t need to drag subjugates along. If what Talon says is true, the water there will have the power to make the magic he’s stolen permanently his.

It doesn’t make sense that they still want the tears. If Tyrus is threatening Feihria with tears—tears that
won’t
let anyone drink them, what do they want with them?

Could the tears have some connection to Angel’s Basin? Something I don’t know about?

Ren steers down the dirt road much sooner than I remember it taking this morning. We crawl down the streets, pulling in at the safehouse with its blue siding and spotty landscape. Talon veers into the garage, and Ren follows. The white van is parked and empty of its passengers. Ayso and the others must have arrived minutes ago.

“There’s no way one vial of tears can help win a war,” I say as I dismount and slam the helmet to its hook on the wall.

“Tyrus seems to think it can,” says Talon.

Shasa makes for the door into the house, but at Talon’s words stops in place and leans against the door frame. Ren rests a foot on the cycle’s pedal, one hand on the handlebars.

“What’s different about Gwynn, Ren?” I ask, wanting to get to the bottom of this. “What made her be this way?”

“What do you mean?” Ren asks, his eyebrows tented.

“This goes deeper than just drinking some tears. Talon said it himself,” I say, thinking aloud. Talon rests his hand on the other handlebar opposite from Ren, his attention avid.

“Tyrus tried to make him do these horrible things,” I say. “But Talon refused to do it. Now Tyrus is having Gwynn do them, but Talon said the desire had to be in her before she even drank the tears. You said it was already in the core of who she was.” Talon nods to affirm it. I shake my head. “I just can’t believe this is really Gwynn doing these things. This isn’t the core of her.”

“What are you saying?” Ren asks, unsettled.

“You saw her that night, Ren. She was alive, she was vibrant, she had no wicked intent toward anyone. I refuse to believe the same girl who climbed to my window for help after being misused would do what she just did to that siren of her own accord. I don’t think it was the tears that unlocked who she really is.”

“It was that dream she had right before it,” Ren finishes after a moment.

“Dreams were always the key to unlocking who people were beneath the wizard’s spell,” says Talon, cottoning on. Shasa moves from the step back to where the three of us stand.

“It’s not just about the tears. Dreams got Gwynn to buy the tears in the first place,” adds Ren.

Realization spills over every inch of me, filling me with both dread, urgency, and a renewed anticipation all at once.

“Where is Solomus?” I ask.

***

Cadie’s child-sized arms and legs contrast with her mature facial features. It’s been almost an hour since Jomeini healed the nymph’s extensive wounds, but her eyes haven’t opened since they brought her down here. And so Jomeini hasn’t left.

Though standing still, an outburst of instability rattles within her. Try as she might, she can’t help reliving the day’s previous events.

Darkness crept around her in the middle of the bright afternoon in the form of the blonde woman, Gwynn Hawkes. The sadistic pleasure crimping Gwynn’s mouth, the rigid intensity burning in her eyes when she shoved the siren prisoner down, the sight transferred Jomeini. When Gwynn’s boot struck the woman’s back, it was Craven all over again.

All at once the chain was back on Jomeini’s throat. A barrage of swords stung the innermost parts of her mind, stabbing Craven’s reminders of her own failures in, over and over. Jomeini froze in the midst of that battle, unable to take her eyes from Gwynn, not daring to move for fear of what might happen should she fight.

The murky thoughts spin in the ferris wheel of Jomeini’s mind, each one revolving, taking its turn at the top. Jomeini couldn’t let Craven rule over her any longer. He was dead, after all. But knowing that still didn’t help. She wasn’t able to best him the way she always dreamed of. But in that moment her senses heightened. She knew she could help the screaming siren.

Flames awoke. She waltzed out with fire and fear in her hands, aiming it at the blonde woman who just cut off the siren’s wing.

And Cadie was nearly killed because of it.

“All I do is destroy things,” she tells the drooping lambsear plants in the box across from Cadie’s bed. Jomeini aches to feel the soil, to stroke the soft, fuzzy leaves. “I won’t hurt you,” she tells the plant, cradling a single leaf in her hand. It’s velvet smooth and cool to the touch.

“How is she?” Ayso asks.

Jomeini startles at the interruption. She digs her fingers into the soil in attempt to hide her skittishness. The cool grit soothes her skin. The porous smell of dirt hits her nose, letting her escape, just for a moment. To Xavienke, where gardens around the wizard palace were decadent and her only playground.

Then Grandfather moved her to Valadir and everything began to die. He left. She was taken.

Craven’s voice fades from her subconscious, the feel of his hands on her, the chill seeping into her bones and the skittering sound of rats in the crawlspace, the constant, crushing fear that one would gnaw at her in her sleep and then waking to one’s teeth attached to the hem of her skirt. As a wizard she thrived on her magic, used it to treat her plants, used it to learn how to rule Valadir, it was part of her. And he stole it.

She thought she was rid of him. But the trauma of seeing someone else like him crushed her.

Gwynn Hawkes was no better than Arthur Craven.

The old shaking rushes forward anew, only where her bones were once empty, now they fill with flame, scorching hot and making her sweat all over.

“She’s breathing,” Ayso says, stooping over the nymph. “That’s a good sign.”

Jomeini opens her eyes. Rocks have taken place of the dirt in her hands, dehydrated and recrystallized from the heat of her magic. She wrenches each of her fingers free from the holes in the rock and lets it drop near the wilting lambsear.

“Ayso?” Jomeini hates how much her voice shakes.

Ayso’s glasses slip from her nose, and she nudges them back on with her middle finger. Her silvery hair tumbles around her shoulders, and she stops her inspection of the plants to look directly at Jo. No sense of frustration, just a kind, open curiosity.