The Silver Siren (37 page)

“
You dare call that
peaceful!” I yelled, pointing to Sinnendor’s castle up in flames.
My heart raced powerfully fast as I tried to not think about my
father, about Siobhan, Joss, Kael, and all of the innocent lives
that were at risk—or already lost. “You call using mind control and
drugs to force them to fight for you peaceful? They are people with
their own free will.” I took another step toward the young queen.
Her hands were hidden within the fold of her red dress, her face
expressionless.

“
No, I call them a
necessary expense.” Her lip rose in a smile of disdain.

“
No lives are ever
expendable.” I roared and felt power begin gather as my fury rose.
“I’ll have you know—”

Snarling erupted behind me, and I
turned to see a pack of hybrid dogs, with blood-red eyes. Cirrus
made a single motion and the pack raced to attack me.

This time, I knew what to expect as
five furious canines barreled down on me. Without even a glance, I
flung out my hand and sent them spiraling into the air and crashing
back through the underbrush. Yelps of fear littered the darkened
forest, though I could hear some of them gathering for another
attack.

Cirrus attacked me head on—a blast to
the chest and I flew back into a tree. My head exploded in pain as
it slammed into the trunk. Every Denai trait was mine to
command—earth, air, water, and fire—as well as the Sirens’ gift of
death and destruction. If only my will were strong enough to wield
them.

I got up and lashed out at Cirrus with
a bolt of ice. He blocked it before it touched him. I was at a
slight disadvantage, because I didn’t know what I was doing, but he
did. It became difficult to breathe again as Cirrus wrapped a
thread of power around my throat. I fought against it and fell to
my knees. I tried to reach for him, tried to stop him, when I heard
another growl to my right. Out of the corner of my eye I could see
the huge rabid dog growling and preparing to attack.

He barked twice, flexed his muscles,
and lunged for my face.

Chapter 35

I
closed my eyes, expecting teeth to rip through my
throat.

Instead, something darted in front of
me impacting the dog and knocking him down. I opened my eyes to see
a large grey wolf in front of me, biting, clawing, and going for
the dog’s jugular. I felt a touch of worry in my mind and knew it
was my wolf. He’d come back when I needed him most.

My lungs still burned, and I fought
against the lack of oxygen, trying to gasp for air. But with every
breath it seemed to squeeze tighter. Cirrus sent another wave, this
time encasing me in a ball of fire. Heat engulfed me, flames
flickered against my skin, barely touching me.

But when they did pain followed. He
was toying with me.

“
You see, I’m the
teacher,” Cirrus taunted. “You’re still the student.” The ground
shook, and I felt myself running as the ground began to collapse
below me. I wished for a bow and arrow, for its familiarity. These
new powers were still foreign to me. I saw a large stick on the
ground and thought of it flying through the air. It did—and sliced
Cirrus across the cheek.

The pressure around my throat released
and I could breathe again. But only until he attacked me again. I
dodged another large fireball, which grazed my leg and instantly
blistered my bare foot. I flicked my wrist and wrapped it with a
bandage of frost. The coolness cancelled out the pain.

His next attack throttled toward me,
but I froze the fireball midair and directed it back at him.
Cirrus’s eyes widened and he dove to the side as the giant ice
snowball crashed into the tree, shattering behind him. It took him
a moment to crawl back up.

I continued my assault, focusing on
the tree next to him.

It grew rapidly, and branches wrapped
around him, imprisoning him in vines. Cirrus grunted and the
branches began to whither and burn. When they fell from him in
ashes, he gave me an impressed nod.

I just smirked.

A realization struck me. To my
knowledge, Cirrus hadn’t had this many Denai gifts. He must’ve been
helping himself to a few of the injections. He was now stronger
than a Master Denai. And he was fighting without showing any signs
of tiring.

But then I saw them—the threads of
power flowing through the camp to the battlefield. I could see them
all tied to Cirrus. Which meant that if he was fighting me, there
was a good chance that he wasn’t controlling Joss and the others. I
had to save them.

Cirrus closed his eyes, and large ice
crystals formed above him. Seconds later, they spun at
me.

I flung up a wall of power and they
crashed into it and shattered, littering the ground with flecks of
snow. I started to feel myself weakening already. I was draining
myself after I had gone through an intense life-altering change.
Even though I hated myself for doing it, I reached out to the
nearest people and started take their energy to resupply my
own.

My breathing slowed and I stood
straighter. I crossed my arms and flung them out with blasts of
fiery darts, but I soon felt myself drained again. I reached
farther, took more from more people. More Septori. I could actually
feel them start to collapse to the ground as I took everything they
had to offer.

You shouldn’t take from
them.
Wolf nudged my mind. I could see
that he was still circling the edge of the clearing, keeping the
attack dogs at bay.

They are not
innocent!

They are all innocent in
the eyes of the one who loves them.

They hurt me!
I tried to justify myself.
They hurt my family.

Ja, so did Sinnendor. You
forgave them so easily. Why not show these people mercy?

Who are you to talk about
forgiveness? You have not walked in my shoes. Only I can choose to
forgive someone.

It’s not your forgiveness
they need. It’s your mercy.
Wolf spoke
firmly.
You mustn’t take from others, if
you’re not willing to give yourself.

My determination wavered and I
faltered in my next attack. I made the ground shake beneath my feet
and made large cracks appear. I aimed them not at Cirrus but at
Lilyana. Cirrus rushed forward and pushed her out of the way just
as a giant hole appeared where she had just vacated.

He studied me. “Oh, I see what you’re
doing, but it won’t help you for long.” He started to laugh and it
sent a chill to my core. I could see his thread of power follow and
search and connect with every single Septori I had been draining. A
moment later, I heard simultaneous gasps of pain, and power rushed
back at me in a painful whiplash. There was a supernatural
disturbance as if a rushing wind had passed through and sucked out
all the life.

Cirrus had just dealt a hand of death
to all of them.

Lilyana watched as one after the
Septori running around the camp fell over dead. “What are you
doing?” she screamed at him.

“
She was using our own
army against us, draining them to fuel her powers. Now there’s none
for her to drain her in camp. She’ll have to take a chance on
them.” He pointed down the hill to the castle. “There’s no way she
can distinguish between the armies. She could be hurting her own
friends if she tried.”

He was right. I tried to go after and
drain Cirrus and the queen but they were shielded against
me.

Unless I could touch him. He wouldn’t
be able to shield from me if I touched him.

I gathered everything that I could to
me—every remaining dreg of strength within me—and marched toward
Adept Cirrus. He sent bolt after bolt of fire, wind, earth. Attack
after attack.

I threw everything I had into
deflecting, but some of them got through and scorched me, bruised
me, and injured me.

It was a losing battle,
until I realized that I
couldn’t
lose. I couldn’t afford to lose.

I stopped fighting against my fear of
pain and started focusing on the pain. I could deal with pain—I’d
been a born Siren. Sirens relished pain. Instead of fighting it, I
welcomed it. Used the pain and fear to bring forth my other gift.
Ignoring the blackening vision, I marched forward and watched as
Cirrus backed away from me in fear. Power raced up and down my
arms. Visible waves of dark power rolled along me.

Cirrus was scared.

Every painful step closer to him I
came, the wider my smile grew.

He tripped over a root sticking out of
the ground.

“
No, no, it can’t be. You
should be dead by now.”

It hurt and I knew that I would
blackout soon, but the raspy words fell from my lips and I knew he
heard them because he paled. “I’m not afraid of death, not when I
know the timing of my own death, for I control death.” My finger
touched Cirrus through his shirt straight to his hateful black
heart.

I commanded it to stop beating and
watched sadly as he shouted, clutched his chest, and
died.

Lilyana screamed in dismay and ran to
him. She cradled his body, appearing pitiful. Her hair had come
loose, tears streaked down her face, and her dress was ruined from
the mud. It was obvious that without Cirrus, she was nothing more
than a beautiful, broken doll.

I turned from her and walked through
the camp to see it littered with the dead bodies of the Septori.
Dead not by my own hand but by the will of Adept Cirrus.

I should have felt relieved, avenged.
Instead I felt hollow. The more I walked, the number I felt, even
when I passed the bodies of Talbot and Mona lying near each other
in the grass. They both looked peaceful. I saw the small book that
poked out of his vest, and I reached down and pulled out the Horden
journal.

I tucked it inside my
dress.

It was a death march. My footsteps
silent as whispers, I made it to the edge and gazed across the
field to the castle. More bodies lay strewn across the ground.
Young and old, some of the queen’s own army and her Septori, the
others Elite and Tieren’s army. I kept walking through the field,
my body quivering and shaking with emotion and exhaustion. From
where I stood in the middle of the field, I could still see the
battle raging on within the castle walls. A few Denai that were
close to me fell to the ground. I assumed that without Cirrus’s
control they had little power left of their own. But I hoped with
their freedom, they were only dazed. Not dead.

But the large Septori army still
fought. Why shouldn’t they? They had already breached the castle
walls. There was no way I could attack them all without harming
everyone.

The ground shook and I heard the sound
of hundreds of horses behind me. I turned in fear, thinking I was
about to be run down by a second wave of Septori. Except they
weren’t wearing red. The army that came charging down the hill was
actually two separate armies, side by side.

I couldn’t help but smile and cry as
the hill was covered with a hundred SwordBrothers riding into
battle. Beside them, a much smaller army of Denai. The
SwordBrothers rode right past me and dashed into the castle. Within
minutes, I could hear the tide of battle change. People started
yelling, not in pain, but in excitement.

They were cheering.

It didn’t take much to pick out the
large dark form of Pax Baton and Lorna Windmere’s short-cropped
hair leading the throng onto the remains of the battlefield. Behind
them I saw Adept Kambel trotting admirably on a donkey. Breah
followed close behind him and kept yelling at Kambel that he was
going to fall off and kill himself before he even did any
good.

The Denai didn’t attack or join in the
battle like the SwordBrothers, but were sent out into the field by
Pax and Lorna to for the survivors. Breah was the first to stop
beside a young man with a head wound, and she pulled off her cloak
and gloves and began to heal him. Never once did she make a snarky
comment as she tended this man of Sinnendor. Her enemy.

Lorna came over to me and looked at my
tear-stained face. Her eyes filled up with tears as well, and she
nodded her head. “I know child. I know,” she intoned in a motherly
voice.

“
Well, why didn’t you do
anything? Why didn’t you stop them?” I cried out, feeling
useless.

“
We found out too late. It
was when your father’s messengers came to the Citadel that we
started to piece everything together. We searched Adept Cirrus’s
rooms and found all the evidence we needed: detailed plans, maps,
routes of all of the hidden laboratories. As well as letters from
the queen. All of them signed with a raven in the
corner.”

“
We gathered everyone that
was willing to come,” Pax Baton spoke, his deep voice rumbling in
his chest. “And we happened to meet up with the SwordBrothers. It
seems they were on their way here, and we explained what the
dreadful turn of events.”

“
Adept Cirrus. Is he…?”
Lorna drifted off, unable to ask.

“
Dead,” I
answered.

“
Where’s the
queen?”