Siren's Song (2 page)

SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO

S
HORT MEWING SOUNDS RIPPLE THE NIGHT AIR
inside the thin wooden shack. The whimpers are soft and brand new, like the baby emitting them, and hardly muted by blankets the mum's using to swaddle the tiny child against her chest.

“Thank the Creator it's a girl,” a man's voice breathes. “Let me see her.”

“She's too chilled. Wait until morning.”

“Helena.” His voice is gentle, coaxing. “Let me see our child.”

The woman clings tighter, attaching the babe to her breast so the suckling takes the place of the cries.

“Helena,” he says again, but this time his tone is laced with suspicion. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Just let us wait until—”

A slight brush of cold as the blanket is pulled back from the babe's head. It's followed by an exclamation—both from the suddenly cold child and the surprised man.

“She's . . . she's . . .”

“She's like you,” the mum murmurs.

“Impossible.” But the man's tone is more astonishment than annoyance. “What do you think it means?”

“It means she's the miracle.”

“She's Elemental.”

“She's the one we have been waiting for. From the prophecy.” Her firm tone falls desperate. “She
must be
the one.”

The man lets the blanket drop back over the babe's head with a surprised grunt. “But she's from us.”

“Aye. And what's wrong with us?”

A soft chuckle. “A lowly common-house maid living in an internment camp because she made the mistake of marrying an Elemental. And a half-crippled one at that.” He lifts the blanket again. “We can't keep her. Our time here is already limited, and if they find her, she'll be—”

“I know.”

“I'll call for Delaney,” the man muses. “She'll know what to do.”

“She'll send her away.”

“Better that than the alternative.”

The woman pulls the babe from her breast enough to peer down at the snowy-white fuzz on her head and sea-blue eyes. “And if she doesn't survive?”

“She's not even supposed to exist. Whatever choice we make, she may not survive. So hold it all lightly, my love.”

The crying starts up again, soft and mewing.

For a moment it sounds like the notes of a lament coming from the babe's mouth.

The babe who was never supposed to exist.

The babe who is not meant to survive.

CHAPTER 1

I
PULL HARDER ON THE AIR CURRENTS WHILE STARING
at the broad-shouldered black man beside me. I still can't keep my focus off him—off the fact that he's real and alive and truly here with me—feet planted firmly on the airship's deck as he surveys the Tullan earth flying by beneath our small war-shredded fleet. The red dirt and rocks have long since changed with the landscape below to brown and green shadows, blending together like a muddy painting as the airship vibrates and the sound of the droning engine competes with his soldiers' shouts.

Eogan doesn't move to give orders or shout back. Just stands there in his torn red Bron suit in the same stance he's been in ever since finishing his kingly duty of checking on his men and assessing the full extent of our losses. And, if my suspicions are correct, interrogating Lady Isobel and Lord Myles in the dining room where they're being detained.

His handsome face barely shows the strain.

Even his skin and clothes, stained with the blood of wraiths and men from the battle we're fleeing, only serve to make his twenty-two-year-old self look fierce as hulls.

I bite my lip and steady my legs, weakened from my aching chest wounds. And keep my gaze level on him. This king who spent the
past few months as my trainer, stealing every bent piece of my bleeding soul only to break those pieces with his own confessions—before resetting them.

He
is the choice I made over this world and the Tullan people.

He is the chance I took.
And I'd take it again in a heartbeat.

For the hundredth time in the past four hours, the thought emerges that I don't know if that makes me selfish or weak or daftly insane, but there is the bittersweet truth of it.

F
OUR HOURS EARLIER

I reach up and push fingers into Eogan's jagged black hair, then pull him closer as he studies me with a gaze that says he knows how unsure my heart is. And how heavily it's breaking. For Colin's homeland of Tulla and its people we've just abandoned to Draewulf. For the entire Hidden Lands.

The airship we're being whisked away on lurches, then rises higher as Eogan's green eyes pierce mine, and suddenly I swear he's pulling back the lid on my soul, and in the process he's accidentally exposing
his
soul. Which, if the flash of grief is any indication, is aching just as bad as mine. Even if he still doesn't know how to acknowledge it—or what to do with it.

Next thing I know his mouth is present against mine, his lips searing, burning my bones, setting my soul to crash into his earthen heart like sea storms in winter. Bringing with it a hint of his calm to flow through my sliced-open, bleeding chest where I'd clawed my flesh open in my attempt to get the dark ability out. Willing me the belief that love can fix a multitude of worlds and souls and wounds—and promising to send my hope soaring for
what goodness our world can still produce. And for the hundredth time around this man I am completely undone.

Blast him.

I have to resist turning back to survey the burnt sky and red rocks of Tulla, or look for Draewulf's ships amid the smoke.
Are they pursuing us?
“What happens if Draewulf reaches Cashlin first?” I whisper.

“He'll take over the queen and her Luminescent ability.”

“And then what—he'll come for Faelen's King Sedric?”
Will his Dark Army come?

“Then he'll come for me,” Eogan says.

My hand flutters to find his against the cold metal. “I won't let him. We'll hide you.”

His smile is soft as he shakes his head. “I've been hiding the past four years and it didn't do any good. The only way to defeat him now is to fight.”

“And if he kills you next time?”

He falls silent. Enough so that I look up at him. “If he kills me, then he'll come to Faelen,” he says quietly. “But not for King Sedric.”

I frown. “But the prophecy—”

“The right to rule was given to five Uathúils—five monarchs. And the line of Faelen's royal blood was always the strongest. A lineage that belonged to the original rulers of Faelen.” He pauses and softens his gaze, reaching his words deep into my soul. “Sedric's ancestors weren't Uathúils, nor were they the original kings. The Elementals were.”

The airship shudders, and the sensation is answered by a matching quiver beneath my skin. In my veins. In my chest's torn-open flesh that is threatening to make me feel woozy. I blink and frown harder at him. And swallow as the voice of the witch who was Draewulf's wife rattles in my chest.
“And whatever you do, don't let him take the final one.”

When I look down, my left hand is twisting even tighter into the crippled stump owner number fourteen made of it. As it squeezes, a tiny black line emerges through the vein beneath its skin, and for a fleeting second the feeling of dark hunger edges my lungs.

Like the distinct imitation of a spider testing my sinew before beginning to reweave her web.

Eogan's voice emerges again through the wind and sea salt and snowcapped air. “When he comes to Faelen, it'll be for you. Because you're last in line, Nym.”

P
RESENT

I inhale and open my mouth. Then shut it.

Eogan's gaze shifts to study mine before it falls to my shaky fist. “How is it?”

I swallow and glance away and crush my fingers to give a fresh burst of wind. “It's weak, but the power's definitely there. It's growing.”

“That's not what I meant.” He nods at my chest.

“Still hurts, but it'll be fine.”
I hope.
I haven't looked at it since the sight of the shredded skin nearly made me vomit hours ago.

He slips a hand over my arm as if to test to see if I'm lying, because clearly he knows me too well. The span of a heartbeat goes by before I feel his soothing ability wash over me, and this time I welcome it, embrace it, allow my body to rest in it a moment.

His face turns the slightest bit gray and weary. “And without the dark ability, how is it?”

“Better. Calmer.” I allow a smile. “More myself.”

He snorts. “So, ornery as hulls then. Lovely.”

I'm debating smacking the arrogance off his face, except he glances away—so quick I almost miss his expression in the dying sun. It's thick with tension and hope and something suggestive of attraction.

I smirk. Until two seconds later when I nearly jump out of my skin as the nearby airships sound their horns.

One,

two,

five airships altogether, counting ours. The captains alerting each other we're all here. We're all okay, and we're all flying as fast as possible through the icy air to the strange kingdom of Cashlin, which we've never seen, to rescue a Luminescent queen we've never met. In hopes we'll reach her before Draewulf is done ravaging the land of Tulla we've left only hours ago.

I peer down at my own blood-hardened, torn red dress. Just like earlier, I don't have to look behind us to know the black smoke from the battle is still climbing. I feel it billowing up and clawing at the sky. Like spirits from the grave. Moving over the mountains along our right—to reach beyond them to Faelen and the Elisedd Sea.

Suddenly my stomach is twisting again over what those wraiths are doing to the people we left behind in Tulla. What they're doing to Rasha, Cashlin's princess and my friend. If only we'd acted faster, stronger—if only I'd been more decisive and moved against Draewulf on the flight there from the kingdom of Bron—

Eogan's lips flicker sad. “Don't.”

“What?”

He raises a perfect brow at me. “I know you're thinking it again, and
don't
.”

“Really? Because I was thinking how very much like a bolcrane you—”

The airship beneath our feet lurches and drops down on the currents, wobbling so hard I have to grab the deck railing to keep my balance this time.
Litches.

“We'll get Rasha back, I swear. And like I said, I was wrong about you being able to kill Draewulf. Once you'd destroyed me, he wouldn't have had my block to contain him and would've succeeded sooner. So stop skinning yourself over it. Better to focus on asking me your questions, don't you think?”

I frown at his daft piercing gaze. The conceited stare that says he knows what else I've been thinking and is simply waiting for me to get around to it while he stands here.
Blasted oaf.
The questions come flooding back anyway, though—about me being Draewulf's final target. About my Elemental heritage. About what I am and what my parents must have been.

I snort, purse all hint of amusement from my lips, and don't ask anything.

His short laugh catches in the breeze, and next thing I know the sound has sent my lungs running for air—my aches and attitude melting with it. Because it's the rich chuckle that's his and his alone. Draewulf could never mimic or claim it even when he possessed Eogan's body—and how no one recognized it was the shape-shifter wearing Eogan's skin based on that missing clue is ridiculous.

Even so, I allow a barrage of ice flecks to impale his jagged black bangs swagged across his left cheek. He pushes a hand through them, which only succeeds in making them stand up like a rooster tail, making me chuckle too.

And just like that, the air is thick with it again. He doesn't even feign differently, just swerves his admiring gaze across my messy-haired, tattered-dress figure and reaches for me. He tows me close until I can feel his warm breath fighting the wind for the right to snag my hair.