Siren's Fury (19 page)

He flips around. “What do you want?”

“Help.” I lower my voice and glance toward the door. “Whatever that woman gave me is poisoning my body. Something’s wrong.”

“And thisss is cause for getting me up before the Creator himself is awake?”

“How do I fix it?”

“You’re a woman—how in hulls should I know?”

“I had a dream—”

“I would be too if you weren’t ruining my sleep.”

“Of spiders.”

“How nice for you. We can talk about it tomorrow, now would you—”

I narrow my gaze. “I’m not leaving until you help me.”

“Help you what?”

I glare at him and lift my gimpy hand from my robe, holding it out to him as it violently tremors.

He shuts the door. “Tell me about your dream.”

I tell him about the spider and the glittery gaze and the poison in my veins and arm. He closes his eyes as if imagining them, except now he’s moving his lips, repeating my words, and the air around us has rippled until I’m watching the very same spider crawl across the carpet toward me.

I yelp and yank my legs up onto the desk, and the creature dissipates.

Myles opens his eyes. “Interesting. Other than the cold and shaking, how doesss it feel?”

“Like there’s a blasted vortex inside tugging my bones apart.”

He smiles and rubs his face with the base of his palms, then turns to pull a shirt off the foot of his bed to slip on.
Thank hulls.

By the time I glance back, he’s walking toward me—stopping three feet away to roll up his sleeves and smirk. The moonlight glints off his silver tooth, making my spine rigid a moment.

“As to your question if this is normal, I’m no expert, but I’d say the potion’sss working through your system and attaching itself to your blood. The chill and tremorsss will ease once you’ve managed some control. You recall your training with Eogan?”

I ignore the hunger such a simple comment brings. Of course I
remember. That’s part of the reason I’m standing here—because I don’t want to simply remember. I want it back.

I swallow and nod, which feels more like a jiggle since even my head is convulsing with cold.

“He taught you to tap into the idea of protecting others as a way to control your Elemental abilitiesss, did he not?”

“Among other things. What’s your point?”

“Were you ever able to gain complete control of them?”

“Not without his help, but only because he hadn’t finished training me.” I swear my chest bones crack a little wider as the words tumble out.

“Exxxactly. Lucky for you I’m going to finish his training—just the other side of the coin, so to ssspeak. The side he wouldn’t show you for fear you’d become too powerful for even him to control.”

“Because he knew I’d keep hurting people if he didn’t help me.”

“And so can I. The difference isss . . .” He steps closer and lifts his hand, touching one finger to a strand of my white hair. “I don’t think you need to be controlled. I think you need to be ssset free.”

Eogan would be horrified. My teeth begin clacking again as a shudder lurches through me. The bluebird marking on my arm begins aching, flaring, flittering her crushed wings against my pulsing vein. But when I look down, it’s nothing.

I grind my jaw. “So get on with it. Show me.”

“As I said, Eogan used the technique of tapping into your, shall we call it, merciful side. My way is similar. Except I’m going to teach you to reach for your jussstice side.” He dips his face near mine and whispers, “The part of you that hates Draewulf for what he’s done—that hates the injustice done to you by years of being enslaved to perverse owners. I’ll teach you to fight against that.”

My stomach turns. How many times did Eogan and I argue
about this—about my fear of becoming a weapon? “I want to do justice, not strike out in vengeance.”

“Oh my dear,” he breathes. “When I’m finished with you, you’ll be able to use thisss power for whatever you want.”

I swallow and force my head to believe him even if my heart doesn’t. “Because I’ll be able to control it.”

“More than control it, you’ll be able to control
others
with it. Like Draewulf.”

“That witch said Draewulf needs me to achieve something. Will this stop it?”

“It’ll do more than stop it. It’ll kill him if you want.”

Something in the way he says it curls my spine. “By interrupting the blood of kings,” I whisper.

His answer is to slide his hand from my hair he’s been toying with down to the fifteen owner circles on my right arm. And squeeze.

The old familiar energy comes, but instantly it’s not familiar. This one is slicker, cooler, oozing into my veins where my Elemental strength would’ve surged. With it comes an utter sense of hopelessness, of emptiness, as if everything in me is being poured into that vortex in my chest and is flowing, fading inside it, draining everything that is me into an entity that is pure energy.

I begin to yank away but pause.

There’s a quickening in my veins even as the shaking slows and the teeth chattering ceases. The rush is sick and nauseating and thrilling, and for the first time in days I feel a fleeting sense of normal.

Because I feel physical.

Powerful.

Myles’s words are quick, stirring the atmosphere and confusing
my vision as he conjures up the scene of the little redheaded girl at the auction stand. The one I accidentally killed trying to defend her from her new owner just before Adora purchased me.

I start to pull back, to yell at him, but his voice is swift. “Don’t resist the power this time. Follow it. What is
the ability
wanting to do?”

It wants to destroy the man all over again.

“Do you feel it?”

I nod.

“Good. Now act on it.”

I can’t.

I won’t.

I flatten my good palm against my curled fingers and hold them stiff.

He lessens his grip on my owner circles. “What you’re seeing—the little girl, her owner—they’re not real, but in order to release this new energy, you have to act on what it wantsss. Act and watch what happensss.”

I reach one hand toward the mirage of the man and, crumpling my gimpy fingers into a fist, allow the energy to increase. Instead of bringing down lightning on him, the energy in me is seeking to deplete his. I can’t curb it. It lets loose and I immediately see a darkening mass accumulating in his chest. I hear his heartpulse slow. It doesn’t stop though.

Even when he slumps over and his skin has gone gray, it keeps thumping, but something tells me his ability to torment others has been drained from him forever. The bloodlust has faded, and the little girl is left. Unharmed.

The vision dissipates until it’s just Myles and me standing in his room. Surprisingly, confusingly, the cold in my bones has lessened.
I smile. Because as terrified as that scenario was, it also felt safe. And I haven’t felt safe since the last time Eogan held me.

“Again,” I mutter.

The air ripples like before and this time Draewulf’s standing before us in Eogan’s body. He reaches for me like he did yesterday on the airship, going for my throat, black eyes burning. His claws sink into my skin, but instead of evoking fear, it unleashes a vortex of hunger, a craving to draw out his power and destroy it. Destroy him. I lift a hand to his and feel the cold in my lungs start to surface.

It erupts and fades in one clench of my fist as Draewulf clamps down on my owner circles. I tug away but he’s too strong. He keeps pressing down, until what felt so powerful a moment ago now settles limp and small in my veins.

His ability is too great.

I sag and the vision fades. Myles is standing there with his arms crossed and an eerily pleased smile.

I cough and wheeze. I nod, and we run through the scene again.

And again.

The fourth time my shoulders and chest grow feeble as Draewulf leans in closer, smelling of wolf and metal and sundrop skies on Eogan’s skin. His gaze flickers and abruptly it
is
Eogan, his touch, his warmth, his hand on my neck that is taking over, accessing the ability in me and bringing it to the surface. I gasp. My chest cracks and crumbles until it’s disintegrating and falling, falling, falling into nothingness. A faint cry pushes up my throat, and I fear my aching heart might burst open to bleed all over this room.

The vortex inside me begins tugging, lashing up from my chest and out through my arms and fingertips. I reach for him, pressing my palms against him as my lips spill forth mutterings that make no sense. The gaping black inside me grows wider as does the
hunger, and suddenly my hands are drawing the breath and life and energy from Eogan’s body. His eyes flicker between wolf black and emerald green until all at once they’re gray. His entire face is gray and he’s slumping, falling, as his life energy becomes mine.

I gasp and pull away.

The air ripples and Myles is standing two feet away. His pale complexion has turned the color of ash, but he’s grinning.

I slap at him. “What was that? What just happened?”

His smile broadens and my skin tightens. “The images feed on fear.”

A knock on the door interrupts. He steps back. “Enter.”

It’s the Faelen guard from earlier. He’s hesitant, peering around the door before pushing it farther open. He exhales when he sees us, relief softening his features. “Pardon, miss, but . . .” He indicates the hall with his eyes. “I thought you might want to be informed the other delegates will emerge from their rooms shortly. In case you preferred to be there instead of . . .” His gaze flashes to Myles and the hint is clear.

“Thank you.” Flexing my gimpy hand, I slide off the desk and head for the hallway, looking back at Myles. “Let’s resume later.”

His response is a nod, but I barely catch it because just as I reach the hall, I notice the chill shored up inside me is no longer consuming me.

And my spine has stopped shaking.

CHAPTER 21

T
HE BRON AND FAELEN SOLDIERS ARE STILL IN THE hall, stones gone. They eye me as I walk by the row of them. One, three, five of them purse their lips and I’m acutely aware of something rippling beneath all their stiffness. I peer closer. One of the Faelen guards shifts his gaze toward Myles’s door.

I frown. “Is Princess Rasha in her room?”

“She and Lord Wellimton are already in the Negotiation Hall. The rest of you will be taken there momentarily,” a Bron guard says as, simultaneously, Lord Percival’s and Myles’s doors open.

“Good morning,” the lord protectorate oaf says a bit too loud and cheery for this time of day. He shoots me a broad, suggestive grin that is clearly meant to entertain the guards.

I pull my cloak tighter around my warming face and mentally stab him to a thousand deaths. I’m just begging Lady Gwen to hurry up, when a moment later she steps out to join us.

The Faelen and Bron guards, including the angry-looking large one who wanted to rip my head off last night, proceed to escort us to the Hall. I refuse to look at Myles as we walk, but he sidles up to me anyway.

“What did you tell them?” I growl, indicating the soldiers. My face is still hot.

“Funny thing there . . .” He tilts his mouth so only I can hear. “The truth is you dropped out cold once we returned to the base level of the Castle last night. I had to carry you back, which was not an easy accomplishment while trying to fool the nightwatch, if you know what I mean.” He rubs his arms as if they’re sore. “Ssso when we reached your room, well . . .” He chuckles. “I dumped you outside your room to a host of ogling bodyguardsss. I should warn you, they were absolutely taken aback at your recklessss behavior.” He sniffs. “They thanked me quite profusely for rescuing you and promptly dropped you in bed. At least I assume they did.”

I go back to refusing to look at him and feel the chill itch at my insides again. “What’d you tell them I’d been doing?”

“Merely that you’d managed to slip out and find a batch of unseemly friendsss and Bron ale. By the time I came across the poor Elemental girl, she was drunker than a common-house owner.” He shakes his head. “Ssso unbecoming of a delegate.”

“So you
didn’t
lead them to believe you and I were . . .” I clear my throat. It’s so repulsive I can’t even bring myself to say it.

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” he purrs. “Although, believe me, I was tempted to hint at it, if only to see how infuriated you’d be.”

He’s saved from having his tongue sliced out by the fact that we’ve stopped in front of the doors leading into the same hall we were in last night. The only difference this time is that it’s already full of people when we walk in. Some of the faces I recognize from the banquet. Others are part of the general blur. I sift through them for Kel’s, although just as before, I know he won’t be there.

“Have you heard how the young boy’s doing? The one from last night?” I whisper to Myles.

He shakes his head as my gaze homes in on the room’s center, to the blood spatters I expect there, but all traces of violence—and food—have been washed away and the space is back to looking sterile and foreboding with its war maps.

“I heard he would be all right. Apparently they have decent healers here.” Lady Gwen points to Rasha, who’s over at the same table we sat at during the banquet. Beside her, Lord Wellimton beckons us to join them as they stand talking with two of the men who were seated with Draewulf last night. The rest, including the shape-shifter, are noticeably absent.

“Good morning,” Rasha says in a tight voice when we reach her. She swipes a look at me with red, puffy eyes and narrows in on my dress. “I see you’re wearing my nightgown.”

“I assumed it was your knitting clothes,” I admit.

“So of course you chose to wear it.” She attempts a smirk but it doesn’t match the panic and exhaustion in her expression.

“Are you all right?” I whisper.

Without replying, she turns her back to me and faces Lord Wellimton and the other delegates. “Lord Wellimton and I have just been discussing the discovery of three of Nym’s Faelen bodyguards murdered last night.”

I freeze.
What?

“Oh my!” Lady Gwen says.