Siren's Fury (37 page)

The only effect my strike has on the thing is to empower it again until it’s expanding. It’s growing.

My hair is in my face and my clothes are rippling around me as I’m being pulled toward it. A few loose items from the ship’s deck fly up into the maelstrom.

From the side I see the frail-looking Tullan-king-who-is-Draewulf. He steps forward and tilts back his head. His expression is giddy. His black eyes alight as he moves for the mass and opens his gaping maw.

Litches.

He’s going to absorb it.

I flick my hand and send two wobbly ice spears at him. The first misses, but the other catches his arm. He barks and jerks backward.

Suddenly Myles is there, his mouth opening wide. His face looking ecstatic.

In one swoosh, he steps into the black cyclone and inhales. I can hear his breath, hear his hunger. Suddenly the mass diminishes in a spiral until it’s disappeared down Myles’s throat. And he has absorbed the dark power.

Draewulf’s roar shakes the rocks and stone towers around us. He lashes out at Myles, but the force of energy from the dark entity has already tossed Myles back across the ship’s deck and against the door, knocking him unconscious.

Draewulf stalks toward him, but my blade takes him in the thigh.

He turns and pounces for me and grabs my arm. I send a shock of ice toward his face, making him release me and jump back. But not before I catch his look of rage contort into surprise.

He stalls and, slowly, looks from me to Myles, then to Rasha who’s getting up from where she had fallen. She blinks at us. At the Tullan-king-who-is-Draewulf. And picks up her sword.

I raise my fist. “Let’s end this now.”

There’s a writhing beneath the surface of his skin that ripples into place and takes over his face. He winces and hunches for the slightest second as if in pain.

Then he raises a brow as his shoulders begin shaking. His breath comes out in an agonized huff. “Another time perhaps, pet.”

What?
I stalk toward him. The fact that he doesn’t move makes me hesitate.
What is he waiting for? Why is he doing this?

I let it loose just as his shaking becomes violent and knocks him out of the way so my explosion only hits his side. The body of the Tullan king he’s wearing crackles with a brittle sound. Then the body’s ripping apart, tearing open just like Breck’s did so many weeks ago. It dissolves into wisps, melting into the atmosphere except for a small bit of clothing and skin and blood. The blood of a king.

The blood Draewulf absorbed all too quickly.

The wolfish beast stands in front of me and stretches his shoulders and neck before centering his gaze on mine.

He smirks as if I’m a foolish girl but it doesn’t hide the weakness he’s experiencing. He steps backward and grabs Rasha, feebly knocking her sword aside. She punches him in the jaw just as he leaps with her over the railing. They land on another airship that has appeared out of nowhere to bank beside ours. I rush forward with knives of ice pulled from the sky and land two in Draewulf’s chest at the same moment he glances up at my ship’s balloon and mutters a foreign curse at it. The words fly up and puncture a hole in it before he sags and stumbles.

And before the next feeble ice blade I’ve hurled has landed, the
airship he’s on pulls away. I bring down three more blades anyway but they fly with little force and clatter harmlessly against the ship’s hull.

The moment slows.

My heart pulses as the cavernous sensation in my chest steadies and my head clears enough to hear the last of the fighting around me. But all I can see is what’s left of the Tullan king’s skin and blood and clothing fragments lying four paces in front of me. Already invaded, absorbed, and discarded in one bout of violence.

I bend my fingers into a fist and shove them toward the sky. But the blood in me is suddenly failing. Too feeble. As if the power spent on nearly destroying this place is almost emptied out and in need of refueling.

I glance up and find Rasha’s face. Her gaze is on mine.

She is on the swiftly departing airship with Draewulf.

CHAPTER 41

A
HORN BLASTS AND, AS IF ON CUE, THE AIRSHIP I’m standing on pulls back from the Castle and cliffs and the host of other ships. It soars up into the sky even as air’s flapping out the balloon’s small gaping hole, taking Myles and me and Eogan’s body and the Bron soldiers with it.

Within seconds, four other airships follow suit—while the rest have either crashed or appear to be overrun with wraiths. Like the one Draewulf’s skimming away on.

“Go back! He has Rasha!” I try to summon a storm to stop his ship, but my winds are too weak to retrieve it.

“Take us higher,” the large Bron guard yells.

I flip around to face him.
Who does he think he is?
“Your king is dead and the Cashlin princess is about to get slaughtered. And that horde of wraiths down there will destroy what’s left of those people,” I snarl. “Take us back so we can finish it.”

“I’m sorry, miss, but there’s not enough of us. We need to regroup and make contact with the captains who are left.”

I can sense the wildness invade my gaze. I stride toward him,
ready to throw myself and my blade at his face. “If you don’t want to go, fine. But you take
me
back.”

His expression turns doubtful as he drops his gaze to my chest.

I snort and look down to see what he’s staring at.

What in hulls?
My red dress is sliced in shreds, as is my bloody skin underneath it. Clawed not by bolcrane claws, but by my own fingers and blade in my attempts to get the vortex out. To get free.

I sag, as if the loss of blood is only affecting me now that I’ve noticed the obscene amount soaked into my clothes and booties. “I don’t care. Take me back.” I hurl myself at him, yelling it, telling him to return us to save the only friend I have left in the world and destroy the monster I should’ve been able to kill numerous times over the course of today. “Please. I have to try. He has Rasha.”

A voice slips through the gray fog filling the air around us, unleashing with it a calm that slides through my skin, my head, my spine. “Nym,” it says behind me.

I turn but no one’s there beyond the dead.

I’m about to glance back at the guard, to demand he obey me, when I see the flutter of an eye and a flash of green peering through the mist.

The rush of days, of hours, of seconds slows down . . .

Until time is standing still and the only thing I know in this moment is that the man who is dead, who was absorbed and destroyed, is running a hand through his black hair and hauling his tall, broad-shouldered self up to gaze at me with those beautiful eyes. They are blinking as if newly awakened, and that unfair tweak of a smile is starting to surface above a confused one. The thought emerges that the rest of the world can go to hulls in the silence that falls.

How long I stand there I’ve no idea. The moments are lost and forgotten as daft tears find my face and his gaze flickers and firms around mine. I go to move forward, then stop because he’s not real—he can’t be real—and this is a sick trick of Myles’s.

“Once again, I distinctly recall ordering you to run from Draewulf.” Eogan rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Not rush into the center of a blasted war.”

Oh litches . . . It’s really him.

The sob I try to hold back escapes my lips anyway, and then I’m in his arms and in his eyes and breathing in his scent. His heart is
beat beat beating
into mine because there’s nothing between us but the two inches of space where my lips don’t quite meet his.

“Gently,” he mumbles and it’s only then I’m aware he’s flinching at how tightly I’m holding him.

“Sorry.” I ease my grip but his face is bending to brush his mouth over mine. Warm and firm. His fingers slide down my chin to my jaw, to the memorial scars on my arm. Tugging me closer. Obliterating every thought until I jerk back to search his face. To slip my hands against his chest and make sure he’s real and solid and made up of skin and bone and a scar on his neck.

He winces. “Easy on the body. My block still doesn’t work against you.”

I frown. Because while he should look sallow and weak, everything about his fierce gaze and the determined set of his chin is stronger than I’ve ever seen it. And his strength is filling me too. I search his eyes. “How are you alive?”

A throat clears nearby. “Your Majesty, I’m pleased you’re—”

“Go fix the bleeding ship, Kenan,” Eogan says without looking up.

“Sir, as I was saying. I’m pleased you’re alive,” the large soldier says again. “But I think you need to see this.”

Eogan’s brow narrows. “What is it?”

“Your Majesty, we have Isobel onboard.”

Eogan releases me, and I spin around to see Lady Isobel being held by two guards near where I hurled her against the dining area wall.

I walk over and stop in front of her. And crush my fingers into my palms.

She smiles and spits in my face before slipping a hand free long enough to jut it up against my heart. Eogan steps forward but I stop him.

Because there’s nothing in her palm as it touches my heart.

No sensation. No chill.

She pushes harder before the guard yanks her arm down and jerks her backward. But she’s not paying any attention to him. She’s looking at me and frowning, her expression altering into panic.

Her ability’s gone. Ripped out by the same vortex that slammed her into the wall.

“What will your father do to Princess Rasha?”

She sneers at me and clamps her mouth shut just as Eogan leans in.

He studies her, but his answer is for me. “Her father took what he needed from King Mael. Now he’ll regroup and head for Cashlin to take Rasha’s mother. He’ll keep Rasha in case her mother is killed—at which time the power would fall to the princess and Draewulf will consume her. Thus, in order to preserve Princess Rasha and Cashlin, we have to reach the queen first.”

“I thought Draewulf needed your block in order to take—”
“He took it,” he says quietly. “Not all of it, but he absorbed enough of my blood that he’ll make it work.”

I peer up at him. “He took part of you?” My voice sounds as appalled as I feel.

He nods and continues staring at Lady Isobel. “Where did you plan to rendezvous?”

She purses her lips and snorts. As if he’d actually think she’d answer.

He shrugs, then nods to the guard to take her below. “Myles too,” he mutters, before dropping his rich tone to a growl. “You’ll let me know as soon as he wakes. I have some . . .
business
to take care of with him.”

“Very good, Your Highness. Although I might mention Lord Myles ingested the power released by Nym. There is a chance he’ll be a danger to this whole ship.”

“The power will take time to meld with his blood.” Eogan looks at me as if to get my thought on it.

“A day at least.”

The guard nods and begins to move off with Lady Isobel but pauses when Eogan adds, “But Kenan, feel free to bind his mouth as well as his body.”

“Yes, sire.”

Eogan drops his gaze to survey me as the guard strides away. His frown returns to that half smile. “Now where were we?”

“We need to go back for Rasha and the Terrenes. Draewulf’s been weakened but—”

“So have you.” He eyes me.

I glance down at my bloody, torn dress and my ripped skin beneath. He slides an arm around my waist and presses his hand to my side, and I swear he gifts a bit of his calm into me. So much so
that my injured chest tingles and turns almost numb as his face turns slightly sallow.

“Yes, but my ability is recharging. I can feel it. And I’ve—”

“We can’t go back. There aren’t enough of us and these ships have taken about all they can handle.” He peers up at the soldiers working on the balloon overhead, then out to the other four airships flying nearby in formation.

“But the people . . . The power I took on.” I hesitate before whispering, “Eogan, it helped Draewulf. It helped the wraiths. And combined with my storms, it . . .”

I can’t even bring myself to confess it.

How many innocent people I must have destroyed in that battle. Because my powers were too much, too big, and I didn’t listen to him or Rasha about the danger.

Suddenly I can’t breathe. I can’t believe what I’ve done. What I started to become.

What I’ve lent a hand to.

“We have to go back. We have to try and undo—”

“The Terrenes are stronger than you think they are.” His tone is sober. Just like his gaze that says he knows well enough. “They survived you and they will survive Draewulf for the time being—especially now that he’s taken their king’s blood, he’ll have little interest in them. The Tullan people will bore underground to mount a far better defense than either you or I can provide in the state we’re in.”

“But I
killed
some of them.”

“And you also saved more by damaging Draewulf and the wraiths. You can’t do anything further now unless you want to sacrifice the men on these airships. The only way we’re going to help anyone is by getting to Cashlin before Draewulf to aid Queen Laiha.”

I look away. But after a moment I nod again.

“Good. Because aside from the Cashlin queen, my priority is this ship, my men, and you.”

He tilts his head and catches my eye. And tries to hide a smirk. “Because . . . no offense, have you seen you?” He runs his gaze down my soiled clothes and unkempt white hair and raises a perfect single brow.

I snort and look away. “You’re such a bolcrane.”

He chuckles weakly and lifts his hand to run his thumb along my jawline and down my neck to that little divot between my collarbones. “A bolcrane who’s standing beside the strongest woman he’s ever met and thus wouldn’t argue with her unless he truly believed we
will
save Rasha and the rest of the bleeding world she’s so intent on rescuing.” His fingers move up to wind through my hair. “Just like she saved me.”

I look into those brilliant green eyes that are full of confidence.

Just like she saved me.

His words hang in the air.