Siren's Song (39 page)

Their song.

The melody of old. Of Faelen. Of the original Valley.

Our song. The one I used to sing so long ago with my father.

My lungs expand and widen along with my mouth, and the force of the refrain comes out like a flood that reaches straight up through a hole in the sky and I swear it hits the sun. Because now it's as if the light is paused, the day is paused, and the sky itself is on standstill.

Only the people and wraiths and war around us keep moving.

The song ripples and threads through the air, across the expanse of black atmosphere hanging above this entire battle scene, permeating where my powers can't to the land and trees and hearts of the few people we have left.

I don't know that I would've noticed it if the rustle from the Litchfell tree line hadn't caused the trees to catch the paused sunlight just right. I squint.

The movement grows as the trees begin thrashing.

One, two, five seconds later the trees are snapping, and a herd of bolcranes pour forth in giant, horrific, slimy, black-scaled terror. As I watch, the beasts set upon the wraiths—and begin shredding through them like a tidal wave taking on the sand.

“Bleeding hulls,” Myles mutters from somewhere behind me.

The next moment cries erupt across the plateau around us—cries from our own people, as if a quarter of their voices rose up in unison to join the song, but in pain.

I peer at them to see what I've done—where it's coming from—even as my own song continues to pour from my mouth.

I blink. Blink again. Because what lies in front of me, what is happening around me, is impossible.

Uathúils.

Many of the Faelen peasants are turning into Uathúils. Terrenes. Red-eyed Luminescents. And some types I've never seen before in my life—perhaps a blending like Lord Myles. The only way I know is because suddenly some of the people who were here moments ago have morphed, altered,
come forth
, and they're earth-moving and static-wielding.

I watch as they discover their powers and use them against the large wraiths attacking them.

The cries of my people turn to shouts as the realization sets in.
Whatever dormant power lay within much of the peasantry has just been called forth. And their abilities are greater than any physical weapon. They begin cutting through the Dark Army in batches rather than one at a time.

“Nym, here!”

I flip around to refocus on Eogan and Rasha and Draewulf-who-is-Isobel, except the monster has already erupted from his daughter's skin and is standing there, snarling over Eogan.

What in—? No!

Eogan raises his sword, only to have Draewulf's enormous claw smack it aside.

I step between them.

CHAPTER 39

N
YM, DON'T!” EOGAN'S HANDS PRESS INTO MY
side to shove me back, but I hardly feel them and they can't move me. If anything, my blood jumps at the magic they contain. The remnants of that dark ability itch in my veins and suddenly draw Eogan's power in, melding it with my own as my feet plant firm to the ground and my gaze fills with only one image.

“What in bleeding hulls are you doing? Move!” Eogan growls in my ear. But I'm no longer listening. I'm staring into the face of the wolfish beast that is looking more human by the moment.

His black eyes flicker, and for a second, I swear I can see the faces of Breck, King Mael of Tulla, Queen Laiha, and the tear-stained face of his own daughter, Isobel.

In my peripheral I catch sight of the world around us rippling, then altering into a bigger mirage than I'd known Myles could make. Rasha must be magnifying his powers as he projects images of wave after wave of Bron soldiers seemingly coming to our aid. Confusing the wraiths—even the Uathúil ones, from what I can tell.

Draewulf grins, and it's neither toothy, nor gaping, nor wolfish. It's simply the grin of a man who knows he's about to achieve the one thing he's lived his life for. The one thing he's destroyed everyone else's life for. He's taken what he needed from Tulla, from Cashlin, and from Drust. And he's about to take the rest of Bron and Faelen. And within that sly slip of a smile is no shame that I can
find. No guilt. Nothing but pure, unadulterated greed for everything that is not his but soon will be.

The face of his daughter flickers across his features one more time as he grips his sword and points it toward me. “Move, pet, or I will maim you before I take him.” He tips the point of the sword toward my belly.

I smirk and raise both arms straight out, my fists tightened to the sky as Eogan's hand is now fused onto me, my energies mixing with his, boiling the blood between us. My skin burns like fire where he's touching it, yet even the heat feels good.

Feels powerful.

Feels different.

I can do this.

I glance at the sky to where the dying sun is slipping away on the horizon and summon the atmosphere. Draewulf leans in, and the point of his blade cuts deep enough to make me wince the slightest moment before I sense the water from the ocean and air from the heavens respond with a burst of friction.

Flashes. Brief bursts of light overhead. They're enough to make Draewulf frown and look up. Because there are no clouds. No indication of a storm other than what is bristling in my veins as it connects with the energy around me.

The pull physically begins to tug at my sinew—from the ocean currents, the wind, the cracks running beneath our feet far under the earth, just as I feel the pull of Rasha and Myles's mirage they're sustaining.

Draewulf starts to step around me, but I move in front of him to the left. Then to the right. He barks and slashes a warning at my hip, drawing blood immediately and making me flinch. Even Eogan is trying to get around me. But whatever has fused his hands to my waist is also keeping him in place.

I turn my gaze again to the setting sun.

My hands begin shaking first. Followed by my legs, then torso, then neck.

I am summoning pure Elemental energy, which is more than any of his Uathúil-wraiths running around can do.

Next thing I know my back is bending and my chin is thrust toward the sky as the energy spirals up my spine and through my throat to burn its way from my mouth and tear, like a lightning strip, up to the sky. I blink, nearly blinded at the light. And suddenly it's not just pouring from my throat, it's shooting out from my fists, far and wide enough to shred through entire ranks of wraiths.

In my distant hearing I perceive a cheer go up, but it doesn't matter. I'm trying to focus the beams in front of me. Onto Draewulf, who's watching with sick fascination—as if enjoying a part in a theatre play he knows he is soon to take over.

And if what it's doing to my insides is any indication, once Draewulf consumes it he'll be intoxicated past any level of awareness when it fuses with the other abilities flickering in and out of focus beneath his overstretched, blue-veined skin.

Black wisps rise from around him and pour out of his mouth, and abruptly something's wrong. No matter how I move my arms to shove the energy at Draewulf and melt him alive, it won't reach him. He's deflecting it using the shadows as a shield around him.

I grip the energy tighter just as a voice, not my own, breezes past, causing my skin to tingle in its softness.

I ignore it and shove harder, only to watch the light from my fists bounce off his shield. At least it's keeping him from lunging for me or Eogan, and yet . . .

And yet it's not working.

Oh litches, it's not working. The dark ability is insufficient.

“Eogan,” I gasp. “It won't—I can't . . .”

The voice comes again, and for a moment I think it's Eogan, but it's off. I listen closer, and this time I swear it's that of Queen Laiha. As if her ghost is whispering, reminding me of words once spoken.

I lean my ear toward it even as I summon every particle in the atmosphere above and around and beneath us until the light coming from me rivals the darkness surrounding him. And prepare to bring all of it into a shaft that will slice right through the beast in front of me, like the edge of a blade that has just been sharpened.

And then Queen Laiha's words come to me.
“Hold it all lightly.”

I freeze.

The static is now burning my insides so badly I'm forgetting that I am, or ever have been, anything but energy. But power. But fire.

“Hold it all lightly.”

What does that mean?

I tighten my grip and the burn digs in. I glance around at the writhing armies below us, at Kel and Sedric and Rolf, fighting back to back mere yards away from us, and sense Eogan behind me.

But I suddenly know exactly what it means.

Hold it all lightly.

Because otherwise it's not going to work and we're not going to win.

I know that in this split second clearer than anything I've understood before. It's why I couldn't defeat Draewulf in Bron. It's why I couldn't defeat him on the airships.

Hold it all lightly.

Because it was never mine anyway.

This power. This gift.

These people.

I drop my arms and let the energy falter, then die off.

And turn round to face Eogan.

CHAPTER 40

T
WO HEARTS BEATING TO THE MOMENT.

Two souls bleeding.

I press my lips to Eogan's in a promise that offers him all my hopes and wishes and joy that his life will be good. That his heart will be full.

That he will be loved.

Then I shove him off me and, releasing my shield, lunge forward onto Draewulf's outstretched blade as I grab his throat.

One.

Two.

Three seconds go by in which I can't feel anything but the atmosphere assembling around us. Building, condensing, creating static and energy and a mist filled with lightning and raindrops rubbing against each other. A crack rips across the sky and it's as if the sun is undone, unpaused, as slack clouds roll in to cover it. Suddenly they're bringing with them storms full of ice and hail and death. Storms this world hasn't seen in a millennia of Elementals.

Storms made of magic. Storms made of melody and beauty that are complementing Rasha and Myles's continued mirages. Threatening violence not just to these people near and far, but to this world. As if they are about to tear the entire earth apart at its seams.

The ground shakes, and from the mountains comes a rumble as if in reply.

Draewulf's not noticing the gathering storm, though. His eyes are too full of delight. He's staring at the blade he's just gutted me with, and he slips a long wolf claw against my skin. And slides it to the back of my neck.

That's when I feel it. My blood charged with the air, beating furiously to engage the coming storm. Except as fast as it's quickening, it's draining, flowing from my stomach in warm, red currents.
Like ocean waves
, I think as my gaze becomes foggy.

I blink.

A pain much sharper and more sickening pierces my skin at the top of my spine, and suddenly my vision's wavering and Draewulf is smirking. And then he's starting to dissolve into a thin black wisp that will invade my body for the few seconds it needs to own me.

“Nym! What have you—?”

I feel Eogan grab my arm. His fingers clamping around my owner circles to pull me away, to keep me from the beast whose black eyes are glaring greedily into my soul.

Eogan.

I blink again and refocus. Calling forth the one thing Draewulf will never own. The song of my origin in my blood and soul and quickly collapsing heart. It rises up, feeble and weak, but enough to create an immediate connection with the fire zapping back and forth between the billowing clouds overhead. With the people and beasts and heartbeat of the Faelen ground beneath that bore me to be this for them. To do this for them.

To free this world for them.

I hold tight to Draewulf's neck, keeping his blade tucked into my stomach even as my blood is draining out and the monster's face is becoming a fog. I clench him harder. As if by sheer will alone
I can keep him physical—keep him here in my fingers that are pounding with the slowing of my heartpulse.

Eogan's still tugging me back, but I can hardly feel it as I drop to my knees, bringing Draewulf with me. Instead, what I feel is Eogan's skin connecting with mine, sharpening the strength of my blood and ability.

I tap into it one last time.

The sky booms above us and finally prompts Draewulf to glance up. A flash of fear invades his face before he's looking back at me, and now his body is fully dissolving beneath my hands, and his claws and arms are stretching into my spine. I can feel the dark and hate and death as he begins to climb inside my skin.

I don't know why, but I start to laugh. At what? Maybe at him for being so pathetically desperate. Maybe for the people around me who've faded from my sight but are about to be free of him.

Maybe for myself and the fact that no one—not even Draewulf—can ever own me again.

A feeling of warmth takes over as the last of my blood leaks out.

And with one final utterance of the melody I was born into but never could quite grasp onto, before my breath leaves my body for eternity, I grab what's left of his neck and unleash the greatest bolt of fire and atmospheric light I have ever created into the beast in front of me.

Then I'm falling.

Suddenly the world is sideways and I'm on my back and my vision has faded to dark gray.

It's interrupted once by an eruption of light as the monster I was holding, the monster who used to be a man named Draewulf, explodes into a bomb of light that shoots out ten feet each way and shakes the ground I'm lying on. As if the sun I had paused has just exploded inside him. Next thing I see, he's still standing there but
charred into dust. And, slowly, the pieces begin crumbling, trickling to the earth from which he came.