Siren's Song (7 page)

“You had no right.” I'm shaking now. And my hand is flexing. A lightning bolt streaks down and I barely stop it from slamming into the ceiling. I reach my hand out where I feel it itching beneath the skin—and sense the Inter's Luminescent strength beating through their blood. For the slightest moment it calls to me.
Take it.

“And you had no right to crash into our home,” their three
voices ring. “We simply wanted to ensure you were who we thought and had no ulterior motives.”

I shove the subtle dark thirst aside and squeeze my fist until the sky rumbles and crashes, then breaks open into rain. Real rain. “You had no right.”

“We needed more about you. Specifically, what Draewulf's designs are upon you.”

“And?”

“It is as you believe. Just as the Creator gave power to the five original bloodlines, the beast will take those powers to rule all. Including you, who are Elisedd's hope.” The three women look behind me as if one entity and tip their heads. “He will take you last as the final piece to secure his immortality.”

“He
will
take me?”

“You are now dismissed.”

The Cashlin male guard slips beside me and holds out a hand.

I glare at the Luminescents, then turn and stride for the door. To hulls with all of them.

As I step out and the door swings shut, I call down one more lightning strike. Its aim is slick and true, and the crashing of glass rocks the ceiling of the room we just came from. Not enough to kill them by my estimation. But enough to interrupt their abilities for a time.

The male guard looks at me but says nothing. Just keeps leading us away with what I'd say is a hint of respect in the firm set of his jaw.

“I didn't harm them detrimentally.”

“And you didn't hear a complaint from me.”

I frown.

He shrugs and continues his stride. “The Inters would've seen you intended to cause such damage and could've stopped you. They saw fit not to. Which means it is not my responsibility.”

Interesting. “In that case, I need to reach Eogan. I need to get our people out of here.”

He blinks again but doesn't reply as we walk down one, two, three opaque glass hallways through this palace that I swear is like a womb. Warm and pulsing with rhythms and heartbeats of life through the walls and floors and atmosphere, even though it's completely void of voices or other patrons. It's creepy. It takes a moment to realize I keep looking for more glass-encased dead people as if it's
their
rhythms and heartbeats I'm sensing.

“Where are all the people?”

He glances over. “Only a few live here, mainly the Luminescents. Having too many people around sets off their abilities constantly and tires them.” He leads me through an archway and into a clear sort of tunnel with a see-through floor—and abruptly we're walking high above the city where the morning dawn is just beginning to hit. “Thus, the majority of our people live outside the Castle. Along there.” He points below toward the shadowed city walls.

One section of the city's main wall is built into the forested mountainside like a hornet's nest. All patchworked and transparent and stacked up like catacombs. On the opposite side of us is a lower wall, dividing the inner Castle from the outer city. With the morning still gray, it's easy to see the breakfast fires illuminating the elegant houses carved out along that wall. Great glass porticos and columns, like something from one of Adora's historical picture books I used to browse through in her library. These styles are old and incredibly graceful.

My annoyance at the guard and his people abates slightly, if simply out of respect for the beauty and artistic heritage created by a people who are stubborn, yes, and even despicably wretched, but are that way from age and lack of contact with an outside world that has been changing too fast.

The tunnel we're walking through arches ahead of us. It must be over one hundred paces above the ground, and after a moment we're crossing over an entire section of the Castle's courtyard. I slow for a moment as the vastness of it all catches up with me, then pull my gaze up and keep walking.

“How does everything not break?” I say.

“It's stronger than you'd think.”

“The glass?”

“Technically it's not glass. It's a combination of tree sap from our forests and the minerals we mine.”

I eye the span of forest beyond the city that he's referring to. “And that's easier than simply using the wood?”

“Wood is useful for many things, but if you hadn't noticed, it tends to burn.” He shifts his gaze to proudly scan the courtyard below. “This city has been standing longer than any other in the entire Hidden Lands. And, Creator willing, it will stand for many centuries to come.”

“How did they make it?” I wave a hand around us at the crystal tunnel we're inside of. “I mean . . . look at this.”

“Carefully and with lots of heat.”

Heat?
I shoot him a glance.
Could my abilities bring it down if I tried?

“We erect molds and fill them with the molten liquid we melt the minerals down to, then add the sap extracted from the trees. Don't you have windows in Faelen?”

“Of course. At least in the nicer houses.”

“Have you ever seen anyone make them?”

I frown.

“Exactly.
We
make and trade them. Or we did years ago.”

“Now you just keep to yourselves and let the rest of the world destroy each other,” I say and walk faster. A moment goes by before
I notice him tapping his circle wristlet. I shiver and edge away. “Do you make that too?”

He looks smug. “Among other potions. The herb farmers up in the Pass make it. It's harmless, odorless, and—”

“Allows your Luminescents inappropriate access to a person's mind.”

He shrugs. “It's more humane than other forms of interrogation.”

“So that's what your people appease themselves with in order to uphold their pacifist status?” I scowl at him, but if he notices, it doesn't matter because we're almost to the end of the glass tunnel and he's already indicating another part of the city. The giant gates fitted into a thick wall are sitting exposed toward Tulla. I squint and look again for that odd aspect that feels out of place. As if they've forgotten something and I just can't put my finger on it.

I stall. And stare harder.

Where are their archers? Where are their
soldiers
?

I peer around to count how many archers I can spot atop those walls. There aren't any. Then I glance around in search of some semblance of the Cashlin army barracks or soldier dwellings near those gates.

Nothing.

They have nothing. No protection.

Just elegant crystal houses with beautifully laid-out pathways and pale-green gardens that look half frozen in this chilly climate.

Oh, Rasha . . . what in litches are your people thinking?

I swallow and glance up at him. “What's your name?”

He slows and turns to me. An odd expression flickers across his features. He opens his mouth. Shuts it. “Doesn't matter.”

The look disappears as quickly as it came, but it's replaced by an abrupt dawning within me that he's relishing the idea of his anonymity.
Probably doesn't get much of that around here with all the
Luminescents.
I smirk. “Well, ‘Doesn't Matter,' where's your army? Where are your guards and soldiers?”

The pink that floods his face is a color of shame, or perhaps exasperation. “We've rarely needed them before, so we . . .”

“Just stopped having them?”

“No. We have them. Just not at the level we may have once had.”

My stomach twists. “Your queen is insane. She suspected Draewulf was alive and yet let your defenses dwindle?”

“Stubborn perhaps, but not insane.”

“But the barracks? The archers? The lookouts at your city gates—?”

“They are there,” he says hurriedly. “Just hidden. The rest . . . we're gathering.”

Oh litches.

Oh bleeding litches.

We truly have hastened these people's already-impending deaths. And there's not a bleeding thing we can do.

“I have to see Eogan,” I whisper.

CHAPTER 8

S
IR DOESN'T MATTER WALKS ME PAST THE WAITING
row of Luminescents in the hallway and opens the door to the room in which he'd used his wristlet to prick me.

I hesitate before entering. The candles must've gone out—or been put out—leaving it hard to see, other than to tell that the space is wretchedly quiet and almost empty. Are the others still being interrogated by the Inters? I doubt it. I step in and, too late, the oaf shuts the door behind me and a second later I hear the sound of wood clicking into place, locking me in the dim.
Curse him.

Before I turn to let loose on the door, the sound of snoring snags my gaze to Kenan. He's lying on one of the beds, his nose twitching as a splash of gray dawn ripples across his face. And seated in the shadows on the floor nearby him, less than ten paces from where I stand, watching me as if he's been waiting for hours . . .

“Eogan.”

My soul stumbles.

He looks weary and beautiful and what I imagine coming home to be like. I stare at those brilliant green eyes and swear I can feel his heart beating all the way from where I'm paused. Steady. Quiet.

Safe.

Oh hulls, I want to climb inside that heart and never let go—just
feel his rhythm steadying my soul as it drowns out the past and present and entire rest of the world.

“You survived,” he says, still studying me.

I clear my throat and try to ignore the bloom of heat invading my cheeks. “As did you apparently. Did they hit you with that drug?”

He shakes his head, and something about it says it would've been more merciful if they had. “But three hours of questioning was enough for the queen to decide I wasn't a threat. How about you? Did it hurt? The interrogation?”

Yes. No. I won't say because it doesn't matter—his clearly hurt more.

I slip down to the floor so the weighted space between us narrows as I face him and those emerald eyes that are holding mine like clouds holding back a storm. I can feel the friction in them, fighting to repress the ache that's settling in here with us. “Are
you
all right?”

He flicks his hand as if to say it's no big deal. “Fine.”

Liar.
“What did she want?”

“A reading of Draewulf and Bron, and to know about Isobel and me. And you.” He dips his head but doesn't drop his gaze, allowing it to burn through the dark as a shadow of hesitation flickers. A hint of pain. “She wanted to know what Draewulf had done through me, as well as my future intentions.”

“And?”

He firms his chin. Watching. Waiting.

For what?

“What did you say?”
I want to ask.
“About what you've done? About Isobel and you? About your past and your future?”

“And what did she say about Draewulf and me?”

But that hesitation . . .

It asks if I really want to know.

I look away. To exhale. Inhale. To forget how blasted tired I am
and try to focus on the fact that if we're going to even have a future at all, we need to escape.

He nods and straightens and leans back, nonchalant-like, against the bed. “Dare I inquire about yours?”

My gaze flashes up.

Until I realize he's not asking about my future intentions.

Oh.
I shift my position. “I met the Inters and they're blasted eerie. I may have left them a bit put off.”

“I imagine you did.” His grin matches his tone. “And what did they find?”

“They asked about my past. They wanted the truth about who I am and who I was born as, which . . .” I study him beneath my lashes. “I was born in an internment camp, apparently.”

He raises a brow.

And I was not supposed to survive.

“I saw my real parents. In my mind.” I give him a pointed look. “Funny how it seems everyone's more informed of my past than I am.”

His expression stills. In the lines and lips I've come to know all too well in the past few months.

It's his struggle to guard me from himself.

I look at my hands to hide the sudden tightness in my chest as a soft rain starts to drizzle on the glass ceiling. It falls into rhythm with my voice when I finally work up the courage to ask the question I've held on to since we left Tulla yesterday. “So how long have
you
known?”

“About?”

“My parents, or rather the fact that the ones you killed were
not
my birth parents. And that I would be the final piece. Or the fact that Draewulf needed me.”

“I suspected it when I first realized you were true Elemental.”

My voice hitches. “When?” If the weight of the room was already heavy, it's itching with static now. As if the storm I can sense building outside is working its way into this room. Into us.

“That day you nearly killed me and Colin out in the meadow because I'd angered you by asking about the redheaded girl.”

“You knew
then
? That I was the heir? That I was Draewulf's endgame?”

“As I said, I suspected.”

I snort and look away.

“The prophecy—the Elegy my people kept hidden,” he says, as if in explanation.

I stride to the window and stare at those gates.

“I suspected because of the prophecy. If your people had known of it, they would've drawn the same conclusion.”

“And you simply never found the time to mention it,” I whisper.

“I wasn't sure until I saw Draewulf go for you at the battle in the Keep.”

“Why didn't you say something at Adora's?”