Such a Daring Endeavor (28 page)

“That’s exactly why we have to help her!”

He lowers his head, a swoop of blond hair falling into his eyes. “I know you want to think the best of her, but she may not be who you think she is.”

“She’s my friend, Talon.”

He opens his mouth to argue when Estelle raises two hands, signaling her sirens, who then lower their wings. They make a daunting sight, these overly beautiful, winged women.

“What’s happening?” Talon asks.

“I don’t know. They’re all just—standing there, staring at each other. Can you hear anything?”

“You should be on the ground by now, human,” Estelle calls out to Gwynn. Her voice carries to where we’re concealed.

Gwynn steps forward, brushing her gloved hands across the khaki uniform she wears. The shirt is tailored to flare out at her waist. Her blonde hair twists into an elegant bun off the base of her neck. 

“What can I say, I never liked getting dirty.”

“We will kill you for trespassing at Mt. Rhine. Then we will take your men and see how long they last before their minds turn to stone.”

“Funny thing, how threats only work when you can actually carry them out,” says Gwynn.

Estelle ruffles her feathers. In a breath she shrieks and spreads her wings, rising just slightly so her toes dip upward from the ground. The other sirens join, each rising only inches from the earth.

Talon again grows woozy at their cries, his fingers raking through the ground, his forehead to the dirt. But Gwynn and the four soldiers now flanking her fold their arms and smirk at one another.

“You may have noticed you were missing something,” says Gwynn, removing a pair of gloves and stepping toward Estelle as though the siren were a lamb instead of a lioness. “I’m not sure how much you care though, seeing as how you haven’t bothered coming for her. I thought you sirens meant more to each other.”

“You know
nothing
,” says Estelle, signaling her sirens so they each land to the ground in sync with each other. Their cries cut off as one.

“Gross misestimation,” says Gwynn. “Estelle, isn’t it? I’ve gotten quite the education since siding with Arcaia. I know more than you think.”

I grip the ground’s edge.

Estelle straightens. “Where is our sister?”

“Have you ever wondered what happens when you Xian a siren? No? A friend of mine did. It turns out he could use her blood to create an elixir for us. Your songs are so pretty, we wanted to hear and not be controlled by them.”

Estelle’s wings tighten behind her back. Gwynn steps closer, invading the creature’s personal space.

Gwynn leans in, her voice carrying. “Did you know even your blood is pink? It tastes like milkweed.”

I’m dumbfounded. It can’t be true. This can’t be Gwynn.

Estelle screeches at this. Her wings span out. Her hand snaps to Gwynn’s throat, and she climbs into the sky with my best friend dangling in her clutches.

“Oh no.” I push to my feet, breaking for the path.

Gwynn clings to Estelle’s arms, her feet kicking, her hands gripping for all she’s worth—which isn’t much after what she’s just admitted to doing. Drinking a siren’s blood. I shouldn’t be surprised, not after she clawed me. But it only strengthens my resolve. Gwynn once refused to try strawberry-flavored milk and didn’t like anything that smelled or tasted strange. She would never drink siren blood of her own volition.

I rush down the mountainside, but Talon grabs my elbow, jerking me back.

“Stay out of it, remember?” he says. “This is their battle. Not ours.”

“The tears are involved, Talon. And Gwynn. This is totally my battle.”

Still, I stay where I am. Shouting breaks out. The other sirens spear upward and flock around Gwynn. A few dart for the men, gripping them in their clutches, not noticing below where Gwynn’s lackey opens the back door of the final black vehicle and yanks a girl out by a chain around her neck.

She stumbles to the ground at the sudden motion, but he doesn’t stop. Instead, he drags her across the dirt while her shredded, gossamer wings trail behind like mangled chicken wire.

“Elodia!” Estelle cries. She banks for the ground in a dive, dropping Gwynn several feet up so Gwynn lands hard on her hip. The other sirens likewise drop the men in their grasps, allowing some of them to fall as much as thirty feet.

“Stay back!” the soldier holding her chain orders. He releases a strain of purple spirals that slink their way up the chain toward Elodia’s swan-like neck. Her black hair has been chopped off, giving everyone a full view when she crumples in pain.

The surrounding sirens shriek again, bobbing like barrels in water but keeping their distance.

Talon is momentarily immobilized by their shrieks, but I fit the pieces together on my own. Adrian. Elodia is the siren he captured.

Gwynn struggles to her feet. Her weight hangs heavily to one side. The pain is clear on her face, but she manages to straighten.

“What do you want from us?” Estelle demands, flapping midair over Gwynn.

“I believe you’ve met a friend of mine. Ambry Csille.”

Estelle lowers herself to the ground. The other sirens straighten, their wings pulsing behind as they exchange looks. My heart catches in my chest, and Talon’s hand makes its way to my lower back.

“How does she know you met them?” he mutters. “We didn’t tell anyone but Solomus and Shasa that we’d spoken to sirens.”

“And you’re the only person I told after I traded the tears in.”

“Ambry Csille,” Estelle says, dignified. “We know her.”

“We have reason to suspect Ambry left something of great value with you here. A small vial of tears. The most powerful ever shed.”

Estelle’s nose lifts. “And if she did?”

Gwynn holds up the chain. “I propose a trade.”

“No,” I say, rising to my elbows. “She won’t. They won’t. Estelle promised me the tears would be safe with her. She promised me!”

Talon catches my shoulders. “Ambry.”

“Call Ren!” I tell him, gesturing to his aud. “We’ve got to back up Estelle. We can’t let Gwynn get the tears.”

Talon pulls out his aud. I push through more bracken until it breaks at the widening path. I run down as fast as I can. I’ll never make it in time.

R
en crouches behind the thick brush, peering, though he can’t see much beyond the three black vehicles parked at Mt. Rhine’s base.

“Anything happening?”

Shasa approaches, all full lips and tousled dark curls. The same strap of weapons she wore the first time he met her bands across her chest now. She stops by his side. He smells the wind in her clothes.

“Not that I can tell. Just a bunch of arguing between Gwynn and the sirens.”

“Who’s Gwynn?” she asks.

Ren inhales deeply, hoping his voice remains calm. “A girl I used to know. She got a hold of some tears back home in Cadehtraen, and the minute she drank them, she turned into someone so evil I could hardly have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself. She’s working with Tyrus now.”

“But Tyrus isn’t here,” Shasa confirms, glancing out through trees.

“Not that I’ve been able to tell.”

Arguing continues, but Ren doesn’t pay much attention to the words. Solomus, Ayso, Cadie, and Jomeini huddle nearby, watching the show from behind a tent of leaves in the branches overhead. They arrived not long after Ren and Shasa, and he isn’t sure where they parked, or how they got here.

Ren doesn’t get it. Solomus and Jomeini—they’re
wizards.
They could just bust out there and knock everyone out, take the tears, couldn’t they? Then again, Solomus implied something about his magic being limited, and Jomeini… A chill dusts up Ren’s spine. Jomeini isn’t quite all there at the moment. She said she would try to help, but he’s not sure that’s the best thing for her right now.

“Okay, then. What’s the plan?” Shasa says.

Ren swallows, and movement behind him causes him to turn. Ayso, with her stark silver hair, begins to pace. Cadie’s wings flutter.

“Wait for Talon to call, I guess,” says Ren.

“Come on,” Shasa says in her blunt way of both putting him down and luring him in all at once. “If Ambry was with the sirens, then why would they be down here? How many of them are there?”

“I counted twelve, but I don’t know if that’s their whole pack.”

Shasa folds her arms and sticks out a single hip. “Your sister was full of it. She and Talon are probably enraptured on their stupid mountain, turning to stone as we speak.”

“My sister is not a liar.”

“Oh, and that makes her a saint?”

“Ambry’s a good person.”

“Sure, she is.”

We’re getting nowhere with this
. Ren stands, releasing a slow breath and bends his arms across his chest. “All right, what’s the deal?”

“Excuse me?”

“What do you have against my sister?”

“Everything,” Shasa says, whipping her head away from him and folding her arms.

Ren gives off a low, sullen chuckle and crosses to her other side. “That’s pretty all-encompassing. Care to narrow it down?”

“Why? You’ll just tell me what a
good person
she is.”

“True.”

Shasa exhales. “I’m betrothed to Talon, you know.”

Ren heard her say as much to Talon in the dungeon, when Talon tried to convince her to set him free. Tyrus told Ren of the strong Feihrian soldier, of his stubbornness, his unreliability, and quickness to go back on promises. Ren sees the way Ambry looks at the tall, muscular boy. He sees the way those glances soften the warrior’s glowers and bring a calculating, almost tender admiration to his eyes. He remembers Shasa’s accusatory tone in the dungeon.
You love her, even when it’s not allowed.
Suddenly, the pieces begin making sense.

Ren has been surprised at how Ambry has changed. Before she’d slink by, trying to remain as invisible as possible, but here she shines like a star, bristling with power and command. It’s Haraway, Ren knows, his jaw tightening.

“So I’ve heard,” is all Ren manages to say.

Shasa faces him, her eyebrow arced. “You mean she hasn’t told you? Of course not, why would she?”

“Because I’m her brother, and it’s the first time she’s ever really liked a guy?”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Actually, I think it’s pretty complicated,” Ren says, fingering his belt as more shouting breaks out from the sirens ahead. “Which is why you’re having such a hard time with it.”

Shasa laughs, quiet and short, the way she did in the dungeon, as though he’s just paid her a compliment without meaning to. “Can’t I just hate her for a while?”

“You’re asking me?”

She offers her arms as if in surrender. “Why are you being so nice to me over it? Talon just gets mad and huffy with me, but you’re actually listening. Caring.”

Ren kneels at the bracken’s edge, peering out at the confrontation. Gwynn struts in that fitted suit of hers, her expression both taunting and vengeful all at once. “It’s hard when the person you wanted to be with more than anything else suddenly wants something different. Something that hurts you.”

Shasa’s kneels closer to him, her eyes narrowing. “Okay. Who are we talking about now?”

Ren pulls his aud out and opens a conversation, conversations he should delete but can’t bring himself to. This is all he has of the old Gwynn. He saw her with Tyrus, saw her drape herself across the jacker’s lap, fling her hair back and kiss the old fool who is twice her age as though they were alone.

Gwynn knew full well Ren was ordered to stand guard at the door. Ren remembers the way Tyrus stroked her jaw, opened his mouth against hers and pulled her tightly against him. Ren closed his eyes though his heart pounded, and he wanted nothing more than to charge over and smash Tyrus’s face in.

Of course closing his eyes didn't block out the sound of Gwynn’s giggles or the throaty, disgustingly satisfied way Tyrus called her “his vixen.”

Worst of all was their departure. Ren opened his eyes to find them locking gazes instead of lips. Tyrus cupping Gwynn’s jaw and stroking her lower lip while they discussed tactics. With a final peck Tyrus lifted her from his lap and sauntered past Ren without a glance. But Gwynn. Gwynn looked at him as she passed, a self-satisfied smirk and knowing stabs in her gaze, her mouth turned up at the corners. The look speared straight into him, cutting into his heart as she no doubt meant for it to.

“You know Gwynn?” Ren gestures out toward the trees.

“Tyrus’s She-Evil?”

Ren laughs, the sensation loosening the coil over his heart. “That’s one way to put it.”

“You had a thing for her?”

Ren hands Shasa his aud. She begins scanning through conversations he couldn’t bear for Ambry to read. Conversations he knows by heart.

I want you to come with me,
Gwynn said once her feelings broke through that dream she had, and he told her to meet him on the street for IDs to get into Black Vault
.

I can’t,
he replied, like a fool.
I have orders, to make sure things are in place before I can leave, and I can’t do that until our leader says so. They’re counting on me.

I’m not staying,
she said
. I’m sorry—come with me or don’t. I’m leaving tonight after I get my tears.