Siren's Fury Page 21

  He gives a humorless laugh. “I’ve advised Eogan’s father since shortly after his and Odion’s birth, and I’ve spent the past twenty-two years watching them grow to take his place. If you knew any of them the way I have, you’d realize how foolish a statement that is. You say Eogan would have me help you, but all you’ve done is corrupt Bron tradition here.” He’s almost spitting the words at me.

  I clench my hands. The cold in my bones is igniting my veins, and with them my anger. I don’t have time for this. “Look, Eogan’s block is failing, and when it does he’ll be dead and Draewulf will have complete control. We need to know what that Elegy says. What exactly has begun?”

  He doesn’t answer. Just firms his stance and crosses his arms.

  I snap my chin toward the wall mural. “That’s the Valley of Origin, isn’t it?”

  His eyes flinch. “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve been there with him.”

  He shifts to the side—out of the dim lantern light so it falls on me—and shuffles closer to scan my face. He’s searching my eyes.

  Ten seconds.

  Fifty seconds.

  Enough. This is a waste. The ice in my veins is turning into fury, to need, to bitterness that will lash out and claim the information from him if he won’t offer it. I’m just reaching out to force the only hope of surviving we have from his throat, when—

  “Perhaps don’t tell us about the Elegy then,” Rasha says in her high-pitched, hazy tone. “Tell us about Draewulf.” She strolls over and smiles. “Having lived so close all these years, you must know quite a bit about his origins. Humor us.”

  It’s an elongated minute before the tension has eased enough so that Sir Gowon uncrosses his arms and graces Rasha with an expression of tolerance. “King Eogan killed him. What else do you want to know?”

  “Was he always able to shape-shift?”

  The sound of his sigh says he’s weighing how much to give us. After a moment, he nods. “I will tell you what most people in Bron could already tell you. I’m sure you’ve heard he was born from a Mortisfaire mother and wizard father. Since Mortisfaire powers can only exist in the female line, he naturally turned to wizarding and managed to do a lot of good until an unfortunate accident. His ability to shape-shift came as a consequence of his experiments at the age of nineteen.”

  “Experiments?” Rasha’s eyes blossom red as she focuses thicker on him. Searching for his answer, and for Draewulf’s weakness if she’s smart.

  “We are all aware there are darker things in this world, yes?” he asks. “Varying shades of good and evil? Sometimes people play with things that aren’t theirs to alter. In one of Draewulf’s experiments, he discovered a way to absorb things. Powers and spirits, life energy from others, for lack of a better explanation. The ability to do so granted him incredible abilities, but it also came with a price. His attempt to cheat that price has been to live shifted in wolf form. Sometimes the consequences of altering things are mild, but sometimes they’re disastrous.”

  I swallow and shift uncomfortably at the sudden itching beneath my skin. It feels like the spider’s crawling through my veins. I am not Draewulf.

  “Now if you both are quite done . . .”

  Rasha gives me a side glance. “What was the price?”

  Why is she looking at me? What I did was my only option and it’s going to bring us victory.

  “Tell us and we’ll leave you be,” Rasha coaxes Sir Gowon.

  He stares at her as if he’d desperately like to believe that. “My apologies, but we are done here. The guards will see you—”

  I flick him my glare. “What does the Elegy say?” When he ignores me, I reach a hand for his waist-shirt and twist.

  He grips a hand over mine. “You’ll kindly unhand me.”

  I step closer. Squeeze harder. The hissing from outside the room grows louder in my head. “What does it say?” I demand. “What does Eogan think has begun?” Suddenly my arms are crawling and my veins, my chest . . .

  “Nym, stop!” Rasha says.

  “Read his intentions. What do you see?”

  Her hand tugs at me. “You’re going to kill him!”

  “He has the information we need.”

  “We’ll find it another way. We’ll ask Isobel! You can’t do—”

  Can’t I? I stare at her as the heat from my fury floods the ice in my blood. I am beyond finished with this man’s uncaring for the world going to the pit of hulls all around him while he stays in his comfortable fool ignorance. Then the dark from my chest is climbing up until I’m pressing against him, draining the words, the knowledge we need as the wraiths’ hissing in the hall becomes thunderous.

  He whimpers.

  I pull, yanking the energy from his chest bones. Like marrow I can taste.

  Sir Gowon wheezes and stumbles forward. He opens his mouth and I sense it—the words on the tip of his confused, tormented mind.

  “Nym!”

  I barely feel Rasha’s hands because I swear I will make him speak or else—

  “When shadows are sown to sinew and bone, and darkness rules the land,” he gasps.

  “Let storms collide and Elisedd’s hope arise,

  Before the beast forces fate’s hand.

  Just as from one it came and to five was entrusted, to only one it can go, to rule or to seek justice.

  If his demise is to be Elemental,

  Interrupt the blood of kings in each land.”

  I stare.

  “Elegy 96 is a prophecy,” he slurs. “Handed down for generations of Bron kings. It’s a fortelling of what is to come.”

  Twenty seconds go by as every vein in my body is curling up like roots around my chest. Interrupt the blood of kings.

  He’s taking the blood in order. He needed Eogan first.

  “Nym, let him go,” Rasha whispers next to my ear.

  One heartpulse. I can feel his thudding beneath my hand.

  Two heartpulses.

  Three . . . I shake my head. “Not until he tells us more. What does it mean interrupt the blood of kings? What exactly will Eogan’s block protect him from? And who exactly is he taking in order?” Did the witch know of this? Is it supposed to be a caution? A teaching? I press against him harder, but his head wrenches backward at a bizarre angle.

  My gaze darkens. I peer down at my hand, which was deformed but is now near straight and perfect, and for the first time notice how fascinating it is.

  How powerful.

  He’s choking on deep guttural breaths as his lungs shiver beneath my hand. His heartpulse flailing, flailing, flailing as his life seeps away, dissolving into thin black wisps that tickle my skin.

  Rasha’s hands are around my waist and she’s yanking me back. Next thing I know the power is gone along with the connection.

  And I’m shuddering so hard.

  I look up at both of them. Her expression is horrified. His just looks odd. Gray. As if he’s dying. I blink and feel the cold and hunger fade.

  Suddenly I’m seeing him standing there so feeble and weak and oh litches what have I done? I jerk back and stare in dread at them, at my fingers, my palms. He begins to slump forward and I go to steady him but he pushes me away.

  “Guards!” he gasps. “Take them! Lock them in their rooms!” He peers at me. “Your power is like . . . like . . .” He shakes his head and stumbles again.

  I did this to him.

  I hurt him.

  I look at Rasha and everything in me turns ill. I glance back at him, but he’s already walking away while the guards grab my arms and shove us from the room and into the hall toward our quarters.

  CHAPTER 30

  TING.

  Thump.

  Ting.

  I lie on my bed with the shades closed and lights out, hurling my knives into the metal ceiling above me, then waiting to catch them when they drop. Focusing my senses to know when they’ll fall and my reflexes to grab their handles midair once they do. It’s a game Colin and I played
sometimes in the corner of Adora’s barn in between our training sessions. Except I could only do it one-handed then.

  With my gimpy fingers now straightened, I play it with thin stockings wrapped around both palms.

  Ting. The blade sticks.

  Thump, it drops toward me as hard and sharp as the look on Rasha’s face before the guards confined us to our rooms. “I didn’t mean to hurt him,” I murmur again to the ceiling.

  Why couldn’t Sir Gowon have simply told me on his own?

  I grab the knife handle and quietly, methodically, toss it up again. Ting.

  Thump.

  As if what he said made sense anyway. It’s been six hours since I met with him and got confined in here, and I’ve spent every minute of it trying to sort through Sir Gowon’s words. “When shadows are sown to sinew and bone, let storms collide, Elisedd’s hope arise, before the beast forces fate’s hand.”

  I assume it’s speaking of Draewulf, but what did Eogan mean by saying it’s begun?

  What’s begun? The beast forcing fate’s hand? To do what exactly?

  That seems to be the question it all comes back to. What are you up to, Draewulf? What do you want?

  And somehow, destroying the world seems too simple an answer.

  “From one it came and to five was entrusted, to only one it can go, to rule or to seek justice. If his demise is to be Elemental, interrupt the blood of kings in each land.”

  If Draewulf’s demise is to be Elemental—does that mean an Elemental will kill him? I wonder if that’s why he eliminated the Elementals in the first place. Isn’t that what he said in the hallway when we first arrived?

  But then why is the beast keeping me alive?

  “What in litches is it all supposed to mean?” I yell at the air for the hundredth time.

  The muttering voices of the Faelen delegates beyond the wall beside me merely continue without a lull. About an hour ago, they all converged in Lady Gwen’s room. I can hear them talking but not enough to dissect what they’re saying. I didn’t have the heart to go argue with the guards to let me in on it too.

  More accurately, I haven’t the slightest interest in whatever it is the delegates have been discussing, especially since it’d require walking by those wraiths in the hall. Their noise is a dull thrum through my head, like words blending into hollow humming. “Come to us, come to usss, come with ussssss,” I swear they’re saying.

  “Go to hulls, go to hulls, go to hullsssss,” I mutter back, in case they can hear me. I flex my wrist and dig my nails into my bandaged flesh, but the dark hunger beneath my skin only makes their hideous thrumming louder.

  Ting.

  Thump.

  Ting. Thump.

  Five more minutes of me ignoring them, and then there’s a new commotion of voices outside. The delegates perhaps? No. They’re still murmuring on the other side of my wall. Myles? I sit up in the dim just as something heavy hits my bedroom door, followed by a scuffle and deep cursing.

  Silence falls.

  I lift a knife.

  A thin filter of light slices the gloomy room as the door softly opens and footsteps pad toward me. A black mask looms from the shadows. I thrust my blade out only to hear a small sound to my left just before a pillow is shoved over my face, slamming me down into the bed.

  I slash with both knives and am rewarded with one connecting into muscle. It’s met with a cry before both blades are wrenched from my wrists by reflexes better trained than mine.

  I kick. I scream, but no noise escapes beyond a muffled gagging as the air empties from my lungs until I can no longer breathe.

  I stop moving.

  “You’ve been requested,” a panting voice says so close to my ear that my neck tingles.

  The hands pinning the pillow over my face ease off, letting it slip aside, and pull me to my feet at the same time they’re slipping my blades back into my makeshift ankle sheath.

  I blink to focus but the intruder is already pushing me to the door. When I step out into the light, it’s into the arms of two more masked soldiers, part of Lady Isobel’s personal Mortisfaire guard. The Bron soldiers are sprawled out on the ground. They look stunned, not dead, and behind them five or six wraiths are lurking in those gray rags that barely cover their body parts sewn together with bolcrane pieces or panther-monkeys. I shudder. What in litches?

  Before I can pull back, the masked soldiers grab my arms.

  “You’ll come quietly,” the woman behind me says.

  “Like hulls.” I twist and jerk my wrists and begin to pull away, but their hands flail out and become iron beneath their black gloves. I try to peer at their faces, but the thin material stretches over their features enough to hide everything but their sharp eyes. The four of them drag me down two corridors into a thin hallway away from the wraiths. When they stop and release my arms, it’s not just Lady Isobel standing in front of us.

  It’s Eogan. Or, more accurately, Draewulf.

  I pull away and smooth my shirtsleeves.

  “Leave us.” Draewulf bats a hand in the air and waits for Isobel’s soldiers to exit the hall before stepping closer.

  Bending down, I yank out a knife, but before I can lift it to his stomach, he wrenches both arms behind me and draws his body against mine in a move that, like most of his others, is faster than should be possible. He laughs an ugly sound. “So the Elemental girl can fight off an army but can’t handle a few Mortisfaire maids.”

  Lady Isobel steps forward with that smile that’s like a plague on her lips and brushes a graceful hand down my hair. “Or perhaps it’s that she has no fight left in her. I wonder—has watching her beloved trainer live out his final days left her . . . impotent?” Her hand moves from me to her father and presses down on his shoulder. He makes a bizarre choking sound.

  I twist my head around to see his countenance alter as the black of his irises grows wider and his teeth longer. I writhe beneath his grip to stop her, to help him, but Draewulf presses harder on my wrists as any last bits that make up Eogan seem to fade before my eyes.

  “Of all the—” I shove my knee up toward Isobel.

  She dodges and retreats with a giggle, then releases her father in the process, allowing him to return to Eogan’s form. “Oh come now,” she says in a pouty voice. “Watching your pretty face flinch is just so lovely.”

  “Let’s see if yours stays lovely when I make it flinch.”

  She lets out a tinkle of laughter and glances up at her father. “I think our impotent Elemental forgets who she’s speaking to.”

  “I’m speaking to the woman whose father now inhabits her onetime lover’s body.”

  The same expression I noted back at the banquet when she stood looking down on Eogan in irritation and disgust flashes behind her eyes.

  I smirk. “Must be awkward, no?”

  Her hand goes up, but Draewulf releases my arms and slides around to block her from slamming it against my chest. “Isobel, quit fooling and tell me. Does she have what we need?”

  She narrows her gaze. “Father, I—”

  “Now.”

  Her look is murderous as she slides close to me. “Don’t worry. That heart of his you only wished belonged to you is about to cease existing altogether.” She pauses to lean into my ear. “Say good-bye knowing he won’t suffer. Much.”

  I wrench a hand free and slap her across the jaw so hard, I think I hear her bone crack.

  Her fingers are on my throat, but Draewulf’s quicker. He pulls her wrist away and crunches it loud enough with his own that she actually whimpers and I wince. His smile turns disgusted. “I said assess her, not kill her.”

  Isobel’s glare could pierce ice through my skull. She clenches her jaw but stays put, then slips her hand onto my arm covered with memorial scars. She squeezes down as he murmurs against my neck, “Just think, Eogan’s gone all because of me. Because you weren’t strong enough. And now,” he whispers, “no one but you and I and your two Uathúil friends will ever know.”

&nb
sp; I bring my foot toward Draewulf’s family heirlooms. It only lightly connects because he dodges, then jerks my elbow toward my shoulder, but we both cry out.

  “There it is,” he pants.

  “I will kill you—”

  “Careful with threats you can’t follow through on.”

  Lady Isobel’s hand begins shaking over my arm. It’s warming. I cringe and twist my wrist beneath Draewulf’s fingers enough to hover it over his chest. Forcing down, I yank as much energy as I can from his venomous, twisted soul.

  Draewulf utters a pained curse word.

  But it’s not enough. I can’t focus it adequately as Isobel’s hand latches onto something in me, and it’s as if I can feel the veins stiffening in my arm and solidifying all the way up my shoulder and down to my heart, freezing it into place. Into stone. My palm immediately drops from Draewulf, my whole being going sluggish, as if I’ve been weighted beneath metal.

  “Enough,” Draewulf murmurs as he sags back. He pushes Lady Isobel’s hand off me. “Is she ready?”

  Her only reply is to nod.

  “For what?” I hiss.

  She smiles. “The question is, Father, are you?”

  Perhaps it’s my imagination, but I swear I see the slightest wince in his eyes. “Only a day, maybe less.”

  “Then the airships depart before dawn.”

  CHAPTER 31

  IN THE HOUR FOLLOWING MY FORCED RETURN TO my room, I lie splayed out in a near-paralyzed state on the floor where the Mortisfaire tossed me. My attempts to yell through the wall to Rasha get me nowhere. Either she’s ignoring me or the water pipes are flowing too loud because there is no reply, and after a while I give up and focus on breathing through the heaviness in my lungs. And the awareness that even if I could move enough to get around the wraiths to reach Rasha and Myles, we’d still have to find Lady Isobel and Draewulf.

  And then what?

  I close my eyes and curse myself for not focusing my ability more when I had Isobel in hand.

  Eventually the breathing eases, bringing relief that whatever injury she did to my heart and veins is waning. The aching following it keeps me near doubled up the rest of the night though. As does the utter fury that I have no idea how to prevent what’s about to come.