"Your mother is the Goddess of beauty, and yet you turn into a beast every nightfall. I wonder what she must think about that."
"I'd assume she'd be rather pleased. She is the one who placed the curse on me nineteen years ago after all."
I recoiled from Oren's indifferent tone. He didn't have a care in the world about what his mother had done to him so long ago?
"Why?"
His gaze would not meet mine.
"Why would she place that kind of a curse on you, Oren? Why would a mother everâ"
"Because she is not a mother. She is a Goddess, Josephine, and she can do whatever she pleases. I can do nothing to stop her with my powers barely out of their infancy. I was only a five year old boy when this curse was placed upon me, and I'll do anything to have it removed."
Chills ran swiftly down my spine at the reverence in his tone.
"Why did she do this to you?"
Still, Oren would not give me an answer to my question.
"Oren?"
His mouth stayed locked tight as the gates of Hefeta.
Where once my gaze begged me to trace the soft swell of his lips or the sharp outline of his chiseled jaw, my mind suddenly urged me to slide away from the heated expanse of Oren's body, but just as I made the move to put some distance between us, Oren caught my hand in his.
"No, wait. I'm sorry, I justâno one has ever really cared to ask why she has done this to me. Adira has many children all over the world, and each one of them is cursed to transform under the light of the moon. I'm just the only one who's ever tried to do anything about it."
"Why would she curse all of her children to turn into beasts every night?"
My tone must've softened something inside of him, because as the surmounting energy that had once flickered and drummed against my back urging me to grow closer to him, that same energy left me in one absolute swift move, as if he had reached into every orifice in my mind and expunged every trace of his strange power from it.
"It's all about the balance of power. With children so irresistible, there had to be some drawbacks, right? But, Josephine," he began, crushing his hands around me to pull me in even closer.
The wind stirred, as if only just noticing our presence when before all had been still as death.
Strands of my hair brushed across the light shadowing of dark stubble on Oren's face from the wind that was scented with cloying apple and tangy bark of the Briar trees in Avanth.
"The Sirens here in Hefeta offered to help me break the curse. All to find you and bring you here. I am sorry for what I did to you. I should've handled the situation better than I did, I just couldn't fathom the thought of surviving an immortal life transforming into something I'm not until the end of my existence. It wouldn't have been a life at all. I was desperate, but what I did to you was wrong. I hope you accept my apology."
Oren's hands did not let go of me, even as I struggled to get some space for him for my brain to process his words.
I was still angry at him, of course, but something about his intoxicating presence was enough for me to push that to the back of my mind, if only for a short amount of time.
Perhaps I couldn't forgive him, but I could empathize with his situation.
Had I not been trapped in my own body as well, forced to endure a life as a monstrous beast lurking beneath my human facade?
Was I not as beastly as Oren, in my power's own deceitful, tempting way?
"I understand why you did what you did."
Oren's eyes bore holes into my own, but I did not look away.
One of the many things that Drevan taught me in my short time being his sister-in-law: never look away first. Never show vulnerability. Never back down.
"You understand, but you don't forgive me? Or can't?"
"You do realize this all only happened a few days ago, right? Maybe it wouldn't be wise to push someone to forgive you so soon, especially if you want that to be sincere."
Pushing back from his lap which I had only moments ago been so content to be straddled across like those girls in one of the brothels I'd been sold to in my youth, I so desperately wished that I hadn't fallen underneath Oren's spell and kissed him.
It was strangeâfeeling regret over an action not having to do with violence, but with passion.
But was it his passion, or mine?
The fact that I couldn't decipher the two was startlingly obvious that I didn't need to spend time alone with Oren any longer. He was dangerousâand not to my heart, but to my desire.
"Is this what you wanted? To get me alone and try to seduce me once more? You already achieved your plansâI'm here in Hefeta. You got what you wanted. Why does it seem like you won't stop until I'm in your bed as well?"
Oren stood in one powerful push from the ground and then suddenly he was towering over me, his strength and fortitude intimidating as I craned my neck but somehow still seemed to look down my nose at him.
"Is it not compliment enough, Josephine, that the son of the Goddess Adira desires you? Can you not simply take the flattery and fall into my arms like the rest of them do?"
I scoffed, that wind rustling up again and turning the once smooth, calm surface of the Serenity Pool before us choppy and restless.
The taste of apple exploded across my tongue, and suddenly Oren was being pushed against by a maelstrom of the wind, its current making him recede one, then two steps.
"Oh, so I'm nothing but another conquest at this point now, is that right?"
The wind barreled into him, relentless, fierce, angry. Wrathful.
I hadn't known I carried that much rage inside me for the demigod, but if the forceful winds were any indication, then I must have been truly irate at him.
Except...this wind didn't feel as if it came from me. I did not command it like I commanded my song when I was seldom in control.
This felt as if the currents and the air were angry for me. Like some unseen force was behind me, pulling the strings to dance to their tune.
"Josephine, if you'd known magic all along, why not use it to defend against yourself in combat with me back in Avanth? I don't think you really want to hurt me."
Coaxing energy crackled along my skin as his power washed over me, but I was far too enraged to fall for it again.
"Nice try, Lord Oren, but you're going to have to do much better than that to get me under your spell again. You kissed me while I was under your influence, while I was susceptible to your persuasion. I've had enough of men making a mockery of me and thinking that I will simply bow to their every whim. That I can be controlled."
This was it. This was the defining moment where I would choose, once and for all, if I would be staying in Hefeta.
And it all came down to a spat with Oren about who he was and could do and what he chose to do with that power.
If I were stronger in my mind, maybe I could've fended it off for what it was.
But in the moment, I'd wanted him to kiss me, hadn't I?
Or had he just taken the choice from me and made one for me, just like every single other person in my life?
I could have been powerful here in Hefeta, once upon a time.
Powerful enough to best even Oren in swordplay, if the training rings filled with Sirens I'd spotted on the trek here to the Serenity Pool were any indication of how battle-ready this community truly was.
I could have learned strategy and leadership and been brought up to be the head of a living, breathing society at my mercy.
Would I have been great?
Or would I have run it all into the ground, like I'd already done with the rest of my life?
No, I would choose to believe I could have been great.
And I could still be.
That was the beauty of possibility, of having no connections, no strings.
Nothing to have meant that you truly had nothing to lose.
Maybe I was worth having something to lose, after all.
Sparking shocks of lightning seemed to dance along my skin, as if there were a storm in the vicinity even as the cloudless blue sky loomed overhead as if a testament to the power thrumming in my veins.
"Josephine, please. Think before you act. You wouldn't want to regretâ"
"That's the beauty of power, though, isn't it? It goes unchecked by all and is unleashed no matter the place or time. It can't be controlled, only pointed toward the target by the wielder's hand. Perhaps you'd be my target, Oren. Is that what you'd want?"
"No! No, I don't want to be your enemy!"
"You simply wish to use and manipulate me through your powers of seduction and persuasion? You wish to be my master and I your pawn. You want what every other man on this cruel world has ever wanted from me, and it has nothing to do with my affections."
"You're wrong, Josephine. Withdraw this power, and I will show you the truth, I will show you what I truly feel for you."
"You feel nothing for me, just as I feel nothing for you. You'd have to have a working heart to feel any real affection, anyway. Mine is far too broken for that."
The wind carried my voice away on a staggered gale, the notes of my words lifting up and away until the echo of them trembled deep within my bones.
Lightning cracked and slammed into a boulder at the far side of the Serenity Pool.
Dazzling sparks danced and jumped all around, almost like the Goddess of storms was standing right there beside me and guiding the raw power with her hands held in mine.
The tangy scent of scorched land filled the air as Oren stumbled and scuttled backwards, staring at me as if I were nothing but a monster given true form once and for all.
"What, is this not what you expected? Am I not living up to the potential you believed lived in me? Or am I just turning out to be something moreâsomething betterâand it absolutely terrifies you?"
Some ancient dominant force invaded my body all at once, and the glow from the moon shone from the pits in my head that used to be my eyes.
"Before the Harvest comes, the songbirds will fall. The wolf of the winds will have his run, but the shadows swirl before their call."
My body swayed to some unseen entity seizing me, the crispness of the words in my mouth tingling with apple sweetness.
The winds still rocked the grounds, the land still rumbled with the force of an invisible storm on a clear horizon.
Nearby, a group of songbirds took flight from the force of the energy swirling in the air and ripping up the water into the air like a tornado.
When the songbird trills its last song, do not be afraid to sing along.
"Before the Harvest comes, the songbirds will fall. The wolf of the winds will have his run, but the shadows swirl before their call."
Over and over the words poured out of me in a keening song that wrapped my voice in honeyed velvet, the notes of the four lines bleeding together until the smoke leaked from my mouth and spread across the grounds until it reached where Oren still lay open mouthed in unabashed horror at the sight before him.
One touch of my deadly smoke, however, and he hissed and jumped back in pain from the lethality of this unfamiliar power seeping from my throat and intermingling with my voice.
But thenâthen warm hands encircled my own.
Hands so warm and so unfamiliar yet recognizable down to the deepest depths of my blackened soul that I never imagined there could be any light there before that moment.
Sunlight so potent and blistering which bade the very eyes blazing with moonlight to close and return to their normal state, those hands never once leaving mine.
Not even as the rough callouses squeezed and caressed over the tough skin of my own. Not even as the earth ceased to rock and tumble around me.
Not even as the sizzle in the air faded and the winds died to a gentle breeze slightly sifting my long strands of silver strawberry hair onto my cheeks and tickling the sensitive bridge of my nose.
Opening my eyes tentatively, there was a figure standing before me.
Taller than Oren, more intimidating yet still so much gentler somehow, the figure was clearly a man.
The outline of his form was silhouetted in a backdrop of blind spots and hazy vision that even as I blinked over and over again, the sight never cleared.
But there was no panic inside of me, even as the crashing reality of the stupor I'd fallen into finally gained recognition in my scattered mind.
There was no anger, rage, wrath. There was no fear or pain.
Only the icy bite of fire licking up the sides of my palms. The warmth fed to me from him hadn't been true warmth at all, but ice.
Cold and frigid and unrelenting but somehow still comforting, in its own way.
The figure shifted, shadows blotting out the sun that seemed to reach every point of the ground in a gilded sheen except for the man before me, like he were made of nothing but shadow.
Like he was crafted from the sunless night itself.
Raising one of my trembling hands to where I assumed his mouth would be, a pair of scorchingly charged lips smoothed over the skin of my hand.
I blinked, and then he was gone.
I blinked once more, and then Oren was standing before me, just like the figure had once been.
In my daze, I'd barely breathed.
But suddenly, standing by Oren and his near suffocating scents of cinnamon and sweet smoke, the finality of my senses came roaring back to life.
When the shadow man had stood before me, the winds pushing on Oren had come to a ceasing halt and instead had encapsulated us much like the circlet of air had done for me in the Gold Sea.
He had stood before me, and there was the taste of crisp apples on my tongue.
***
Author's Note:
What did you think of this chapter?
What do you think of what Oren did to Josephine?
The words Josephine was forced to sing?
What do you think will happen next?
Any part of the lore/mythology that you have questions about?
Let me know what you think!
Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)
***
The World of Irena: