"You sure that collar will keep her mouth shut? I don't have any cotton in my ears at the ready."
My back slammed against a hard surface every few moments, and there was a pounding pain behind my eyelids.
Something sharp was digging into my throat, but I couldn't reach up to remove it.
What was going on? Where was I?
I must've made some kind of nose, though, because the thing around my neckâthe collarâtightened ever so slightly against my neck.
I would've whimpered again had it not been for the not-so-subtle warning that one simple sound and I would be impaled on the spikes wrapped around me piercing like daggers.
It wouldn't kill me...but I wasn't sure about the powers imbued in the collar around my neck, if it was equipped to decapitate the wearer after one too many sounds...
and I wasn't brave enough to find out if it was capable of one of the few ways to kill a Siren.
"Shit. What the Everworld was that?"
"What? I didn't hear anything."
Oren's voice rumbled from the uncomfortable surface my head was lying on, so that must've meant that it was his chest.
"Shut the fuck up, Briggs. You hear that?"
The soldier named Briggs cursed again at Oren who'd told him to be quiet and then suddenly I was falling, falling down toward the ground still soaked with the rain from the tempestuous storms that had threatened to drown us all with its might and power during the attack on Hefeta.
I had no idea if we were still there, in Hefeta, or if they'd stolen me away somewhere far enough to keep the Sirens and soldiers from being able to come after me.
And then the most peculiar of things began happening.
Shadows slithered from the dim light cast off from the lonesome moon in the sky.
They seemed to writhe around as if they had a mind of their own, careful not to touch a single living thing, for when they scraped across the groundâashes.
Nothing but blackened ash arose from the dead leaves on the ground where the shadows touched them.
Coiling around live oaks and towering pines, the shadows seemed to swirl and unfurl in the air around it, as if afraid to do anything other than search.
Not to destroy, but to seek for its one purpose.
The subject of that purpose, I was unsure, but I kept my mouth shut, even as I sailed through the sky and was one second from hitting the ground beneath my face.
Until a strong arm reached out and grabbed me, yanking me against a rough, hard chest.
"I've got eyes on her!"
"Josephine!"
My ears perked up at the sound of Inala's voice, but I couldn't scream out to her.
I could do nothing aside from rest in Oren's arms.
I was still kept prone and unmoving from whatever concoction had resided in that water skin pouch, potent enough that despite being rinsed out over ten times, it had still drugged me. I could only imagine what would have happened to me had he allowed me to drink straight from it undiluted.
Arrows whizzed past us as Oren righted us on his horse, my vision blurring and the world dizzy beneath his hold.
The night air was brisk on my skin, and chills pebbled them as everything happened as if it were all in slow motion, the effects of what the soldier had called winterbane muddying my veins and slowing my reaction times.
Even as Oren's arms were firm and warm around me, I found no comfort in them, not after knowing what he had done to me.
Not after the betrayal that cut me straight to the bone.
It shouldn't have hurt as much as it did, but that didn't mean that I was without the pain that came from it.
I could've kicked myself ten times over for ever believing I could trust a word from his fraudulent mouth, no matter how passionate his kisses had been.
"Oren! Stop now, and we won't kill you."
That was Warrickâhis voice angry enough to cut through the thick fog in my head long enough for me to realize it was him that was catching up to us.
Maybe he'd even get to us in time...
Warrick's words fell on deaf ears as Oren laughed, the sound a deep timbre behind me.
"Kill me? If only I could be so lucky. I can't die, Warrick, but you can try your best."
Our horse galloped on, though, and the sounds of my would-be rescuers faded into a sad, hopeless background of things I shouldn't have ever allowed myself to wish for.
Of course, no one would be able to rescue me.
Oren was a demigod, powerful enough to destroy any soldier and impervious to the Siren's song.
I was stuck on a horse with him with a metal collar locked around my throat, my powers null and void.
Dark scenery whipped past us as branches scraped my arms and legs, Oren clearly uncaring of any damages we might've sustained on our way to wherever he was taking us.
"We're going around the temples, then taking the long way back to the shore. We've got a boat there. Amell is waiting for her there."
"I thought we were taking her straight to Farriah?"
"Plan changed. Thought you were on board but earlier it sounded like you were going back on it before we showed up."
"That was nothing. I was just trying to get her to come willingly, that's all."
Oren's voice did nothing to quell the ache building up in my chest.
It felt like he'd taken pieces of sand and rubbed them it into a gaping wound in my chest where my heart should've been.
Yes, I'd been suspicious of him before, but this?
This was just cruel.
The steady clomping of horse hooves drowned out the sounds of Oren's voice in my memories, when he called me tempting, bewitching, exquisite...
When he pressed his lips to my own and made me feel things for him that I hadn't allowed myself to feel since Peter.
The night air dried my tears on my cheeks were they fell.
Not long after the ride, the horses began whinnying and whining, growing restless for some reason.
"We must be near the temples."
The shadows from the power I'd been given flared beneath my skin like something living crawling amongst my bones and veins.
Shards of light speckled my fading vision as large monuments rose up before us, each glowing gently, a pulsing shock of energy entering my being with each that we passed, though one in particular seemed to glow ever bright as we passed.
I glanced up to find the unearthly beauty of Adira, Oren's mother, staring down at us.
Her statue was carved in white marble limestone, and her expression was serene in the pale light of the moon.
She must've greatly disapproved of her son's endeavors to break the curse she'd painstakingly placed upon him, but we weren't struck down as we thundered past her.
Amon, Jarek, Gesa, Aluma, Iraida, Etana, Amell, Inti, Nalini, Nicos...
We passed each and every god and goddess, save for the god of death who'd been banished to the shadow world long before these temples were erected, and each one buzzed with energy and light as we galloped and bound past their forms.
One statue in particular lit up just as Adira's had when Oren passed before it, but my eyes were glued on Nalini.
Her head was bowed in somberness as a pure black bird rested on her shoulder.
I said a silent prayer to her just as the effects of the winterbane took hold of me once more.
My head bobbing back and forth, my eyes only caught snippets of scenery bathed in the darkness of night and only illuminated by thin strips of light cast off from the lonely moon in the sky.
It was like a cloud had been placed over my vision, and every few moments there were pieces of awareness, but not enough to move or attempt anything with the tiny wisp of power still clinging to me like a parasite, refusing to let me go.
I supposed I'd need that power for later, if my kidnappers were going to be taking me to a boat.
To take me to my uncle or the King of Valencia, I wasn't sure.
I wondered which was the more evil of the two, and if I would even live to have my answer.
A sharp slap on my left cheek roused me enough to open heavy lidded eyes.
I was no longer astride a thick mare with Oren at my back and his arm banded across my front, but instead draped unceremoniously across a four legged wooden chair.
Someone was tying my hands to the arms of it.
Then my feet.
Then there was a leather band across my forehead, yanking my neck backwards so that I was forced to look up, and the sight before me had me shivering in a frenzied panic unmatched by anything that I had ever felt in my entire life.
Worse than the sight of my father stricken down at my feet.
Worse than Peter's body being swallowed up by an ever-growing puddle of his own blood.
Worse still than the sight of Minna and Sabira's severed heads placed precariously back onto their bodies as they laid stretched out on a funeral pyre of dark wood and branches, the scent of lavender swirling in the air to cover up the stench of burning human flesh.
Because standing before me was a man the age my father should've been had he survived.
A man who shared a familial resemblance to the woman clutched in his arms, her protruding swollen belly indicating that she was only days from giving birth.
A man who stood before another strapped to a chair similar to mine, familiar brown eyes latching onto mine with that same shred of panic and heartbreak.
Because that was my sister, and my brother-in-law in his captivity.
Oren came up to my side and produced a key from his pocket that he used when he leaned down to place into the lock of the collar around my neck.
"Don't open your mouth, and he won't hurt them."
Oren's voice was unrecognizable as his fur tickled the sensitive skin of my cheek, his overly large amber eyes closing softly before reopening with determination set somewhere in their depths.
The collar unlocked and clanged to the floor as Oren let it fall.
The ground beneath us lurched, and I shuddered with realization that we were on a boat, the wooden planks decorating the interior reminiscent of the one we'd taken to reach Hefeta.
"Lovely to meet you, Josephine. I feel like I already know you after everything your sister and her husband have told me about you."
I refused to meet the man's eyes before me. I refused to give him that satisfaction, even as drowsiness and the eternal ache of dread settled into a ball in the pit of my stomach.
"What, no words for me?"
His voice was disgusting. Gravelly and a deep baritone, he was what I imagined death to sound like.
"Fine. I suppose I'll just have to get to know my baby niece the hard way."
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted his hand squeezing Marlisa's shivering form tightly.
Too tightly.
"Stop."
My voice came out tight and shredded, but I got my point across. He had me where he wanted me.
So long as he held my sister and her unborn child captive, as well as her husband...there was nothing that I wouldn't do to make sure that they were safe.
I knew Marlisa was attempting to catch my eye, but I was giving the man in front of me my full attention.
"Ah, she speaks."
And it was the pure delight in his tone, the time worn face with thick wrinkles painting his eyes and the pinch of his mouth, the light dusting of grey hair upon his head that had once been dark like Marlisa's, just like our father's, and the deep set of his yellowing blue eyes that had me speaking to him once again.
"Hello, Uncle."
***
Author's Note:
This is going to hurt...
What do you think is going to happen next?
Thoughts on Oren?
What do you want to happen next?
Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)
***
The World of Irena: