There was at least one bird's nest in my hair from my vantage point in the tree.
Crouched in the branches nestled a few spaces up in the air, I kept my dagger raised and waited for Oren to appear, continuously turning my head to get a better perspective.
Would he arrive from the north, the south?
Would he come in the direction of the Carti river to my west, the Ness Mountains to the east?
I would get the jump on him, take him down and possibly tie him up and demand answers.
Answers to who he was, if he sent those men into the markets, and just how much the king was paying him to track and capture me.
I only hoped I was as good with my surprise drop as I had planned, not having had enough time to practice the move before having to get into position and lie in wait.
My eyes grew droopy as the sunlight slowly leached itself from the sky after a few hours rolled on, the energy that had been expelled with my curse not long before having tired me out more than I accounted for, but still I held myself as if I were a statue, not daring to move a muscle in case he returned and I was unprepared.
Just because this man had claimed that he wanted to help me and teach me control and all other kinds of nonsense didn't mean that I believedâor trustedâhim one bit.
No, trust did not come easily to me, not after my mother decided to throw her daughters out as if we were nothing but the trash under her shoes.
Owls sang a hooting call in the distance as the dusky sky broke in a twilight of pigments dancing across once cerulean skies.
Pale tufts of clouds roiled, the murkiness in their depths bringing with them the scent of fog and the promise of rain.
A branch behind me cracked, but before I could whip my head behind me to find the culprit of the noise, my hands were grappling for the thin handhold of wood I'd perched myself upon, searching frantically for purchase against gritty oak sticky with sap.
I lost my footing as something slammed into me, and balance was the last thing on my mind as I careened toward the forest floor, the air rushing by me in a waterfall of dizzying colors flashing before me.
I barely had time to scream as the brown and orange leaves came closer into focus and it was all I could do to tuck my limbs into my body and protect my head before the impact. Teeth clenched, I tensed as I awaited the pain, but none came.
Instead, I was wrapped in a cocoon of strong arms and a lush scent that coated me from head to toe, something lavish that I wanted to bathe in which rendered me speechless, the aroma something warm and familiar like cinnamon.
I could barely conjure up the courage to crack open one eye, and yet when I did, I knew who I would find. It was still a shock to be so close to the stranger, a man I'd hardly spoken an entire conversation with, and still he affected me more than most did. He had meâquite literallyâin the palms of his hands, but I was not scared.
I was angry.
Furious, even, especially as he took in my shocked state and carried enough nerve to crack a smile.
A too-confident, arrogant smile at that.
He took in the dagger hanging loosely at my side as he gently set me on my feet.
"You won't ever be able to kill me with that kind of lazy work ethic," he joked, mocking me even as my dagger itched to be plunged into his thigh.
Not to kill, just protect myself from him...and his terrible jokes.
"I could kill you in the amount of time it takes for me to pick my teeth."
"Is that so?"
Those amber eyes, golden in the close proximity, grew hooded as he arched his dark eyebrows in silent question.
Before I had time to react, my dagger was gone from my hand, my back was pressed tightly to his front, and from the slight poke at the skin of my neck, I suddenly realized where exactly that dagger had gone.
"And what about now? Still have all that bravado from before?"
I shivered at the rumble of his voice that clamored through me.
His free hand that wasn't holding me at knife point slid smoothly down the covered skin of my side sending chills along my body.
One of my hands held his wristâthe one that was pointing the dagger precariously close to the hollow of my throat that would spill more blood than my song would pull out of a man's body.
My other hand, however, rested at my side, as if I were calm in this situation, giving me the illusion of being unbothered by his actions.
Even if I was being burned alive from the outside in.
Even if his skin touching mine created something I could not name inside of me, something that touching Peter had never elicited, and it was that thought, the thought of my slain love, that had me pulling away from the situation.
My mind was suddenly there and somehow not, and I knew on an instinctual level what needed to be done, even if this man were simply playing a game with meâit was a game that I no longer wanted to be a player in.
His free hand kept that idle graze down my body, caressing my hips, my ribcage, never veering to the more inappropriate parts of my body despite the fact that he held me so tightly that he could've if he wanted to.
He was simply showing me the power he had over me in the moment, and I hated myself because I didn't hate it.
I hated the fact that I didn't hate it.
What was wrong with me?
I tensed as the dagger scratched at my skin slightly, the chills erupting anew once more along my body and he chuckled darkly from behind me, the sound reverberating throughout my entire being.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're enjoying this, Siren."
"I am not a Siren," I combated, even though speaking through my gritted teeth and my breath coming in quick pants meant that I could hardly put any venom behind my words.
He tightened his hold on me, and his scent of warm cinnamon wrapped around me, nearly suffocating with its intensity.
His wandering hand crept lower, down toward my thigh, and all I could do was hold my breath and wait for the roiling heat within me to subside, but to my growing horror I realized that it never did.
It only traveled lower as the feelings I hadn't felt since Peter stirred within me.
They weren't feelings, though.
No, they were just instincts, and human nature, nothing more.
It was purely physical, because there was nothing kind that I felt toward this man, rough with one hand and gentle as a feather with the other.
His fingers curled into the flesh of my thigh and I gasped outwardly, back arching of its own accord as my head lolled back onto his shoulder, and my eyes involuntarily closed as pleasure wrapped itself around me like a thick comforting blanket.
Let him believe he has the upper hand.
Let him believe all of this and not see it for what it isâa show.
His hips were aligned with my back, and from his height that towered over me, I could feel the evidence of what this encounter was doing to him as well, so I assumed I only had to play the game correctly to throw him off balance.
That damned hand went wandering again, this time upward, and as he reached my ribcage and allowed himself a touch, a taste of my body, I parted my lips and darted my tongue out to wet them, knowing that he was watching with unabated rapture, especially when the wrist holding that dagger relaxed, no longer taut and tense.
His fingers had just brushed the curve of my chest hidden beneath my dress when I kicked my leg backward, sweeping his own leg with mine, and he fell down to one knee while simultaneously I grappled for the dagger with the hand I'd kept wrapped around his wrist the entire time, using my free hand to my advantage to pluck it out of his grip.
The shock that I expected to be plain on his face, however, was not there.
He only laughed silently to himself as he stood, brushing his pant leg off from the dirt that marred the charcoal material.
It was only a momentary distraction, however, as one second he was standing there in front of me, slightly bemused, and the next he had me pushed down against the sodden earth, hands pinned above my head as I blew a stray strand of hair out of my eye.
"Damn. And here I thought you were enjoying the moment."
He smirked against the glare that I threw his way as I struggled in his ironclad hold, noting that this time, his muscles didn't budge an inch as he pried the dagger free of my fingers, smiling when I half snarled in response to him stealing it from me.
He leaned down, face in my neck while my body went slack at his nearness.
What was he doing?
What was he planning?
Who was this stranger, who was he really?
I had no clue of his motives, and that threw me so off balance, I could hardly clear my head.
His legs had me pinned, his heat almost suffocating as he studied the body he was straddled across.
I stiffened as he leaned down so close that his striking scent nearly paralyzed me.
He nuzzled the soft skin of my neck and suddenly I was lightheaded, lost in the sensation that I was falling, falling and could not rise from the place within myself where my dignity and pride lived.
Instead, I was a half-panting, melted mess, reduced to a puddle by some half attempt at seduction, and by whom?
An assassin of the king?
A third party interested in my gift?
I had no idea who he was, because I couldn't take what he'd told me at face value.
Anything from his mouth could be a lie, and yet...
Yet I moaned when his tongue darted out and lashed at the skin of my neck, the place where I couldn't control my reactions.
Oren smiled widely at the visceral response his touch drew out of me, even as I cursed myself for the mortifying sounds I'd made, and he moved again, this time placing a kiss there at that spot, his breath tickling and arousing and not altogether unpleasant, but still I snarled in response.
He pulled away, golden eyes glinting in the fading light filled with mirth and amusement.
"I knew I wasn't wrong. You were enjoying that."
I adopted the most glowering glare I could muster and responded, "Why don't you come closer to my mouth, then? My teeth are begging to take a chunk out of you."
A wolfish grin spread his face apart before laughing to himself.
"That's more like it. You're going to need that spirit for what's in store for you."
I kicked upward with all my might to reach the part between his legs that had been at attention against my back not even a minute before, but he was too quick, even as both his hands forced my own to the ground and beside my head.
He deflected the kick to the apex of his thighs with ease, as if this were a normal day for him, and though I was prepared for a blow in retaliation, even flinching to brace myself for the impact, nothing came.
Instead, he simply held both my hands beside my hand with one of his while his free hand began reaching for a strand of hair with the other, completely ignoring my recoil as if he didn't care one bit that I was expecting him to strike me.
"They said you'd be a blonde, not this half-red, half-silver colored mixture. It's quite bewitching, actually," he responded, as if lost in thought over the color of my hair.
Oren rubbed the hair between his fingers, and I couldn't breathe for a moment.
The gesture was so Peter, so purely him, that my lungs seized up and water lined the rims of my eyes.
"Don't do that," I choked out, wrenching my strand of hair away from his grip by jerking my head to the side and swallowed down the bile that threatened to rise up within me.
He sensed the shift in my emotions and produced my dagger before me as if a gentleman giving a lady a gift.
I took it in with suspicion as he released my hands, the question clearly in my eyes.
"Take it. How are you going to protect yourself without the gift being able to work on me?"
"You would give me a dagger to hurt you?"
"Of course. It won't hurt me, seeing as I can't die, though I do wish to give you some sense of security, and for you to trust me."
I snorted despite myself, and the twinkling amusement was back in those gilded eyes so honey struck that I wondered if they had been crafted by the old gods themselves.
He was sunshine personified, a walking star shining in the fading day.
He couldn't die. Right. I rolled my eyes.
"Right. And I actually am a Siren," I quipped sarcastically.
"You are."
Such resolute sureness in his tone, I was taken aback by his faith in that statement.
I had no idea what I was, but I was definitely no Siren.
"No, I'm not. You are sorely mistaken. I am nothing like those water creatures, luring sailors to their deaths. I don't sprout tails and fins when water touches me. I am...something else."
Oren contemplated my words as if he couldn't understand why I would contradict him, but then brushed me off as if it wasn't an issue.
Grasping my right hand and placing the old, leather worn handle of my dagger into the palm that he held, the calluses of his warm skin brushed against mine and then...then there were those damned chills again.
If I never experienced chills again, it would still be too soon.
"Take it. You're going to need it."
He stood swiftly and gave his back to me, pausing to see if I would test out his claim of immortality, but I kept the blade tucked into my hands, taking the space he'd given me and allowing the air to flow freely down my starved lungs and to reassess his words while I rose from the cool, wet ground and dusted off my skirts.
"You say that you can help me control this curse, this power given to me when I was born. How can you do that if you don't carry the same curse?"
"Curse? You truly believe your gift is a curse? If I could slay my enemies on the battlefield by merely opening my mouth, I wouldn't need to work another day in my life. In fact, I would be paid handsomely by the mercenary armies that envied my power."
"It was a curse when itâwhen Iâkilled anyone who ever mattered to me. It's always been a curse, and it always will be."
"Tragic accidents, of course, but if you'd been taught control, they would still be here."
"You saying that doesn't very well help me, or bring them back, now does it?"
Oren ignored my outburst, leaning easily against the trunk of a nearby evergreen and kicked a leg up against it, arms cocked lazily behind his head as if he could argue with me all night and remain unconcerned.
"You said you killed anyone who ever mattered to you, and yet you protected that woman in town. Your friend? Sister? I would have also guessed lover had she not clearly been pregnant with an iron ring on her finger."
"So you've been watching me. Closely. Who are you, then, really? The king's assassin?"
He picked at his nails with the bronze dagger he produced from his belt, feigning nonchalance.
"She didn't seem all too happy with you saving her life. Ungrateful, if you ask me."
The pain of her disappointment with me stung the back of my eyes.
"That is none of your business."
He ignored my nearly growled words and continued his unfeeling inspection of his nail beds.
The high sheen of the pale moon glimmered a ray of light in the darkness, catching on the gleaming gold in his eyes, and I could have sworn they grew almost incandescent when the night hit them fully, as if they glowed no matter the dark or light.
As if he could see everything clearly even if it were pitch black night.
"Come with me. Come to the Temples of the Gods, allow me to introduce you to your people, your real people, and teach you everything I know."
"And what gives me any reason to trust a single word out of your mouth, as if I would ever set foot on that continent again," I responded, shuddering at the thought of crossing the Strait of Barron and entering the king's continent as if he wouldn't immediately be notified that the woman he'd been looking for the past two decades had just simply landed in his lap.
"Does my not falling dead at your feet upon hearing your Siren's song not give me credence enough?"
I gritted my teeth against the irritation coating my skin.
"No," I ground out, fists clenching and unclenching at my sides as if I could control the murderous rage punching through my body at his aloofness and actually keep myself from hurling the dagger toward him.
"Well, then, I suppose you'll simply have to have faith."
I couldn't stop the rakish laughter that erupted from my chest.
"Have faith. In you? A stranger who claims to know everything about me when I haven't got a clue who you are? Right. Like that will actually happen."
A predator stood before me in less than a second.
One moment he'd been lounging against the tree, and the next he was at my side.
"What would you like to know, my lady?"
He turned his head to the side as if assessing me closer in the moonlight.
I held my breath at his closeness, at the way his nearness stole my very mind from my head and ignored the stutter that grew in my heart because of him.
"Darkness becomes you, Josephine. Your beauty is unmatched in the sun, but with the shadows painting you?"
He paused, his hand in the air between us as if hanging like an unspoken question, voice raspy and filled with gravel.
"Exquisite," he answered his own sentence, and I gulped as something dangerous glinted across those golden eyes that turned molten from our close proximity, and suddenly we were sharing breaths.
I couldn't discern where his ended and mine began, if that was my hand reaching up to touch him as well or if it was a trick of the mind.
I could not ascertain fantasy from reality as I leaned in closer, drawn in by the magic that swirled in the wispy insects that glowed yellow-orange in the air around us, lighting up our bodies as if backlit by the old gods themselves, painting us with their power under the milky moonlight basking us in the allure and sorcery of the night.
"Josephine," he taunted, voice a teasing rasp, pulling back slightly while I chased him with my face, desperate to be closer once more, desperate to have his breath upon my lips.
"Absolutely bewitching," he concluded in a controlled, unaffected whisper, threading his hands in my hair and tugging the strands as he balled them into his fist, drawing a pleasured cry from my lips that had never come out of me before.
Wait.
No, this was too much, this was too much and yet...not enough.
I craved him, I craved his touch and his lips upon mine and every inch of my skin andâno, too much.
Too much, too fast.
This was not right.
My head was foggy with a lust I knew did not come from me.
I placed my hands firmly against his chest and pushed him back a step, even as his eyes widened in shock.
"My trust does not come from seduction, either," I managed to say, even as the desire coated my throat and caused my words to come out gravelly and affected.
His shock was short lived, however, as he withdrew something from his pocket.
"Then I suppose I'll simply have to do this the hard way."
My muscles locked up as he approached slowly, pure danger and wickedness in those once smoky, lust addled eyes, and suddenly I wished I had let him seduce me, because whatever came next was not going to be pleasant.
"Hopefully, you'll be more agreeable in the morning," he noted as his teeth grew to sharpened fangs in the moonlight, or was that simply a trick of the light?
His skin pulled and stretched as he grew in size, muscles ripping out of his clothing and suddenly, as the moon finally reached its heavy peak directly atop the sky, he transformed into half-beast, half-man.
Oren was no longer, and I had sorely underestimated the 'man' before me.
At least he had already given back my dagger.
I barely had time to scream before I threw my dagger and the gift ripped out of my chest at full force, but the beast did not stop its advance upon me, not even as the dagger hit home on his right shoulder.
The gift had never reached this pitch before, tearing out of my throat as if a harpooned screech that scratched even my own ears with a renewed fervor as panic swelled in my heart, but still he kept coming toward me, never stopping his terrifying advancement.
His growl was inhuman, rattling my ears and shaking me to my core.
My feet tore across damp soil as the dirt flew from underfoot and the forest became filled with the sounds of an inhuman beast and the pants of a terrified young woman desperate to escape, to survive.
Droves of birds flew from their nests, painting the dead night with the flapping of wings and shadows cast from a newborn moon, drowning out the raucous beating of my heart.
My foot caught a stray branch on the ground as labored steps drew near.
Step after step after step the thunder of my demise pounded ahead.
Golden sun streaked eyes glowed fluorescent in the blinding night, and my legs worked at double pace, back toward the town, back toward Marlisa.
I wanted my sister.
I wanted her husband, Drevan, who'd become like a brother to me.
I did not want this beast to steal me away and turn me over to the king, because of course only the most vicious for the evil king.
Oren was part of the king's personal arsenal, I was sure of it.
How stupid I had been, entertaining this monster instead of putting a stop to all of this once and for all...
"Josephine," the creature rasped out, the sound both mocking and chilling all at once as my name dripped from a mouth that formed sounds and syllables through razor sharp teeth that glinted in the gray light of the moon.
Hiding behind a nearby Briarwood tree, I held my breath and counted to ten until the footsteps faded from my senses.
One.
Two.
Three.
The crunch of a nearby pile of leaves and the breaking of branches sounded to my left.
Four.
Five.
A squirrel scurried away from its hiding space no less than two trees away.
Six.
Seven.
Something sticky and wet dripped onto my shoulder, something like tree sap but steaming with warmth.
Eight.
The sounds were dissipating, and I curled my fingers around a sturdy fallen branch on my left, fingers digging so hard into the bark I worried my nails would break on the wood.
Nine.
Ten.
Elevâ
His roar filled the night air moments after his half-paw, half-hand clamped down around my shoulder and my cry of pain joined him, the sounds mixing in the air on a broken wind that carried over the mountains and the swells of the river.
I surged forward with the branch and slammed it into the beast that was Oren, finding purchase as I plunged the blunt end of the large stick into the skin of what should've been his shoulder, but his height had risen to that of one of the medium sized Briars, so it landed somewhere in his lower abdomen.
His cry of pain was enough for me to try to take off running once more, but my gift suddenly tore out of my throat with a pained screech.
The beast's sharp talons ripped through the skin and bone of my shoulder.
Searing hot pain crawled up my arm until the jolt seemed to reach my throat where my gift still seeped out of me, mixing with the fire and flame until a glow seemed to rise from the depths of my inner being, and moonlight dripped out of my mouth in a smoky substance that coalesced with the wound gushing golden blood from my shoulder.
Upon touching the monster, he recoiled at the smoke, hissing as the scent of burnt skin filled the air around us.
Glowing, the moonlight scorched an illuminated path before me until it reached the monster's surprisedâand terrifiedâeyes.
Lit from within, the smoke spilled out of my mouth as my gift forced me to scream my throat raw.
I could finally inhale a breath, but as the puddle of smoke dissipated, the wound on my shoulder kept on glimmering in the night.
Unable to keep running, I slumped against a tree as the skin on my shoulder stitched itself back together before me.
My eyes closed of their own accord.
I just couldn't keep them open anymore.
I was so tired.
The scent of cinnamon and bonfire smoke clouded my senses as the monster finally captured me from behind and threw me unceremoniously over his shoulder.
The fur I found under my cheek would've disconcerted me before...but I was so tired...
The blazing heat of his unearthly breath against my neck was the last thing I remembered before I was rendered unconscious.
The World of Irena: