A drop of water plopped onto my cheek from a leak in the planks above me.
Or maybe it was one of my tears.
I couldn't be sure.
"Josephine, just answer his questions, and then he won't hurt you or them. Right, Amell?"
"Whatever you say Orenthal. You've done your job well. I'll even send Cursebreaker up to your rooms in the hold when we all get settled in Farriah. There's just a few things I need to know about Hefeta's Elders before we go. Josephine, your sister here says you're a lovely singer. I wonder if her husband has had the pleasure of hearing your wonderful voice?"
"No, please, don't make her do that toâ"
I hadn't glanced my sister's way twice since waking up, but after our uncle backhanded her across the face and sent her sprawling to the ground, my eyes found her then.
Her face was a pale, bedraggled mess of red splotches, from the hit and crying, it seemed.
Her normally immaculately kept hair had fallen down around her shoulders limply, and in the dank, dreary light of the sub-level of the boat we were being kept on, I couldn't tell the expression on her face, but in knowing what my powers could do to men, I could only imagine the horror on it.
The disgust.
The barely kept rage.
I knew, because it was exactly what I felt inside.
I shook my body in my binds a bit, trying to loosen something, but the only thing I accomplished was in making the leather strap fall forward and slip down my face to land around my neck where the collar used to be.
"Briggs, grab a few vials and start collecting some of her blood."
A lantern flickered to life, the light throwing grotesque shadows across the walls as they danced and quivered with the movement of the men around me.
Briggs leaned in close, his lips and chin blanketed by coarse copper facial hair and his deep set brown eyes were bloodshot from the long trek through the woods.
He smelled of horses and sweat. It made my eyes water.
Marlisa tipped her head up, and our eyes caught just as someone inhaled a shocked breath of salt brined air.
"She's got the mark. She's been marked by Death."
The soldier that I assumed was named Briggs had stopped directly in front of me and peered down at the mark on my forehead that I'd almost forgotten about, even as my head swam and black dots obscured my vision.
I still hadn't eaten anything, and the effects of the winterbane were still coursing through my system.
"He's going to come for us if we touch what's his, Amell."
"He's been banished to Hell in the Everworld, Briggs. No one escapes Hell, not even the God of Death himself."
"But what ifâ"
"Enough. I'll do it myself, then, but you won't be seeing a single silver or gold piece that this fetches me."
"Rather be broke than struck down by a god. I'm not having any part of this. Let's just deliver her to the king and be done with her."
"Who said we were giving her over to the king?"
Silence filled the night air around us as a chill crept through the planks beneath my feet.
Water sloshed against the hull of the boat, and Marlisa's wide eyes were telling me everything she wasn't saying.
We weren't going to make it out of this alive.
Not if I didn't do something to stop it.
One simple, quiet nod to my sister and resolve flooded her features as she cradled her large baby bump and scuttled ever so slightly backward toward her husband, who was just as panic riddled as she, but with a gag placed in his mouth and binds on him just as tight as me, there was nowhere for him to go.
We met each other's gaze and his face grew crestfallen as he read what must've been plain as day written across my features.
We weren't going to win this one, not without him dying in the process.
He wouldn't survive my mist when I unleashed it.
He gave a single parting glance to his wife before him, and she turned her head as if sensing his eyes upon her.
The look of pure adoration and love spilling out of him was enough for me to realize that this was their quiet goodbye and that I shouldn't have been prying or watching such a heartbreaking moment, but I found that I couldn't look away.
Not until our uncle came striding up to me and tilted my face upwards to find a barely restrained rage swimming in the depths of his blue eyes.
My fingernails dug into the rough wood that my hands were strapped to, the scratchy ropes a reminder of the first time Oren had taken me.
I remembered the salty grit taste of them as they'd been pushed into my mouth, the chafe the binds had given me as I worked my wrists to get myself free.
History loved repeating itself, it seemed, as there Oren was, standing at attention beside me as his beastly head grazed the ceiling.
I eyed his glinting talons in the harsh yellow lantern light and shivered for an entirely different reason than I would have before.
The soldier who'd been ready to sprint from me pulled up short, turning his head back to look at my uncle in confusion.
"We're not giving her to the king?"
"Now, why would we give our best bargaining chip to him? He wants her more than I did, and I'm not giving her up without proper incentive."
"Do you really need more gold, Amell? Your stronghold is basically gilded at this point."
My uncle cut arrogant eyes to Oren, eyebrows raised in faux amusement, but I could tell there was resentment for the beast at my back in eyes so similar to my father's that I could only look at them for a few moments before jerking my eyes away to a much less offending sight: a bucket filled with water off to the side to catch the water from a leak.
Drip.
Drip.
"I don't need gold; I need men, and I don't want to use my own resources to get them. With enough men, we'll take Hefeta and all the Sirens inside. We'll have them all at our disposal, ready to use whenever we want. We could use them to take out whoever we want. We could kill off the nobles one by one, and place others in their spots who would be loyal to us instead. It's not a title that makes a king, but his people, his supporters. His money flow. We cut that off, and what does he have? A crown heavy on a weak head? How long before someone savvy comes around and chops it off?"
Drip.
"But the king is our ally; he pulled my brother from the front lines because he heard our mother and father had died of winterbane addiction. He actually cares aboutâ"
"If he truly cared about you, or had any real morality in him, he wouldn't have allowed me to take his men and ransack Hefeta and behead his precious Sirens."
The King of Valencia and morality didn't belong in the same sentence.
There was nothing morally right about the king, and in my eyes he was no better than the monster before me.
"Now, collect the vials and hand me your knife, Briggs. We haven't got all night. Didn't you say her people were giving chase?"
"Yes, but we lost them just before the temples. Andâwell, there's something else that you should know."
Oren shifted nervously beside me, but I didn't bother glancing at him.
I was mesmerized by the ripples of water in the brown bucket in the corner, the droplets ensnaring me and refusing to let me go.
I pretended I was one of those drops falling into the bucket, spreading out and joining the rest of the water I'd fallen into.
If only I'd been able to get to know the rest of the Sirens better. If only I'd been less trusting of someone who'd already kidnapped me once before.
If only I'd never left my sister to begin with.
Maybe I could've protected her from the men who'd captured her and Drevan.
Maybe everything would've been different.
But then...
I never would've met Inala. Erinna. Sabira...
"They've done it. They summoned Nicos."
I didn't have the time to flinch before something glass shattered nearby, but I didn't move my head to check and see what it was.
My sister or Drevan did not whimper in pain, so they hadn't been struck.
At least I still had that.
Oren's hand clenched tightly, and from the corner of my eye, I could tell that he was growing more and more panicked with each passing moment.
"And why, exactly, didn't you start with that?"
Amell's voice was eerily calm, like a small break before the storm's deluge pours down upon you again.
"Iâwe were busy tying her up, and..."
"And?"
I'd have felt for the poor soldier had he not been my kidnapper.
At this point, all I wanted was to burn the boat to the ground and sink right along with it.
If I drowned, at least I'd take the rest down with me.
But only if Marlisa and Drevan survived. If it came down to me or them, though, I knew who I would choose, and it wouldn't be myself.
It wasn't like I was the one carrying life inside of me, or had the capability to protect my sister and her child and give them a better life like Drevan could.
It wasn't like I was ever anything but a liability to her.
Gods, I wished that weren't true.
I didn't often wish.
Wishes and regrets and 'what if's' were for dreamers, and I was no such thing.
I'd been on the run so long, I wasn't sure I'd ever really experienced peace.
My uncle was talking again, but I couldn't concentrate, not as his voice destroyed my thoughts upon hearing him.
Not as the water drip, drip, dripped and it ran scarlet like blood.
Not as something deep, foreign and primal rose up inside of me and peeked one eye open on this madness unfolding and did not like what it saw.
"Tell me the names of the Elders again, Orenthal."
"Velda, Treasa and Olesia."
"And they are the grandchildren of Hefeta, yes?"
"Yes. That's why their blood is golden, while the rest of the Sirens have common blood. Their lineage was given powers, not born with them like Hefeta's direct descendants."
"And how many direct descendants does she have still alive?"
"Six. The three Elders, and then Josephine, her sister, and their mother, though I'm not sure if she's still alive or not."
My head whipped up as that ancient energy within me surged to the forefront.
"Ah, but my brother's wife was never very loyal, was she? One could even call her a broodmare. Who's to say she didn't sire more bastards that we don't know about?"
I couldn't pull in enough air to keep the black from blocking out my vision.
My uncle cut his eyes toward me, tied to a wooden chair, death marked upon my forehead, shadows swirling beneath the surface of my skin as it recoiled from his presence, like they were an actual living, breathing entity and not just some shared source of power that hadn't gone out yet.
"Who was your real father, Josephine?"
"What?"
My mind didn't register the fact that his hand had just slapped me across the cheek hard enough for blood to bloom in my mouth until it began seeping out of me, a golden trail dripping down just like the water into the bucket.
Drip.
Drip.
Dripâ
The sharp sound of knuckles exploding across bones reverberated throughout the lower level of the boat, and it was the blossom of pain crawling along my face that made me realize.
Oh.
It was me that he'd stuck, again.
It was me that he'd slapped so hard across the face that Marlisa cried out in agony across the room, even as she crept closer to Drevan still.
The man stationed at the wall beside Drevan wouldn't let her get close enough to actually free him, though, and that was probably more devastating than the fact that my uncle had just told me my father wasn't actually my father to begin with.
"You don't have our face, our hair, our eyes. You're some strange combination of silver red hair and green eyes. You look nothing like us. Your powers are stronger than a normal Siren's from what Orenthal tells me. Burning mist that flows from your mouth when you sing. Sometimes you don't even have to utter a single note for it to flow out of you. Strange shadows follow you around. Death has marked your brow. No...you're something else entirely."
He eyed me with something devious prowling beneath his skin.
The same face that I'd witnessed pale as all the blood drained from it due to my song spilling out of my mouth.
My father's faceâthe face that had smiled impishly at me as I hid from Marlisa when I stole her favorite toy.
The face that had scolded me gently for knocking into things one too many times to watch where I walked, and then maybe I wouldn't be so clumsy.
The face that had wiped away my tears from superficial injuries.
The face that had smiled softly at me as he stroked my hair while holding me to sleep.
My mother had never been too involved. She had always been too busy with pleasing my father to care much about making sure our emotional needs were met, but it had worked.
We were happy for a time, because when my mother wasn't there, my father was.
I hadn't thought of his name in so, so long, but it was so easy to conjure it when asked who my father really was.
His name fell from my lips easily, like water running through a rushing creek bed to join a stream as it flowed to rivers and oceans.
"Malachai. My father's name is Malachai."
The next strike was no strike at all, but a slash.
The white gown clinging to my figure like a second skin was sliced open, revealing my bare chest to the room as the dagger went straight through my skin.
But the cut did not heal, even as blood poured down from me.
Marlisa held my eyes the entire time as Amell bent down low, his hot, pungent breath coating my face and blowing strands of my hair away from my face.
"Who is your father, Josephine Raphelia?"
My eyes flicked down, leaving Marlisa's as Amell's gaze pierced through the haze of pain still swimming in my mind.
I could suddenly see so, so clearly, even as the pain lanced through me and threatened to close my eyes for good.
"I already told you. My father's name was Malachai."
Something cold was placed on my chest, and I looked down to find that it was a small glass vial and that Amell was collecting my blood from the gash he'd created on my skin, soaking up all the golden liquid that he could before it began to staunch on its own.
He stood without another word, and I followed his gaze as he looked to Oren, then to one of the soldiers, and then finally to the one whose name I knew to be Briggs.
He gave a curt, stoic nod before Briggs stepped forward with apprehension and hesitation on his features, but still he kept walking forward.
Still, his boots thudded against the planks.
And still, the water dripped from the ceiling.
The first lashing of the whip that had been dangling on his belt the entire time was like nothing I'd ever felt before, and the resounding scream that left my lips was one of pure, unabated agony.
Amell came up from behind me, his hand wrapping around my neck as he leaned down to whisper in my ear harshly.
"Scream again, or make any kind of noise that could be considered a song, and I'll slice this across your throat so quickly you won't have time to draw another breath."
The sharp point of his blade was nestled precariously against my pulse point, so I could not nod to him in understanding, but he must've taken my non-reaction as answer.
My eyes made the mistake of trying to meet Oren's, but what I found there chilled me to the core.
Nothing.
There was nothing but a blank mask across his expressionless face.
It was like he wasn't even inside his own body at all, but somewhere else. Somewhere lost inside his mind.
Marlisa choked on a garbled sob as she clutched her stomach.
Amell brought his face up to look at Briggs once more.
"Who is your father?"
"Malachai."
"Briggs? Again. This time, don't stop until I say."
He didn't stop until the water ceased its dripping into the bucket that had long since turned golden from the shimmering spray of my blood as it splashed across everyoneâand everythingâin the room.
***
Author's Note:
What did you guys think of this chapter?
Any theories on why Oren betrayed Josephine?
What do you think will happen next?
What do you WANT to happen next?
Favorite part of the book so far?
Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)
***
The World of Irena: