Either my mind was playing tricks on me, or I had been kidnapped by a beast.
Seduced, attacked, then kidnapped by a beast masquerading as a man who wanted to help me.
Smoky wind berated my senses as I stirred, twitching hands and feet to find both were bound by a harsh rope and the tears sprung to my eyes unbidden.
At least the rope in my mouth, gritty and stringy, kept me from crying out in terror.
The soft lulling of the carriage I was bound up in kept a steady pace, the gait of the horse no doubt controlled by the beast-man who had stolen me the night before.
I had heard the tales of men who turned by the light of the full moon, but he had grown at least three inches in height, with rippling muscles along his width remaining humanesque, and he never lost his humanoid shape like the men who turned into the wolves of lore.
I shivered at the memory of his teeth that elongated to the length of my dagger that he had presented back to me as a gift, no doubt laughing maniacally behind my back at the thought that someone like me could ever do damage to someone as powerful as him.
Rocks and dirt rushed past the bottom of the carriage that I was facing as I attempted to realign myself with my surroundings.
That was not the forest floor beneath me any longer.
We were traveling along the shoal beds that fed into the Carti river, but from the steep incline, it was obvious to me that we were headed east, toward the Ness Mountains.
Why we were headed to the mountains, however, was a complete mystery to me as minute after minute passed and still, Oren did not notice that I had woken up from his drug-induced sleep.
Silent as a field mouse, I tested out the strength of the binds on my wrists.
They rubbed the delicate skin of my inner arms raw as I did the same with the rope at my ankles.
Slowly and with quiet ease, I made the decision to begin the long and arduous task of rolling my wrists and ankles to loosen the binds. I worked around the rope shoved into my mouth, saliva collecting at the briny dirt taste coating my tongue.
I held back a gag as I pushed the thoughts out of my mind of who might've been tied up similarly with these same ropes, at the thought of who came before me.
Sweat dripped down my back as I twisted and writhed in the binds, rubbing the skin even more, and as the wounds I'd created began pulsing with the roaring beat of my steady heart, the unrelenting heat of the sun cooled to a pleasant lukewarm temperature, the air invigorated with a fresh chilly quality as we ascended into the mountains.
It was that very same pulsing of my wounds that reminded me of an injury that should've been hurting still: my shoulder.
There was no shockwave of pain, no ache, no sharp pinch that belied a puncture wound of the skin.
Completely healed.
My throat was still rubbed raw as the carriage hit a stray rock and a whimper tore from me, sending a shooting arrow of fire through my windpipe.
Following the creek beds that flowed downstream from the hot springs and underground aquifers from the mountains to the Carti River, Oren steered his mare up, higher and higher until the air around us was not painted blue from the clear skies, but colored in gray steel from the rocky barrier the mountains had provided for him.
There would be no salvation for me.
The only one who could save me was myself, and that had been true since the moment I'd been thrown out onto the streets with my sister in tow.
Hours passed, or maybe it was days, maybe an eternity, all I knew was that my mouth was parched, my bladder was near the point of exploding, my stomach was cramped in a continuous pain that surged more powerful than any other, and my stomach was screaming at me for food as if I didn't already know what my body needed.
Still, I wearied on, still I chaffed my wrists and my ankles and loosed salty tears of pain against my cheeks and witnessed, helpless, as they splashed to the careening ground below.
All too soon, the steam of the hot springs filled the air and the clear visibility was gone, turned foggy and murky, and I could only tell which way was up and which was down due to the carriage that by body had been haphazardly strewn across in Oren's rush to steal me away into the night.
The rocks jostled the carriage and using the loud clomping of the horse's hooves against sharp rock, I yanked as hard as physically possible on my ropes, and the knot on my wrists sprang free.
I held back the hiss building in my throat as I reached down quietly and began picking at the knot that was binding my ankles together.
My fingers, trembling from hunger and thirst and sweaty from the nerves, faltered three times before finally catching on the innermost part of the knot.
I worked and worked and worked, half sitting up and half lying down and not daring a peek at the front of the carriage.
The soft red velvet plush of the cushion was the only reprieve from the biting pain singing along almost every inch of my skin, but still I worked, tugging, pinching, pulling at the rough twine of the rope as finally it slipped free.
I would've cried out in relief if my captor wasn't so near.
I bided my time until we passed one, two, then three hot springs.
I spied a fourth spring nestled off in an alcove, just a few paces away from the carriage.
I tucked myself into a ball, and when the carriage hit another loud bump, I rolled off effortlessly, landing in a sharp thud.
My head swam as I scrambled to my feet and took off in an outright sprint, veering left and right as I attempted to clear the dizzying black dots threatening to knock me unconscious before I made it.
My legs heavy, head a dead weight lolling around on my neck, I continued my mad dash to the hidden spring that I prayed Oren would not notice.
I made it one, two, three...ten?
Fifteen?
Twenty steps, before a roaring filled the night air.
Was that Oren?
Or was it the roar of yet another fearful beast hidden away in the rocky outcroppings filled with places to surprise unsuspecting travelers?
All I knew was that I had to keep going, to keep putting more and more distance between myself and him untilâ
My legs flew out from under me.
The water from the hot spring was a flash of hot steam and a soothing burn as I fell and sank down deeper into the water that wrapped itself around me as if a long lost friend embracing me in our reunion.
Bubbles drifted from my mouth as the fading sunlight wafted down into the pool from the break in the rocks covering my position in the mountain, as if the gods of old had carved out this one piece of the Ness Mountains specifically for me, just so I could see the sun and the bold hues that accompanied a blazing sunset.
I sighed out into the water as a striking tangerine bled into a blushing rose, the pigment like a watercolor painted canvas against the fading azure sky.
Something stirred in the black waters below me, however, as an object that resembled a tail fin swayed and rippled the water out from it.
I stared out in pure shock and half wondered if I was in the process of dying, the amount of oxygen leaving my body bringing me to the brink of sure death.
It moved again, streaks of cobalt whipping through the water and toward me at such a fast pace, I barely had time to brace for impact as the fin of a creature I'd only laid eyes upon once struck me, the blood leaking out of the skin of my legs as it retreated into the dark depths.
My lungs seized as I kicked to the surface, but the fatigue from the carriage ride and the run to the hot spring had weakened me considerably, and I could only remain there, awaiting the death the creature was bound to force upon me.
It circled back, hair red as fire catching on the fading sunlight shafts piercing through the bubbling, steamy water.
Our eyes met, and something passed between the two of us, as if a sister species examining its other half through the murky lens of the hot spring.
She cocked her head, ancient and deadly eyes perusing every inch of my body as my own inner being screamed at me to escape, to get away from her and this attack before it could happen, but I could not.
I was transfixed under her stare.
Her mouth opened, revealing a set of razor sharp, milky white teeth, and I recoiled, even as her song began floating through the currents toward my ears.
Haunting.
So beautiful, yet so haunting.
Her tale was one of heartbreak and betrayal.
Of a sailor who had captured her and stolen her away, cotton in his ears to drown out the only defense she had against the men outside of the water.
He had taken her down with a bronze blade, dipped in the blood of one of her victims, though she didn't die, because he didn't pierce her heart, even as her blood continuously poured out. Even as she was tortured by his hands.
My arms floated in front of me and attempted to bring me closer to the creature, her song continuing even as my eyes teared in the boiling water.
She was cursed to live in this pool for eternity, never dying and yet never living, trapped in a cage with a bare amount of sunlight and no contact from the outside world.
A prisoner, condemned for who she was and what she had done.
I watched in awe as she began her advance anew, though instead of an attack, this felt more like she was coming closer, as if for an embrace, a companion in the endless dark.
She darted forward, careening through the water more graceful than the fish she resembled, but before she could reach me, a pair of large hands gripped my shoulders and yanked me up, and then I was staring into golden eyes.
Water gurgled up from my lungs as my vision went black, and then I was coughing up hot spring water onto the bank of a pool filled with a creature that had chilled me to my bones yet made me question the very inner essence of my entire being.
Wind whistled through the cave systems as I laid there on the damp and cold bank, sunlight stricken eyes assessing me for any damage, but thankfully he didn't lift my skirts to search for the injury that was there, even though it might've needed some tending to.
I would tend to it myself laterâI didn't need him lifting my skirts and mortifying me all over again with how responsive my body was to a single touch of his.
"Drink this," he demanded, shoving a canteen into my hands and tipping it back as I raised it to my lips, taking greedy gulps, even as his grip on it forced small drops to dribble down my chin.
Shivering in the cool air that pebbled my skin after the heat from the pool escaped my body, I drank and drank until the canteen was emptied completely and refused to meet Oren's eyes, though I could feel their blazing disapproval from the hole that he burned into the side of my head.
I was half inclined to tell him where he could put that disapproval before he scooped me up in his arms and nestled me close to his chestâthat sculpted, muscular chest that was peeking out from the gap in his white shirt.
Bronzed and tan, his skin gleamed in the sunset lights, and though I might've been half delirious from the starvation and drowning, I couldn't help myself.
I reached out a hand and caressed that warm skin, the heart thumping wildly underneath my palm a sure sign that he was, in fact, human and not a beast like I must have imagined the night before.
But he'd still kidnapped me. Tied me up and starved me for at least an entire day.
I yanked my hand away as if I'd been burned, but then Oren's hand was there, guiding it back to the spot it had been only a second ago, but I curled my hand into a fist instead.
He didn't meet my eyes, and I was glad, because the fire that was surely burning inside my irises would've melted him on the spot, and I was far too weak to walk on my own.
It was not because I enjoyed his warm hold on me whatsoever.
He reached the carriage in no time at all, and then I was placed down once more upon the red plush of the seat, sans rope and bindings this time.
The sinking sun cast an ethereal glow around us as it weaved and swayed through the cracks in the mountains while a gust of wind peppered my skin and cheeks, the chill wracking through my body as an all out shudder tore through me.
My cloak was placed on my shoulders as Oren appeared out of nowhere, but before I could acknowledge him or even think of something to say to him, a parcel of food was shoved into my hands.
Dried, crispy bread and a strip of salted and dried meat resided in the makeshift bowl he'd handed me, and I didn't waste a moment of my time on speaking and instead tore into the food with such a fervor that I completely forgot any table manners as I ate like a rabid animal.
His soft chuckle at my enthusiasm for food sharpened my irritation, however, and loosened my tongue enough for me to speak.
"I wouldn't be so ravenous had someone not attacked and stolen me in the night, not to mention being starved and bound for an entire day."
That zapped any of the comedy out of the moment.
"It was unavoidable. My deepest apologies, my lady," he countered, turning around and bowing deeply at the waist, as if that was supposed to smooth anything over.
"Are you actually attempting to be charming after kidnapping me?"
There was a slight hysteria climbing into my voice, but I couldn't shove it down, not after everything.
Not after my agency had been stolen from me, not after everything I had ever known, Marlisa and Peter and my old life, had vanished before my eyes, and Oren was there to steal me away in the night because he could.
Because I was easy to kidnap and take control over and force to do what he wanted.
Because what else was there for me to return to?
Marlisa would not look for me, not after I'd given her all the money I'd had left in my pack.
Not after she made it clear that she wanted nothing more to do with me after that display of my violence in the market.
Not after she'd shunned me and turned her back on me, refusing to even try and understand, to see things from my perspective, as she often did.
I didn't look upon her with disappointment when she had folded from the pressure and took a job in a brothel during one of our travels where she met Drevan who vowed to care for her upon their first meeting.
I had allowed for her to make her own choices and her own mistakes and even though I might not have understood them, I did not once judge her for them.
A part of me always wondered if she never forgave me for killing our father, even at such a young age when I had no idea what my voice could do.
How could she forgive me, though, if I still hadn't forgiven myself?
"You forget that I just saved your life from that hungry Siren. You're welcome."
I sneered at him from his spot in the middle of the cave systems, setting up bedrolls and fixing a fire in front of them.
He tied the mare to a rock outcropping and set to pilfering through his provisions, taking out some squares of cheese and dried fruit and nuts for himself, no meat.
I chewed thoroughly before rising to inch closer to his provisions, searching the stacks of bags for my pack that was tied to my back before I'd awoken tied and bound.
One step toward the back of the carriage and the supplies stacked there, however, and I hissed out in pain as I limped back to my spot on the seat I'd previously occupied, remembering the sharp injury the Siren had given me in the pool.
Her song told the tale of why she'd resided in a hot spring instead of the freedom of the Irenic Ocean or the Gold Sea, but the encounter was perilous enough that if I never laid eyes upon another Siren in my life, I would not complain.
"You're hurt."
"And you must have eyes," I replied sardonically, even as the pain jumped and ricocheted throughout my leg, the gash starting on my upper thigh and radiating down the length of my left leg.
"Let me examine your leg."
"What, are you a healer as well as a beast assassin for the king?"
Ignoring my attempt at insulting him (and attempting to figure out just exactly who he was and who he worked for), he strode to my spot on the carriage and kneeled before me, body between my legs and suddenly I blushed, unable to take my eyes off his crouched form in the looming nightfall, the last spray of sunlight bouncing off of his ocher hair and casting it in a golden hue not dissimilar to the color of his irises.
"Lift your skirts," he instructed, and I attempted to shut my knees together even as his body kneeling before me made that damn near impossible, but still, I tried.
"Either you lift your skirts, or I will do it for you. It would be wise for you to obey me at this time of night."
My eyes widened as something akin to lust clouded the gilded sheen in his eyes, but I couldn't let go of his previous statement.
"And what makes it so different from any other time of the day?"
He smirked, and something yanked tightly on an invisible string inside me.
The night before when he'd abducted me, his eyes had taken on a different quality in the night, the same way in which they were changing in that moment, glowing in a strange, luminescent way that reminded me of the algae plants from Port City and the fluorescent tinge that they emitted in the dark.
Was the transformation of him into a beast real?
Was it indeed something rooted in reality and not in the dreams that plagued my mind after he had drugged me?
I had not a scratch on me from the altercation in the woods, save for the rawness of my throat, butâ
Could it have actually been real?
I allowed his fingertips to grip the hem of my skirts and pull the material up, exposing the bare skin of my thighs until he sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, and that was when I knew the injury was more than I was willing to peer down and inspect for myself.
Oren reached for the canteen and splashed some water over the gouge in my skin and the pain was so stifling, so blinding, that for a moment all I could concentrate on was the bright bursts of light that flashed behind my eyelids, nearly knocking me as unconscious as I had been when Oren had drugged me.
The sun's last rays penetrated the cracks in the mountain walls surrounding us while Oren prodded the skin around the tear in my thigh with a keen eye before he leaned up and tore a strip of fabric from the bottom of his shirt.
The first touch of his makeshift bandage on my brutalized skin brought forth a pained whimper from my throat.
My fingers curled into a fist at my sides, the nails cutting into my palms and likely drawing blood, but instead of my focus being seared onto that one spot, that sensitive, raw pain of my inner thigh, the path of my thoughts took a sharp turn as Oren's hands grazed the inner skin of my uninjured thigh, as if checking that skin over for another wound but instead finding it unmarred and with a line of chills wherever his hand roamed.
"Did you really turn into a beast last night?" I asked in order to take the attention away from the gruesome injury of my leg and the aching, stinging pain that shot up my entire body from it.
"Would you try and run again if I said yes?"
His tone was amused, but his words were horrifying.
"Why does that happen? How are you...somewhat normal now and become a beast once the night sets in?"
I tried to forget that the sun was sinking rapidly behind Oren's back, and I would come face to face with this beast once more.
"Let's just say there is a reason I'm bringing you back to your people, and it's not simply for you to learn control."
"I knew there had to be something in it for you to kidnap me, but I was expecting it to be something more...fitting."
He scoffed as he tied a knot at the back of my thigh with his strip of cloth, the action causing a sharp breath to spill from my lungs.
He didn't immediately retract his hands from my skin after finishing tending to my wound, just as I didn't immediately push him away.
I should've pushed him away.
I would.
One more second. Two more...
"And what would you expect to be more fitting for a man like me?"
"Considering the fact that you aren't actually a man at all, I wouldn't assume something along the lines of money, glory, power. I assumed it would be omething absolutely...scandalous."
I had no idea why those words chose to fall from my mouth.
Perhaps it was the close proximity to his lush lips that were parted and stained pink as the last dregs of sunlight fell upon them, turning them a rosy hue that I wanted nothing more than to sink my teeth into.
I hadn't kissed a man since Peter.
I wondered how Oren would taste.
His eyes darkened into a wicked burnt amber at my words.
"Why would I need a community of Sirens for something...scandalous when I have one right here at my disposal?"
"Ah, but you would first have to save her from the hot spring she's trapped in. I see no other Siren here besides the one you rescued me from not long ago. That can only be the woman you speak of, am I correct?"
"Temptress," he growled underneath his breath, but still I laughed.
I had actually laughed. I was joking and laughing with my kidnapper.
"You must have added something to my food and drink. Something to make me more agreeable," I concluded, thinking out loud, even as his brows furrowed in confusion.
"I drank from the same canteen, ate from the same loaf of bread as you, and yet, I have not been made more agreeable. You seriously think I would have done something like that?"
"I don't know. You did drug me, kidnap me, tie me up, gag meâ"
"Alright, alright, I did do those things, but it was for your own good."
"My own good?"
I stood, pushing him back despite the roaring pain that begged me to sit once more.
I ignored it.
"Yes. You would have only terrified yourself more in my presence and attempted to run away. I need you just as much as you need me."
"Oh really?" I prompted, hip popped out to the side as my arms involuntarily crossed over my chest.
"Yes. Yes, really. You must learn to control your gift, and I will finally receive the instruction on how to break my curse. We need each other."
"I have been surviving just fine on my own without this community of Sirens who aren't even my own people. I don't need them."
His eyes shot me a pitying look.
"Tell that to your dead father and boyfriend."
I did nothing after his statement but breathe in once and in the next moment my mouth opened as the walls around us shook with the force of my voice as I cried out in pure, agonizing fury.
I did not attack with my hands or with blades and knives.
My voice careened through the cracks in the walls of the mountains, fissures opening in the rock as boulders began to tumble off of their high resting places and smash down to the ground below, the force of the gift inside wreaking havoc on all things around me.
Oren did not falter, even as his shaking hands reached to cover his ears, as if finally, this distilled, undiluted rage that spilled out of me as if water running over a cup could hurt him as it did the other men.
As if my enchanting call could kill him just like it did the men he'd mentioned so callously.
The men that I'd loved.
The ground shook as the potency of my gift climbed up an invisible scale inside of me, my body having gone longer than an entire day without expelling the pained, mind numbing curse from me as it sat there, collecting and growing and building into this vile abomination of death and destruction that crawled along my veins as if a poison coating my very insides, begging to be let out at even the slightest provocation.
My hands rose to my ears, covering them even as slick, hot blood sparkling golden in the sunset light trailed out of them and still I continued on, screaming and shrieking and shaking as it ripped out of me with a fervor that I had never emitted before, not even when the sailor had attempted to bed me without my consent and I ended him and his entire crew.
Not even as I fended off the handsy leches who'd beaten Marlisa black and blue before I could get to her, not even asâ
The flashback had a mind of its own. Bits and pieces of memories clicking into place as an agonized shred of my soul punched itself back into place inside my mind.
It is winter, and the snow is tearing through Port City on the tails of a blizzard climbing high on the white cliff face toward our small, ramshackle home in the center of town.
Oren was shaking me, screaming in my face, but my mouth was open on a not-so-silent scream, eyes peeled back in pure, unadulterated terror, and I shook my head as more and more boulders slammed from their place on the upper ledge of the mountain wall.
My father, hair bright and pale and unruly, sits across from me at the dining room table. I stare down at my small hands. Barely out of the toddler stage, not quite an older child just yet. He smiles, white teeth yellowing in his older age as time worn wrinkles paint his kind face.
"Josephine!" My name was being roared from somewhere that I couldn't follow.
My eyes closed.
My father.
I wanted to see my father again.
"When the songbird trills it's last song, do not be afraid to sing along."
I smile back at him, a wide and beaming, childlike smile full of wonder and the trance of innocence. I open my mouth to singâ
But suddenly Oren was staring back at me, not my father, and I closed my mouth, the song ending on a harsh note that was out of key and hopelessly ugly in the frigid night.
My ears were gushing rivulets of golden blood, and still I could not meet Oren's eyes, not even as he attempted to come forward, and do what?
Console me?
Pull me in as if he were a person who could give me any sort of comfort?
A guttural growl left his mouth as I peered up at the dark sky through the gap in the cave above us and noticed that the half moon was cresting the top of the sky.
Oren was becoming more beast than man.
I was too drained to witness his transformation.
I resumed my earlier spot on the cushioned bench inside the carriage, laid down, and closed my eyes, pretending to rest as Oren roared out into the pitch, starry night, hoping against all hope that he wouldn't come to find me in his form.
I'd had enough fuel for my nightmares to last a lifetime.
***
Author's Note:
What are you all thinking of Songbirds and Sirens so far?
Are you enjoying the storyline?
Favorite part so far?
Let me know what you think in the comments!
Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen:)
The World of Irena: