"So, here's the plan," I began, Inala watching me curiously through half hooded lids in the idle rocking of the carriage.
The Siren stared at me as if I'd interrupted her precious mealtime with her favorite food.
"Plan for what, exactly?"
"Getting away from Oren."
Her lips tipped up in an indulgent smile.
"Go on," she touted, amusement flickering through her blue eyes.
"First, we wait until the carriage makes it out of the caves. Then, when he stops again, the both of us will attack him with this."
I presented my dagger, the very same one that Oren had given to me before the kidnapping had commenced.
I wasn't prepared for Inala's laughter, loud and cackling and outright obnoxious.
Daggers shot from my eyes toward her as her lithe frame continued shaking from her peals of chuckling until they finally subsided.
"I'm sorry, master, but why would you want to escape Oren?"
She said his name as if he were a harmless insect and of little significance.
"Why wouldn't I? He's an incompetent brute who stole me away in the night to serve his own purposes. Not to mention he transforms into a beast at night."
"Ah, I actually forgot about that. Well, you'll be happy to know that aside from turning into a dog at night, Oren is relatively harmless."
"A dog? Really, Inala?"
I jumped at Oren's voice as it reached us toward the back of the carriage where he was astride his small brown mare, far enough away from us that he shouldn't have been able to overhear our conversation.
"Ah, the mutt has the ears of a dog, as well. You'd better get used to that, too," she remarked, kicking her newly booted feet atop the bench beside the two of us, hands cocked back behind her head as she rested her eyes.
Well.
Apparently I wasn't getting anywhere with her.
I eyed the small window in the carriage where I could spot Oren straddling his horse, eyes forward and large frame corded with sinewy muscle glowing in the shafts of light that protruded from the holes in the rock installations above us.
Crystals glowed along the walls of the mountain cave as we traveled further into its inky depths, the musty scent clinging to the insides of my nose as it grew darker and darker until even the smallest of holes in the foundation could barely let the light in from the outside world.
For a moment it was pitch black, no light to be found anywhere, as if all of the brightness in the world had been leached out.
I was about to cry out to Oren and demand he turn around, or even jump off the carriage and run the opposite wayâuntil something very peculiar happened.
The crystals on the walls began to glow as if lit from within, the shadows being chased away by the illuminated, glittering gems that decorated the steel hued stone.
The steady lull of the carriage brought about questions that I desperately needed answers to. Answers that I wanted from Oren, despite Inala being seated directly beside me.
Something told me not to bother with her while she was napping.
"Oren, stop the carriage."
The man in question pulled on the reins and did as I bade, the horse slowing while Inala barely stirred at the sudden stop, eyes still closed and face the most peaceful I'd seen it since encountering her.
Testing my weight on my injured thigh that Inala had only shrugged her shoulders at in what I assumed was her idea of an apology, I slipped down the lone stair of the carriage and into a hidden alcove where I emptied my bladder and hid for a moment to gather my bearings.
What was I doing?
I should have been halfway to the Carti River at this point, but there was something about the masked pain that Inala wore plainly on her face, something so miniscule that only someone who'd suffered similarly would understand it, would be able to recognize it for what it truly was.
There was a flicker in her eyes as she'd spoken about masters and owners, as she'd joked about it as if it were nothing, but it wasn't nothing.
I'd freed her from the cave, but it was my duty to see that she was returned back safely to her people.
Although...she didn't necessarily need my help, not with her ear piercing song and teeth sharp as daggers.
No, the Siren didn't need anyone's protection.
So why was I still there and not escaping like I so desperately wanted?
Was it because the idea of meeting others who might share something similar with me, others who could relate to what I'd gone through, was too strong an ideal to pass up?
Was it worth risking traveling with Oren, traveling with someone who'd kidnapped me, in order to find somewhere I might belong?
Somewhere that meant as much to me as my short time in Port City had?
Somewhere that resembled an actual home with a real family?
It was worth it to at least try, and if things took a turn for the worse, then I'd have my daggerâand hopefully Inalaâto rip out Oren's throat like she'd offered.
It was a bit more gruesome than I might've wanted, but at least it was something.
I would travel with him to the Temples of the Gods to meet the Siren community, but one wrong move and Oren would face my wrath.
I had made the decision to ride horseback with Oren and pluck as many details as I could out about him and his motives before I reached the horse drawn carriage, but movement along the glowing crystal wall to my left startled me, and I threw my arms up defensively as a figure approached me, moving quickly.
"Yuni! You're going to make the poor girl piss herself, if she hasn't already!"
Oren's voice rang out through the stale cave air as another figure came into sight.
"Who the Everworld are you?"
I cursed my mouth for being slower than my brain, but hopefully the two new strangers didn't take offense to my blunt question.
"I'm hurt that you don't already know, doesn't the beast ever speak of us?"
The disembodied voice spoke just a few feet away.
I jumped, ready to put the few self defense skills I knew to good use, when the figure stopped and his face came closer.
Someone, most likely Oren, sighed out into the cool cave-night air just as the hiss of something being struck against rock rang out.
A few more clips and sparks grew, and then there was a lantern brightening the dim cave, bringing two people into focus who had not been there before.
Beautiful, clear dark skin illuminated in the glowing rock walls, the man was only a few inches taller than me, and beside him stood a woman of the same coloring, both of them wearing matching expressions of indifference, though I could've sworn I spotted a flicker of amusement cross the man's face.
"What are the two of you doing here?"
I started at Inala's voice that appeared directly beside me, my body inching closer to the Siren as the two strangers inspected me with an almost alien look in their eyes.
The man spoke first.
"Inala. Good to see those sailors weren't successful in keeping you. How long have you been traveling with Lord Oren?"
I was still, silent and calculating.
I wasn't sure how it happened, but I was suddenly surrounded by people who knew Oren as 'Lord Oren'.
Something wasn't sitting right with me.
Why did everyone we 'suddenly' come across know him? Surely the world couldn't be that small.
Who was he, really?
"Only a few hours, actually."
Her cryptic answer did nothing to stop the questions floating in the two stranger's faces, and the man, Yuni, stared at me a bit with unnerving brown eyes assessing every single twitch of my jaw and breath that raised my chest.
"And who do we have here?"
The two people before me wore robes of gilded white and honey gold material that clung to their dark skin and draped to the floors.
The woman's eyes were milky white, like she was unseeing.
Glancing at her hand wrapped around the man's arm, her inability to look anyone in the eye I realized that she was most likely blind.
"This," Oren spoke up, coming to stand beside the woman, "Is Josephine Raphelia. Josephine, this is Yuni and Soraya. They are...acquaintances of mine."
My name sent shockwaves through the two standing before me, no matter how subtle they'd tried to make their reactions.
I was a topic of discussion between these people, and I desperately wished that I'd been a fly on the wall for every one of those conversations.
"Oh, so you know of me," I began, placing a hand on my hip as Inala took an almost imperceptible step in front of me, almost as if she were protecting me.
"We've heard of you. The Elder of the Siren community, Inala's community, actually, spoke of you constantly."
The woman Soraya spoke and I turned to her, though her face gave away almost as little as her counterpart beside her.
Her voice had been lilting and sweet and everything that I wished I could have been.
I was hard and sharp around the edges, voice a deep rasp that most men considered to be alluring but I only found it a negative attribute as it drew them to me when all my voice wanted to do was slaughter them where they stood.
Why would I want a voice that called men to me just so that I could kill them with it?
"I don't see how they would have heard of me considering I've been on the run most of my life."
The woman and man before me visibly cringed, as if the words I'd spoken had physically hurt them somehow.
"We are very sorry to hear about that, but...we assumed Lord Oren would have told you by now."
My head whipped to the man in question as Yuni's words struck me.
"We haven't made it to that point in our relationship where Lord Oren shares anything at all with me, I'm afraid," I countered as Oren's chin pushed downward in annoyance.
"We haven't had much chance for idle chit chat," Oren mused, attempting to smooth things over with them, as if they were important and he didn't want them to know about his kidnapping ways.
"Are you two brother and sister?" My words came out soft yet sure, and although I would grill Oren for more details about what exactly he knew about me later, I wanted to redirect the attention from me, if only for a bit.
"We are," Yuni replied, eyes flashing over Inala's form as she stepped more perceptively in front of me, as if the two were a threat to me somehow.
"You've...you've completed the blood bond? With her?"
Yuni's words took his sister aback as they stared at the two of us in shocked silence, but Oren was quick to explain.
"In order for Inala to be freed from her imprisonment, she needed to take the bond with someone else, and Josephine was the one dumb enough to stick her hand over the water."
"If she hadn't, I would still be stuck in that cesspit. Seems the Siren Princess has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to thinking she can save a lost cause."
I stepped up closer to Inala, hand on her shoulder to make her turn to look at me.
"You are no lost cause."
She sucked in a breath at the reverence in my voice, and despite the slight nod of her head I could tell that she still disagreed.
I would just have to work extra hard to make her change her mind.
Soraya appeared uneasy as she took in everything that she had heard transpire between us, hands shaking, though she didn't appear fragile.
No, it was something more than that, something almost angry that swam under the depths of her all-white eyes.
Her head held high, an ethereal energy swirled around the woman's frame, as if she were magic incarnate, though for all I knew she was plainly mortal.
"You've allowed this fugitive to take the blood claim? Do you even know what that will entail? You can never lie to her, you have to do everything she commands until the end of your time, or until another comes to steal it just like the sailors did. This is why you never should have left home. What were you thinking?"
There was a betrayed edge to Soraya's voice, something piercing and fraying that reminded me of the time I'd overheard a local woman flirting with Peter behind the markets and he didn't immediately rebuff her advances.
My anger, while abundant, wasn't so terribly misplaced, just as I realized Soraya's wasn't necessarily out of line here, either.
"What would you have had me done, then? Starve and waste away for all eternity, or take my one way out? At least the princess here won't force me into slavery. Right?"
"I am almost offended you had to ask that considering the amount of times you've made me bleed and I didn't once threaten slavery on you," I began, tone half amused and half insulted, but I continued. "As soon as someone tells me how to free you, then you will be."
"That might be a bit more complicated than you think," Yuni said, and I turned to Inala for the answer, eyebrows raised as she sighed heavily.
"Unless someone forces me into another blood claim, I will always feel a...special bond with you," she began, ignoring the scoff of indignant anger that came from Soraya at the words 'special' and 'bond', but I kept quiet so she could continue.
"I will want to protect you and follow you on your journeys. It is a way to show the complete and total trust of those who choose to enter into a blood claim willingly. For you to order me to be free and be happy would simply be commanding me to stay by you and protect you always."
"But...you didn't totally trust me and I definitely didn't trust you when the blood claim happened. You don't have anything to prove to me."
"I know. But I want to."
I could hardly believe that she wanted to follow around a Siren who wasn't a Siren through danger and fire and the kingâ
"No, you can't follow me, anywhereâ" I began before being interrupted by Soraya.
"That's the most intelligent thing she's said this entire time."
I ignored her as Inala rolled her eyes at the woman.
"The king is still out there and he is searching for me. If he gets his hands on me there's no telling what he might do to those around me."
The group around me grew silent, too silent.
The quietness was almost deafening as something thick swirled in the air around us, an unspoken answer to the words I'd spoken, almost as if they didn't agree with what I'd said.
"The king has been searching for me my entire life. Anyone around me will be collateral damage."
Still, they said nothing, as if their tongues were glued in their mouths.
"What? What don't know? Oren?"
He still did not speak, eyes refusing to meet my own even as I stepped closer, but Inala's body was strong and formidable in front of me.
Perhaps it was time to test the theory of if she could lie to me or not.
"Inala, why are they all not answering?"
"Becauseâ"
"It's because we do not know if it truly was the king who has been hunting you all this time, but someone far more sinister. Your father's brother, Josephine, is still alive. He is very rich and has many men at his disposal and hails from the land of Valencia, using the king's men as his own. He knows how to kill a Siren, and he has your father's blood, your victim, as well as a bronze blade. He has all of the tools needed to kill you, and he has been searching for you for twelve years."
***
Author's Note:
Plot twist!
What did you all think of this chapter?
What do you think will happen next?
What do you want to happen next?
Where do you think the direction of the romance is going? ;)
Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)
***
The World of Irena: