"Who is your father?"
"What is his name?"
"Tell me!"
Over and over, again and again.
"Three lashes this time, Briggs."
"Ten."
"Don't stop until I say."
Were my wounds healing?
Where was Drevan and Marlisa?
Was that her screaming that I could hear?
Why couldn't I keep my head upright?
Who was my father? I couldn't remember.
"Your mother was nothing but a useless whore, just like the two of her daughters."
"My brother didn't deserve this. Your mother definitely didn't deserve him."
Finally, finally, a blessed reprieve.
But, no, that wasn't water being pressed to my lips, but a sickly sweet concoction I'd only tasted the slightest hint of before.
What was it called? Winter—something.
Winterbane?
But it did something different to me this time.
Suddenly, everything was sharply in focus, as if fresh ice water had been doused on my head in order to rouse me from a deep sleep.
The lantern was hanging from the ceiling and swinging back and forth, like the waves were angrily whipping the ship again and again for it's captain's crimes.
Someone was covering me with something, some kind of fabric that slithered like silk against my skin, but fresh angry agony screamed out in protest as it touched the stinging, raw wounds on my chest.
Was I whimpering in pain, or in fear?
I recoiled from the person crouched before me, their face pulled taut with something like concern—or was it guilt?
He had golden eyes.
I used to like that color—gold.
It was the color of my blood, after all, but seeing so much of it being spilled out of me made me hate it.
And that was the color of this man's eyes, so I hated him, too.
"Is she coming to? I've got somethin' to show her."
A deep baritone voice with gravel in it and accented from a far away place called out from another room, and I flinched from the sound of it.
I hated that voice, too.
I remembered that voice saying things to me, asking me questions I didn't know the answer to. Ordering my torture.
Laughing when I cried.
My eyes noticed that my uncle was not in the room.
It was only Oren crouched before me, his face finally connecting with my brain in recognition of who he was.
My eyes hardened into angry slits upon seeing him.
"Do not touch me."
He recoiled from my voice, like the hoarse words were not what he expected for me to sound like.
"Here, you need to drink this."
A wine glass was pushed against my dry, cracked lips and I could only sigh inwardly in sweet relief as cool water splashed across my tongue and coated my sore throat.
Until I remembered who it was that was giving me something to drink.
I wanted so badly to push him away, to spit the water out and spray his face with the force of my loathing for him, but my need for the water was too great to pass up.
With the winterbane in my system, I needed the water more than I needed for Oren to understand my pure and everlasting hatred for him.
"Oren...you have to get me out of here. You can't let them keep torturing me. Help me save my sister and her husband—she's pregnant for gods' sake!"
From the fact that Oren was no longer in his beast form and was dressed in the stretched and torn armor from the battle, I could deduce that it was already the next day.
Already the next day with dawn breaking, if the light filtering through the cracks in the wooden planks overhead were any indication of the time.
"You were never supposed to be taken tonight. I was trying to get you out before, but you only wanted to argue! Your sister is—"
"Ah, look what we have here."
Oren's head whipped behind him to where a mewling sound was coming from, but I couldn't see around him.
"Is that—"
"I thought Josephine would want to see her brand new nephew."
All the air rushed from my lungs as Oren moved out of the way, and in my uncle's arms was a wriggling, writhing thing, plump, pale skin with blood still clinging to it and clumps of something white tangled in his dark as night hair.
"Say hello to your aunt Josephine, child. It might be the only time you'll ever have the chance to see her."
Amell was holding the child gently, as if he actually cared for him, though from the gleam in his aging yellow eyes, I could tell that it was far from the truth.
The only thing my uncle cared about was power, and that had been clear from the first moment I'd met him.
He might have had my father's kind face, but the sneer he wore upon it turned it into something unrecognizable and grotesque.
He was a pure mockery of everything my father was and the memory of him that I still held tightly inside of my mind.
"Thank the gods its a boy, otherwise I would've had to kill it. Couldn't risk it turning out to be a murderous little Siren like you, now could I?"
My sister's child in the arms of a monster, I closed my eyes against it. I couldn't bear it—the thought of him growing up like this, in the midst of those who would wish to murder his own flesh and blood simply for the sake of how they were born—as a girl.
As what that meant for others like me.
Prejudice, spitefulness, pure hatred being thrown at us for the power that thrummed in our veins and the fear that resided in the hearts of men like my uncle.
It was what had caused those pirates to torture Inala and keep her starved, stranded and isolated from the rest of the world in that hot spring in the Ness Mountains.
It was what had caused those men who'd captured Marlisa to be the slave to their bed after I'd escaped and hadn't been able to get her out on time.
They'd suffered the wrath of my regret soon enough, though, and despite not being able to get to her soon enough, I had spent the rest of our time together trying to make it up to her.
Killing the men who tried to hurt us, though I wasn't sure how many of those deaths she was aware of.
Killing and killing and killing. Just a short time ago I had been with her, still on the run, still using the only thing my gift was good for—the only thing I was good for—murder.
Maybe Amell was right about one thing—it was good that the baby had turned out to be a boy.
Then maybe he wouldn't feel the cursed dread and guilt each morning when he woke knowing that he murdered his own father on accident.
"Where is my sister?"
Something akin to joy lightened my uncle's features.
"The bastard child took her last breaths screaming out in pain pushing out her little one from her womb. What a shame really—she was quite beautiful despite being heavy with a common man's child."
There was no rhyme or reason to the way my gift worked, only the knowing and then the killing.
One moment, I was knowing, and then the next—
the next—
My mouth opened on a halted scream, the tipping scale balancing between one precipice of peace and the next of chaos incarnate.
Because that was my sister in the next room, dead.
Because that was Sabira and Minna flashing behind my eyes, their headless bodies being stacked on a funeral pyre from a battle that I had the power to save them from.
That was Peter...Peter, staring up at me in confused and terrified agony as the last shreds of my song ripped his body apart and his blood soaked his clothes, staining my hands, his hair, my soul.
And that was my mother screaming at me in a shattering rawness that broke something intrinsic inside of me, something that as a young child I hadn't known could be broken.
Because that was my father on the ground.
My father, my father my father—
My father? But—
He was not my father, but he was the only parental figure that had ever shown me true love.
And I had killed him.
Dead.
All of them, each and every one of them, dead.
"Josephine," Oren started, his form moving closer to me but I jerked back in response as the sob broke loose something inside me, a tether to my sanity finally tearing over the edge as I descended into madness.
The men covered their ears. My uncle placed wads of cotton in his ears, handing the infant off to someone to go into the other room so that I could not reach him with my deadly curse, but for Amell...
"Oren, place the collar on her before she lets out her song."
Oren did not move.
"Oren—"
The voice shattered from my throat, ripping loose a tendril of my powers, but Amell still stood, even if he was suddenly entranced, entwined by the dips and valleys of the notes in my voice.
One man standing guard at the door which must've led to the stairs up to the top deck of the boat did not have cotton in his ears.
Briggs, I was most positive was his name.
Briggs was the first to start bleeding.
Hypnotized, his body swayed to the tune my voice held, and I noticed it was the chant I had used in order to summon Nicos that fell from my lips.
Closer and closer he came, even as a shock of shadowy, slithering power grew inside my core and seemed to merge with my impulse to kill this man on sight.
Even as a pure white, blinding light filled the dank bottom level of the boat, forcing Amell to stumble back into the wall behind him and shield his eyes, though I'd had no idea where that light had come from.
Even as Oren came forward with a bronze dagger.
The first drip of blood fell from Briggs' nose, and as it dropped to the floor it burned up before making its way down completely, the sizzling smoke from it filling the space around him.
My mouth opened and mist poured from me.
"Oren, now!"
But Oren was stalking toward me, even if it wasn't with the collar, but with the one thing that could kill me for good.
Amell tried to push forward, but that shining beam of light that illuminated the boat burned anything it touched, and the mist tumbling forth from my body was doing the same, shining like frothy sea foam underneath the brilliant luster of a full moon.
Closer and closer Oren came, avoiding the path of my light and mist.
Until he was directly behind me.
Until I couldn't see him with my eyes which burned as if I had stared at the sun for far too long but still couldn't close them against its painful light.
Briggs landed on his knees just an arm's length away, and the moment I pulled my eyes away from Amell to stare at his prone body, that beam of light seared into his face.
His screams were deafening, his agonizing pain tasting like sweet vengeance on my tongue.
It was like music to my ears.
"Now! Dip your dagger in his blood and let this be over with!"
Amell's words didn't seem to sway Oren from his task, however, and suddenly not one but both of my hands were freed from their binds.
The ropes holding my feet to the wooden chair below me were cut and I was freed.
I did not turn to Oren behind me, but to Amell, who was beside his fallen soldier's body, dipping his own bronze blade in his blood.
The fresh blood of my kill.
Mist fell from my fingertips and sunlight dripped from every pore in my body, setting the wood around us on fire slowly as flames sprung up everywhere my eyes fell.
The bucket of water collecting from the leak in the ceiling had long since turned to dust.
The shadows inside me swirled and rejoiced at the sharp display of power.
My uncle stood before me, feet planted, dagger at his side, eyes dripping rage as he was ready to pounce.
Only—my fire did not burn him. My smoke did not incinerate him, and my song hadn't killed him.
The hesitation on my face did not give him pause, though.
Because even though everywhere my eyes landed fire burned true, it was not the case for Amell's body.
One glance at the door Briggs had been guarding had the wood going up in flames, but it was that one small move that had led me to making my first mistake.
Amell was on me in an instant, his hand plunging through my burning mist and his body taking the hit of the fire coming from my eyes as his free hand wrapped around my neck and slammed me to the ground, the mist ceasing immediately from me.
"You murdered my brother. Now it's time for me to make this right."
One look up at the ceiling had holes being burned through the top into the deck above us, planks falling down as flames grew and encroached on the rest of it while the bottom level burned.
Burned, just like I'd wanted.
Burned, just like I'd wanted to happen to me and my soul.
To burn and never come back.
Because this life? This was too much.
Too much strife, too much hate and anger and pain pain pain all life had been for me was pain and I was tired.
But I couldn't give up, even as my mind tried whispering that it was for the best, that it was my time to go.
Because who would watch after my newly born nephew, only moments old?
How many would mourn Inala's death, if I allowed it's wicked embrace to encircle me and take me down to the Everworld to face my judgement?
But how sweet would death be, if only I let the thought consume me for just a moment?
Would there be peace after all the suffering? A balm to ease my aching soul?
The blade going through my heart didn't necessarily hurt, like I'd once thought, but rather—ached.
Like a sore muscle after a long day, or a heartbreak pondered upon for moments in solitude.
The ache spread until a cool numbness washed over my body and my golden blood spilled over my lips.
"No! Josephine—"
"Stay back, beast. You'll have your curse broken. This needed to happen."
The blade was ripped from my chest as the metal scraped inside of me, the serrated edges leaving me raw and empty as I bled out over the floor.
Ever so slowly that light inside of me dimmed.
Dimmed until my vision blanked, and then there Oren was, standing over me with something like anguish brimming in his eyes.
I didn't want my last sight to be of him, so I looked up.
And up, and up, and up.
Up where the blue sky was encroaching on a beautiful day.
Up where the gods and goddesses were looking down upon me, possibly with pity in their endless eyes.
Up where my father and Peter might've been, had they survived the Everworld's trials.
I liked to believe that they had, and that maybe I could join them soon, if only my soul could pass.
"No. This wasn't supposed to happen like this."
"Oh? And how was it supposed to happen? You were tasked with bringing her to me, so that I could kill her. So that Adira wouldn't get her pretty little hands dirty and bring about a war amongst them. So what, exactly, was supposed to happen, Orenthal?"
Silence rang out through the boat's lower deck, even as shouts were spreading out like the wildfire surely springing up around the crew above.
Because I had set fire to their ship, and I was going to let it all burn down to Everworld with me.
Something harsh and foul smelling was splashed on my body.
"I'll burn the body, you report back to your mother that it's done. Kyan won't be getting his hands on her with only a soul and no body. They might be together in the Everworld, but they won't be rising up here in Irena, or up there, with them."
"She was wrong. About Kyan. About the uprising—about all of it. She was never really a threat to you—was she?"
I turned my head to catch their conversation even as the world burned down around us.
Amell lit a match stick and flicked it onto my body, and it burned.
My ceremonial gown from the Summoning went up in red angry flames.
But where my skin should've bubbled, blistered and burned, it remained intact.
Where the stab wound in my chest should've destroyed me, it healed over and closed completely.
"She was always going to be a threat if he wanted her. So I killed her. Anything he wants, I will destroy, no matter the price."
"And the sister? The child?"
"That is yet to be determined. I've already got them on another ship, somewhere safe. They're heading to my stronghold."
"They? So she survived?"
"Of course. I've got the best healers known to our kind that always travel with me. She's not my brother's child, either, though I would love to find out which god is her father. The same with Josephine, but I wasn't ready to risk him getting what he wanted in order to find out. Either she truly did not know of her parentage, or she knows how not to crumble under torture, that I will give her."
As they spoke, the fire wrapped around me like a warm blanket even as the scent of ash clogged up my nose and threatened to smother me with its heat.
It became like a kind of armor protecting me from the horrors of the outside world.
It swirled and twisted into a funnel similar to the one created in the Summoning circle of Nicos.
My last remaining bits of shadow joined it, one black, piercing piece of power to entwine with mine.
"Holy gods above—"
"No! There is no possible way. He wasn't even in the mortal realm when—"
"It doesn't matter! We have to leave. I'll get the child and—"
"No. I'll take the child. Give him and the sister to me. I'll allow you to run and escape with your life. You know what will happen if you face his wrath head on."
And then the force of a hundred explosions rocked the world.
Arrows whirled past in a volley of motion.
One just barely missed Amell's head before he broke out into a full on sprint through a door to somewhere my eyes could not follow.
Oren took one long, parting look at me on the floor, at the powers on full display dancing around me.
I had just only lifted my head before he was tackled to the ground by a familiar body.
Warrick subdued him just as a woman with blood red hair parted the seas of warriors and Sirens alike.
Inala didn't waste one moment as she strode for me, uncaring of the shadows and fire and walked through my power before kneeling before me and throwing her arms around my body.
She did not burn.
My flames might've winked out, but my soul was still on fire.
A never ending blaze stoked by the embers of my hatred and one all powerful need reverberating throughout my entire being: vengeance.
And then a god walked through the chaos.
***
Author's Note:
What did you think of this chapter?
What do you think will happen next?
What do you want to happen next?
Only 2 chapters until the EPILOGUE!
Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)
***
The World of Irena: