The shadow man was back.
Lurking in the farthest corners of my mind, he was watching me try to get to Inala with my powers unfurling out before me on the physical plane, hands outstretched, mouth open, yet silent.
Even as the storm raged on.
Even as Oren watched with wide eyes.
Even as the king's soldiers flooded the beach once more and were close to finding my prone body sitting upright in the line of fire, but I was too far gone inside my mind.
The shadow man had taken ahold of my consciousness, and he wasn't planning on letting go anytime soon as I felt his influence stretch taut over me like a thick blanket.
There was no song pouring from my mouth, only deadly mist that burned anyone on contact with it.
"You'll get nowhere if you keep that up. You'll burn yourself out much too fast, especially after the work you've done with Orenthal in his cabin. Seemed very...comfortable, if you ask me."
My concentration was wavering, and that red light the same shade as Inala's fiery hair was waning as I attempted to locate her in Hefeta in my mind's eye just like I had found Sigrid the night the king's men had kidnapped her.
"Slow down. You're expending too much power too soon. Anymore of this and you'll be drained and be of no use to the Siren you're seeking."
"Who are you, and why are you trying to help me?"
The shadow man stepped out from his cover of darkness and I gasped aloud as his form came into focus.
The sigil on my forehead that Sabira had called the kiss of death burned under his stare as more of his towering body came into my line of sight.
There was no longer any connection to my earthly body or the world outside.
There was only the shadow man inside my head and me standing before him with panic painting my blood in deathly colored hues.
"I'm not quite sure you're ready for those answers yet, Josephine."
"And why not? You've been infiltrating my mind, making me see things that aren't really there, distracting me from—"
"From?"
His voice rumbled like a peal of thunder that exploded somewhere outside the reach of my mind.
I could've sworn someone was faintly screaming my name, if only I could pull from my mind, move away from the shadow man and his machinations of distraction.
"From protecting the people I care about! Now get out of my head, or I'll kick you out myself."
His laughter was water dripping on a moss covered rock, a slow moving creek rippling across a verdant studded countryside.
"You sure you don't want my help? Looks like you need it from where I'm standing."
My connection with Inala was growing weaker and weaker by the moment and I knew that if I didn't pull my consciousness out from this bleak nothingness where the shadow man resided then there was no way I'd ever be able to make my way to her and protect her with my powers.
She was doomed if I couldn't pull it off.
And then something in the landscape of my mind...shifted. Moved. Transformed.
Because suddenly it wasn't the shadow man standing in front of me—but Peter.
"Jos? What's going on?"
I was on solid footing near a waterfall we'd used to travel to in the short hour before dusk to watch the sunset atop the rocks.
The sun was a blazing pastel canvas, and Peter's umber hair was shifting in a sweet, soft breeze.
He reached forward to grab my hand, and my heart shuttered inside of my chest.
"Come on, tell me. You've been acting strange all day. What's wrong?"
His voice called to the most broken pieces of me.
It was a voice I'd wished to hear for so, so long. To bask in and submerge myself in and drown in forever, because what good was I alive instead of dead right alongside him?
"Josie? Baby, you can tell me. I promise, whatever it is, it'll be alright."
"This isn't real, this isn't right."
My voice came out scratchy and terrified.
"What's not real?"
Peter stepped forward even more, his body crowding mine, but I couldn't banish the last sight I'd had of him swimming with blood out of his eyes, nose, mouth, ears...
"Why are you doing this to me?!"
The shadow man must not have heard me, or he didn't care. That was the only logical reasoning I had to the vision of the only man I loved suddenly flooding my head.
"Love, it's going to be fine. Just—come here."
And then my memories recreated the feeling of his arms around me.
It didn't even feel wrong, not until my tears dripped down my cheeks.
Not until the energy inside of me swarmed and grew until rage built up in such a way that I despised the being controlling the scenery in my mind.
"Stop, please, stop."
Peter's form only hugged me tighter, and the rage turned into despair and agony as my grief etched itself onto the remaining contents of my pitiful soul.
Peter only smoothed the hair over my head soothingly as I cried into his chest.
Cedar and pine assaulted my senses, the scent of him burning through everything else until all that was left was him.
The last dregs of my favorite memories.
The silken smoothness of his sweet touch on my skin.
The perfect harmonious bliss of the idea that someone could actually love me for who I was despite the monster lurking beneath my skin.
"Shh. You don't have to cry. We could stay here forever, you know."
"What?"
"You don't have to go back there if you don't want to. I can be whomever you'd like. I can even transform into that beast you seem so fond of lately. Just say the word, and it is him that I'll become."
"You're not Peter."
"Of course not—he's dead."
For some reason, there was some piece of my mind that had desperately wanted it to be true.
But this person with Peter's voice and face had made it all abundantly clear.
His body melted in front of me into a pile of steaming red blood as my screams stained the suddenly empty field around me, the waterfall suspended in time and space as each and ever drop of water grew stuck in the air, unmoving.
No breeze ruffled the grass at my ankles, no bird calls painted the air with their song.
And in the space where Peter used to lie, Oren appeared.
My screams never abated, though the shrieks scratched my ears raw.
Even as I bent down low at the waist and stared up at the man before me, hands over my helpless ears, a frown marring that golden face.
"Why are you screaming? I am doing this for you."
My screams turned into a wail, and then I was down on hands and knees, attempting to sift through whatever remained of the boy I loved.
His blood evaporated into thin air as I watched with tear stained eyes his ashes lift up into the sky on a still air that I couldn't follow.
"Please—please, just leave me alone. I want to go back. Let me go. Let me out of my mind."
"I thought you'd appreciate this form over your fallen love. Is this not pleasing you?"
"No! I don't want to see Oren. Show me your true form—that is what I want!"
The fake Oren before me reared back as if I'd slapped him in the face.
"You would cower before me in fear if you saw my true form."
"I don't care! At least then it would be real! At this point, I'm not sure if I'm speaking to some entity in my mind or if it's my head playing tricks on me! Maybe I'm sick and making this all up, who knows? At least show me something of substance, not something fake!"
The air around the fake Oren before me seemed to ripple, as if the man controlling these hallucinations within my mind was angry at me request.
"You'll be frightened. Everyone always is when they see me for the first time."
"I don't care! I just want you to let me go!"
"You don't want to stay safe forever? I could keep your body suspended in stasis for the rest of time, you know. No heartbreak, no death, no anger or despair. Isn't that something you'd want?"
"I'd rather be dead and at whatever kind of peace the Everworld could give me than be absent of my emotions."
Oren's body shimmered as the last rays of the sun set in this dreamworld created for me by what had to be the shadow man controlling everything inside my mind.
"Very well. As you wish."
Inky black shadows stole the light from my eyes and then I was suddenly staring into two ice blue eyes that seemed to glow with moonlight on a star speckled night.
There was no body attached to him that I could see, though when I glanced down I also couldn't see the outline of my own body.
It was like the sight had been stolen from me.
"Allow me to return to my body. My people are being attacked."
"I love when you try to give me orders, Josephine. It warms the space in my chest where a heart should be, and no one has been able to do that before."
His voice...
Gods, his voice.
It sent terrified chills skittering down my back, as if in retreat from the entity in front of me.
Deep, gravelly and old.
His voice must've been ancient, the deep timbre vibrating with eons of memories all coagulating inside of one voice.
"What am I doing here? And why won't you let me return to my body?"
"I suppose you'll have to go back in due time. It's all coming together now, soon. You've seen pieces of the future that will happen, dreamt of it. I needed to distract you from your powers as you were depleting yourself far too quickly. If I hadn't stepped in, you'd be dead right now. Remember that no demigod—or goddess—is worth your life and if you try to sacrifice yourself for a meaningless Siren again, I won't hesitate to intervene again. I don't love sharing my power, but when it comes to you, I suppose there is no other way, it'll happen eventually. Try not to move."
"What are you—"
And then he touched me.
It should've been simple—just one little touch.
A brush of a fingertip against an arm.
But this shadow man was anything but simple.
An aching echo of power trembled through my veins as my eyes lit up the darkness around me, and for a moment, my mouth opened and my mist poured from my incorporeal form in this blackened realm of my mind, and I saw him.
For one split second, I saw him for who he truly was, in this shadow banished domain when my bright fire eclipsed his darkness.
The shadows recoiled from my light and his towering form stood tall and imposing in the blankness surrounding him.
We truly were in an expanse of nothingness that stretched on for an eternal existence.
His sinfully carved mouth was cut into a smirk that foretold of unspilled secrets and eyes that belied their lightness, for there was nothing light in this being aside from the color his gaze brought forth.
Blue, frigid ice.
Swirling in mirth and shadows.
His jaw was angular and ethereal, like nothing else carved from this world.
He was inhuman.
He was eternal.
He was boundless and cut from a lavish cloth not of this world; something resplendent and effervescent shimmering in the depths of his creation.
It almost hurt to look upon him, but one glance and I couldn't tear my eyes away.
I could've died losing myself in his eyes and be nothing but happy for the distraction as he withered my soul away in his hands.
And then I was tumbling through realms, swirling and sailing and screaming until my soul slammed back down into my body that was sprawled out in the golden speckled sand beneath me.
The grit must've grounded me, because my ears blocked out the chaos.
My eyes did not falter closed at the gore painting the sandy ground.
My body did not feel the pelting rain as it slashed down upon me in droves.
Instead, my mouth opened, and my power struck true.
Easing up from my laying position on the ground behind the palm that had nearly taken out Oren as he attempted to save me from its wrath, my song spewed forth hatred and death for the men around me.
The very men carrying swords dripping with the scarlet blood from the headless bodies of the Sirens surrounding me, open eyes unseeing and souls fleeing to the Everworld in trauma and piercing agony.
My mist fell from my lips, and the soldiers closest to me cocked their heads in question.
"Josephine, what are you doing? Get down!"
Ignoring Oren's warning, my mouth opened further just as the first few wisps of the featherlight clouds seeped from me.
They raised their swords in unison, all three of them, and I smiled.
Come closer, so that you may taste the rage inside of me.
Step nearer, so that your eyes may take their fill and your feeble minds wrap around my form.
Take pleasure in looking, because it will be the last thing your earthly eyes will ever see.
Like a pebble dropping into a still pond, the power gifted to me by the shadow man inside my mind exploded to life as black shadows coated the mist pouring from me, twirling around my power like it was an extension of myself.
Honeysuckle wafted from the shadows coiling out from my hands, green apple exploding on my tongue.
And then...something darker, more opulent in taste appeared in the air.
Something like rich soil and the velvety caress of dark chocolate.
Where my mist struck, skin bubbled up and burned.
Where my song touched the ears of mortal men, blood dripped forth from their every orifice, and they died with a magic mysticism pulling them ever closer toward their killer.
But where the inhuman man's shadows coiled, no one burned, no one bled.
They simply...vanished.
Curled in on themselves and turned into wisps of what they used to be, turning into ashes floating away on a ravaging wind torn from the hands of time and fate as the storms colluded with the deities above.
"Fall back!"
The shouts of soldiers didn't reach my ears until their retreating backs filled my line of vision.
And there, on the ship still rocking on choppy, unmitigated golden waters, was a glint.
Like a mirror hitting the sun's rays, an all knowingness infiltrated my veins.
There on that ship wasn't the king of Valencia.
My powers unfurled, reaching, twisting, tendrils of smoke and power and unnatural stillness born of desperation and angst. My powers were trying to reach him.
The man on the boat.
My uncle.
Because that was familial familiarity coaxing the bonds in my mind.
That was the tell tale sign of my relative standing on that boat, watching. Waiting.
But then his men were slaughtered before his eyes, just like I had done to my father, his brother.
And then there he was, yelling to his captain in a voice that I could somehow hear even through the baying howls of the treacherous wind.
Oren was there, though, holding me up with his hands behind me.
The shadowy power inside of me didn't like his touch, hated it, even. But it did not strike him, not while he held me close. So, I let his hands remain. He was not my intended target, anyway.
The Sirens came bounding up the cliffside to find the soldiers retreating, and a shock of red hair filled my line of vision moments before the last soldier who'd tried to make it back to his boat disintegrated into thin air by the strange shadow powers I was somehow wielding.
Inala.
She rushed past all the rest, blood dripping down her forehead as she used her hands to staunch the bleeding on a large gash on her neck.
My feet were running before I knew what I was doing, and she was in my arms in the very next breath.
"You're alright, you're alright."
It was like a mantra.
"You're alright."
"I'm alright."
Inala's entire body was shaking when she spoke again.
"Sabira's dead. Your uncle had someone grab her and kill her to send a message. He's the first wave, and the king is next."
And then the world crumbled beneath my sodden feet.
***
Author's Note:
What did you think of this chapter?
Are you liking all the action?
It's not over yet! So much more to come!
Theories on what's going to happen next?
Let me know what you think!
Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)
***
The World of Irena: