Chapter 2 The Voice
CHAPTER TWO
THE VOICE
ADELINE
I wake up in the dark, curled up on my pallet, wrapped in my worn blanket. I blink, listening. There had been a sound, hadn’t there? A voice?
But only silence greets me inside our small home, apart from Brogan’s gentle snoring. Nobody is talking.
I often have bad dreams, so waking up with the echo of screams and curses in my ear is not unusual for me. Still, that had been weird, and—
“Are you listening?” a male voice says right into my ear, and I sit upright with a yelp, my heart crashing about inside my chest.
“Who is there?” I ask shakily.
“My name is Olm.”
“Where…? Where are you?” I hiss, scrambling to my knees and glancing wildly around. “Show yourself.”
“Use your ears instead, and listen. The book you found. You will take it to the royal palace tonight. You will steal a horse and ride—”
“Are you crazy?” I demand.
“If I am crazy? What…?” The voice stutters to a halt. “What is happening?”
“Happening? I’m dreaming, that’s what’s happening.” I scrub my hands over my eyes. “I’m inside a dream.”
“No, you are resisting my voice. How are you doing it?”
Letting out a soft laugh, I lie back down. “Oh, this is a hell of a dream.”
“It’s not a dream.”
“Of course it is, but let me enlighten you. I know plenty of tales, Olm. My mother taught me all the stories she knows, and trust me, they are all the stories that exist in living memory. I can see patterns. And a voice in the night telling me to take a magical book to the palace is bad news.”
“But you’re human, you have no magic—”
“I know stories. Stories are magic.” I close my eyes. “Now let me sleep. I’m tired.”
“Take the book,” Naida says the next morning as she brews a medicinal tea for Brogan, “and drop it back in the square where you found it. Perhaps the person who lost it will go looking for it.”
“I doubt the woman will be back for it,” I object, approaching Eiras who is eating bread and olives. I grab two olives from his plate and he grunts, eyes flashing. He attempts to cover the rest, and I take advantage to steal his bread. “She must be long gone by now.”
“Thief,” Eiras snarls, showing me his sharp fae canines. “Give that back.”
“Would you have shared otherwise?” I sit across from him and stuff the bread into my mouth. “There’s a reason thieves exist. Nobody wants to share, including you.”
“I told you I brought food.” He gestures at the bread basket. “Help yourself.”
I’m instantly on my feet and scrounging inside. More bread, rusk, biscuits. I cover the basket again. “Is that all?”
“Of course not. I brought olives, cheese, flour, oil, some sugar. And coin.”
Mollified, I return to the table. “And then you’ll leave again.”
“I have to, candy roll.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He smirks. “Girls like it when I call them that.”
“I’m not one of the girls you roll in the hay with,” I mutter, annoyed.
“Fuck, Aline, do you think I don’t know that? You’re my sister. Calm down. You’re acting like a hissy cat.”
“I’m not.”
“You so are. And you have the mark to prove it.”
He’s talking about the small scar I have on my inner thigh, something he’s always teased me about. Four dark, parallel lines, as if I’ve been marked by claws.
“It proves nothing,” I retort.
“How about the fact that you were so weird growing up? Eating our food made you sick all the time and Mother was scared you’d starve to death. But otherwise, you never fell sick. Every little injury you suffered healed so fast, one might think you are a fae.”
“My round ears prove I’m neither a cat nor a fae, Eis. And it’s not a good look to admit you were jealous of your baby sister.”
“Hissy.” He sticks his tongue out at me. “Always so hissy. And bitey.”
I snicker. Gods, I don’t want to fight with him.
It hurts when he’s away and it hurts to love.
Love this family who has taken care of me, because I can’t stand to see them suffer, and have no food, no wood for the fireplace, and no clothes to replace the garments that are falling apart on their bodies.
Besides, my head is throbbing, and last night’s dream was way too vivid and unsettling.
“Hey, did you hear anyone talking last night?” I ask casually, popping an olive into my mouth. It’s salty and bitter, and perversely, I like it.
I like salty, bitter things, apparently.
“Talking?” Eiras gives me a look that says it all. “Are you serious? Saying what?”
“Nothing. Never mind.” I take my time chewing the olive, rolling the pit around inside my mouth. “I thought someone was outside the door. Or the wall. Our walls are paper-thin.”
“I didn’t hear anything.” Naida turns and gives me a long, probing look. “What did you hear, Aline?”
“Like I said, nothing. I don’t remember. It must have been a dream.”
“Another nightmare?” she asks quietly, worry lacing her voice.
“No,” I say brightly, “nothing of the sort.”
Bloodcurdling screams, crimson and gore, a sense of dark foreboding, danger and death. They have been plaguing me more and more lately.
“I’ll prepare you an herbal remedy,” Naida says decisively, “to help you sleep.”
“I’m good,” I mutter.
“Fighting for your life every night isn’t good for you,” she goes on and I wonder when I told her details about my nightmares. “You need a weapon—”
“In my sleep?”
“—so try to conjure one up. Controlling your dreams works if you set your mind to it.”
“Be a fighter, like Adeline the Bitey,” Eiras intones.
“The name is Adeline Bright, ignoramus,” I correct him absently. “Naida, I’m not the heroine of your favorite book. I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
“I wasn’t worried,” she sighs, sorting through her herbs. I bet she’ll have that remedy ready for me tonight, want it or not. “And I wasn’t comparing you to her.”
“The Hawk and the Nightingale” is Naida’s favorite book of all time.
She has told me the story many times. It’s set in a time of war and feuding, where the heroine’s family and friends are killed in a terrible bloodbath, leaving her alone to escape the kingdom and reach safety.
The worst part? She doesn’t even survive in the end.
To this day, I don’t know why Naida loves the book so much.
I mean, she actually named me after her.
A heroine who loses everyone she’s ever loved and then joins them in death.
So cute and uplifting.
“How is my girl this morning?” Brogan calls out from the other side of our little home. He’s awake, crafting something out of wood as he often does, propped up on his bed. His amber eyes catch me and a smile tugs on his mouth, but he looks worried. “Did I hear you had bad dreams?”
“I’m fine,” I mumble. “I said it’s nothing.”
It’s just stress, I tell myself, about the future, about Brogan. Worry eats at you a little at a time, and at night you’re vulnerable as you lie asleep, open to the paths of magic and your own willful mind. My mind interprets that worry as blood and death.
It is what it is.
“Give us a kiss.” Brogan puts down the little bird he’s been whittling and opens his arms. Smiling, I go to him and bend over to hug him. “Everything will be okay.”
I nod tightly and release him, his scent of wood and old sweat familiar and warm.
He’s the best father in the world, the kind who chased me around as a child to make me laugh, giving me rides on his broad shoulders and helping with my hair when Naida was busy.
If I ever find a man to marry, to share blood with and swear a bonding oath, I hope it’s someone like Brogan.
Yeah, he’s right, everything will be just fine. I just need to give this satchel and the book it contains back to whoever lost it and return to my quiet, thieving life here in Siris.
Better than getting gobbled down by a monster, that’s for sure.