15. Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
M y grip is steady on the sword as the boy stalks toward me, his cerulean eyes glinting in the starlight. His own sword spins casually in his hand, the movement itself sending a fresh wave of dread catapulting through me. Though lanky in build, his motions contain none of the awkwardness of youth. They’re skilled. Lethal.
He halts above me, running his tongue over his teeth lewdly as he eyes my sword. There is something oddly familiar about his face, something I’m still trying to place when he drawls, “I see the King of Carrion has already prepared you to meet us.”
His voice is like ice sluicing over my skin; like rot and decay. How is that the Niko is the King of Death, and yet this teenager is the one who sounds like something left to fester in the dark?
“Do you see here, kin?” he calls over his shoulder to the other children. They’ve pressed in around me, their movements silent and their eyes bright against their dirty faces. “The King’s given her a sword, so we can have some true fun!”
The boy laughs loudly, the children’s own laughter answering his. The sound, which had been horrible before, is intolerable this close. It hollows out my chest, skids across my skin and digs into my skull. Oppressive, and suffocating.
There is nothing natural about the humor on the boy’s face—it is cruel. Maniacal. Edged in malice and depravity. It’s the feeling that nagged me when I first met Jamie, the one that had stubbornly remained even as I told myself I was being ridiculous. Some company you keep, the Carrion King had sneered.
My stomach squeezes with horror and dread and for a moment, the world narrows above me. Whatever the Strayed are—they are not children. Not as children should be. They contain none of the innocence; none of the inherent kindness.
Sweat slicks my palm as I regrip the dagger tighter, readying myself.
Another of the siren’s screams rents the air, far feebler this time. Like the pain has overcome her. Adira’s warning takes on a new edge, one I understand entirely too well. There are so many times death is a blessing.
The raven-haired boy smiles with sick pleasure as another calls, “What’re we gonna do with her, Dawson?”
The whites of Dawson’s eyes reflect eerily in the dark as he grins down at me. A shudder runs up my spine, but something else begins to burgeon beside it. Something that’s kept me company since I was fifteen and strapped to a table in the Amelioration labs—rage. Fury that burns so deep, its left scorch marks on my bones—fury that’s kept me running, kept me from breaking entirely.
I’ve burned with it so long I’ve grown numb to everything else. But I don’t feel numb now.
As I stare up into Dawson’s young face, it feels like electric sparks have begun to zip over my skin. When it comes to fight or flight, I’ve always tried to choose the latter—I’ll make Dawson regret taking the choice from me. An animal is more dangerous when its caged and cornered.
“Tie her up,” Dawson commands. “We’ll take her back to the Hollows before the king can come spoil the fun.”
“What about the siren?” a girl asks.
“I think we’ve drained the fun right out of her, kin. Leave her on the beach as a token of our affection to our dear and proper regent.”
Though mocking, his words spark an idea. The beach.
My beach, the Carrion King had said.
It’s a desperate gamble at best, but there’s no way I can fight off all twenty Strayed. Though they appear childlike and feeble, I’d be a fool to underestimate them—each one is armed with a variety of weapons, and they’d been capable enough to capture a siren without drowning. Each young face is more feral than the one before, their eyes glinting with excitement at the prospect of hunting me down.
The siren’s suffering had been a passing amusement. And I’m their next thrill.
My only hope is to stay alive long enough to get to the beach and pray that whatever had alerted Niko to my presence that first night, helps him find me now.
The children leap forward in a rush of bodies and blades, their shrieks of delight ringing through the forest. I roll beneath Dawson, slicing at the back of his ankles as I go. He lurches forward with a howl of rage, my blade only skimming skin as he whirls to counter with his own sword. But I’m already on my feet, tearing between the trees.
My heartbeat is frantic in my chest, leaping and lurching in turn, as I skid to halt and weave, narrowly avoiding the three Strayed who stand between me and the beach.
They lunge for me with a rush of vacuous cackles, one of them swinging what I realize distantly is a fucking axe . Leveling my breathing, I bring my sword around in a close arc, the blade slicing cleanly through the boy’s side. I don’t wait to see if he’s down, instead leaping over the underbrush and plowing a path through the thick flowers. Arrows sail past my head as the petals are trampled beneath my feet, and hot blood rushes past my ears as I force myself to move faster.
The small lights floating lazily in the canopy begin to descend in a swarm and a new terror grips me as they rush me in a glowing blur. I might be able to outrun the Strayed; I don’t stand a chance against magical beings.
When my feet finally find warm sand, I nearly cry out in relief. But I only pump my legs faster, the eerie cackling of the Strayed growing increasingly louder. Foliage crashes behind me, and my stomach flips as I race down the sand to where the surf washes over the shore.
Whirling with my weapon in hand, I ready myself as the Strayed fly down the beach with whoops of delight. The fire still burns a few feet up the sand, the siren beside it now silent. The carnage around her framed against the natural beauty of the lagoon settles like ice in my stomach, as I try not to imagine the same thing happening to me if my gamble doesn’t pay off.
What if the king doesn’t know I’m here? Or what if he does, and doesn’t believe I’m worth the trouble?
The cold water splashes up my calves as I duck low, narrowly avoiding three more arrows whistling toward my head. Though my heart hammers against the cage of my ribs, my breathing is calm, as I shove down every emotion behind the steel wall of rage. The wall that’s protected my heart and body from ever being hurt again. I don’t think, letting my instincts course through me, guiding my movements.
Stay alive until the king finds you. Survive .
I’ve done it for so long; surviving is as deeply ingrained as breathing. So, I lower my chin and charge.
The Strayed fall on me like a powerful gale. I take two down in quick succession, one with a slice to the throat, another with a kick to the stomach. But more come. Hands and feet, blades and arrows. A desperate breath shoots from me as a blade slices across my stomach. Shallow, but enough to bleed. I keep my sword swinging, whirling, ducking—falling into the dance of death I know so well.
But even as I fight, as I rage, I know there are too many. I've used my one chance at running to bet on the king, and I bet wrong. Now, there’s no escaping.
Five crowd at my back, and my eyes tear as I’m grabbed by the hair and jerked down to the sand. I try to leap upward, to swing out again, but another cackle of delight rings out over me as the blade is knocked from my hand.
Fear begins to pulse at the edges of my rage, fear that smells like a lab. That feels like the itchy agony of regrowing new skin after someone peeled mine from my body. I don’t even care about the wards or whatever is at risk for the kingdom—I can’t be captured again. Can’t be locked up and taken apart so fully, my body no longer feels like my own.
Desperation closes around my ribs as I’m yanked up the beach by my hair. My scalp burns, the pain only worsening as I thrash my head wildly from side to side in search of something, anything, I can use as a weapon.
Nothing is within reach.
No one heard the siren’s pleads. There will be no one to hear mine.
Hot tears prick at my eyes as I’m dragged toward the fire. I blink them away rapidly as more hands grab at my wrists, wrenching them above my head and binding them with rope. My legs are pried apart, even as I kick and thrash. The sound of a bone snapping echoes through the chaos as I make contact, but there are no following screams of pain. Only more laughter.
It reverberates in my chest like a ballooning hollow. Empty. Hopeless.
For the thousandth time in my life, I wish I could disappear. Sink into the sand, dissipate into the air. Be incorporeal so that no one can ever touch me again, no one can take and take without ever caring that I’m already empty.
“What’s happening?” The tethers on my ankles loosen slightly as the Strayed begin to shout. “Where’d she go?!”
My eyes snap open to find the children running frantically around the sand. Some hurtle accusations at each other, while others feverishly slash their weapons into the empty air. I don’t bother wondering what’s suddenly stolen their attention, using the temporary distraction to wriggle out of the ropes binding my ankles.
Dawson stands only a few inches away, his face deathly calm as his eyes scan the beach. I’m working on the ropes around my wrists, when suddenly, his lethal gaze snaps back to me. His lip curls over his teeth without a hint of humor, and there’s an unnerving madness about him as he growls, “What are you playing at, love?”
The others still running wildly about, Dawson stalks forward, straddling my waist between his feet. He looks impossibly tall from this angle, his face hidden in shadows, but for the whites of his eyes and teeth.
I writhe furiously as he walks up my body, a new terror settling deep in my chest as I’m forced to stare up his legs to the bulge in his pants. And beyond, to his positively inhuman face. “Interesting little thing, aren’t you?”
He crouches over me, and I squeeze my eyes shut, if only to keep from having to see the insanity in his eyes; to keep from imagining what that insanity will feel like when it touches my skin.
Dawson leans in closer, and whispers, “Your fear is so pretty. I can’t wait to splay you open, little Darling. See what sort of thing lives beneath your skin.” His breath is hot and clammy against my cheek. “ Feel the slip of your blood. The heat of your cunt. Break you so thoroughly, you’ll be begging to open whatever ward I please.”
His words are the last thing I hear.
An unnatural silence presses thickly against my ears, and this time, my cry of relief rushes up from the deepest part of me, a wave of vulnerability I rarely allow myself to feel. The earth beneath the sand begins to tremble. Or perhaps, it’s the air itself that vibrates with power. Softly, at first. Then violent, like the ground has rent apart.
When I open my eyes, my terror recedes as the world goes dark. I can’t see Dawson, or the Strayed, or the siren.
Because the King of Carrion, nightmare incarnate, has found me.
Niko’s magic horrified me when it descended over the beach my first night in Letum. I hadn’t understood it then—the ripples of death, the destructive ruin. But now, I see his ribbons for what they truly are: reprieve.
A reprieve that blocks out the rest of the world, that shields me from the violent mayhem on the sand. They undulate over me, around me, but never touch my skin even as I reach for the comfort of their void. There is no more of the awful laughter, no more of the siren’s agonized lament. There isn’t even the crackle of the fire or the hush of a soft step on sand.
There is only silence—the final silence. And for the first time since I spied the Strayed, or maybe even since I arrived in Letum, my heartbeat slows. The blood rushing through my veins calms. My breathing evens as each of my muscles release, as my body relaxes into the comforting pull of the quiet.
As quickly as the darkness arrived, it retreats. Rippling silkily, it shreds apart, threading itself back into individual ribbons until the air clears to reveal Niko standing beside the fire.
Shivers scatter over me as I take in the feral burn of his gaze, so black against his deathly pale skin. Some of his ribbons wrap around his wrists and ankles, while others span out around him like a speared halo of power. He looks impossibly inhuman, a beautiful creature of fantasy and fable. If it weren’t for the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders, proof of his exertion, I’d almost believe I dreamed him up.
The bodies of the Strayed litter the sand around him in different stages of decay. I stare at them all, trying to wrap my mind around Niko’s power. One moment—that’s all it took for him to steal so many lives and leave their corpses as carrion.
I should be terrified when that black gaze flicks to me—at the way it rakes over my skin and burrows into my blood—the pure possession that expands in the fathomless depths. But I don’t cower from it. Instead, I let him stare, allowing him to take what he needs from me.
I’m okay. I’m not hurt. You can come back to yourself.
I see the moment he does. His throat bobs as he swallows roughly, and his lashes flicker with a few rapid blinks. Then he’s moving toward me on unsteady feet and kneeling down to untie my wrists. His scent washes over me, a surprising comfort considering the nature of what he just did. Sandalwood and something fresh, reminiscent of running through winter air.
Up close, he looks even paler than he had in the shadows of the firelight, but also more beautiful. His hair is wild, the tendrils almost as dark as his death. His features are stark with exhaustion, his lips pushed down into a frown. He is soft beauty and jagged edges alongside one another, an outward representation of the things that live inside him.
His gloved fingers tremor wildly as they brush the inside of my wrists, but he ignores it, studiously working at the knots. As the ropes fall away, his fingertips hesitate a hairsbreadth above where my skin has been rubbed raw by the bindings, just long enough that, for a wild moment, I expect him to run them softly over the burns, to soothe the sting of them. Instead, his ligaments tighten, and his hands jerk with another spasm.
When he notices my curious stare, he rises to his feet and tucks his hands into his pockets, even as sick understanding sinks low in my chest.
I’ve seen spasms like that many times before. In victims of torture.
Before I can ask, the siren lets out a singular, mournful note. It expands in my chest—all her pain and horror and agony pressing against my lungs—and my heart wrenches with the realization that she’s still alive and suffering. My eyes jolt desperately to the king’s. “We can’t leave her like this…we have to help her!”
Scrambling to my feet, I try to ignore the empty eyes of the Strayed and the pungent smell of decay as I wade through the bodies. Try to ignore how tiny a few of them are.
The king follows me silently, watching as I kneel beside the siren. Her remaining eye finds mine, a beautiful aquamarine against the red of her exploded capillaries. “Please…end my suffering.” The plea, hardly more than a whisper, summons a hollow of anguish in my chest. “Let me rest in the sea.”
A ball of emotion lodges in my throat. She knows there is no saving her; there is only sparing her any more horror. And god, I understand how consuming the longing for peace can be when your entire body is pain. For a brief moment, something dark and jealous winds through me, but I don’t stop to examine it. Instead, I look to Niko.
“Give her peace.”
He’s gone entirely still, but for the spasm of his fingers and the unnatural rattle of his breath.
“Please,” I try softly.
I’d thought Niko merciless, but that was before I felt the depths of his magic; before I felt the touch of his death. Some would run from the inevitability of such a touch, would find the finite end cruel, but I know the compassion of granting a freedom from pain. And if the King of Carrion is death, it means that despite the horror he contains, he possesses an inherent mercy as well.
“Please…help her. End her suffering.”
As he watches me for a moment longer, I realize it isn’t just his fingers that spasm. His lower lip trembles, the muscles of his jaw locking and then loosening, like he’s trying to keep his teeth from clacking together.
But he raises a gloved hand, carefully unwinding a ribbon from his wrist. It dances through the space between us, before floating gently down to caress the siren’s forehead. Softly, like the hand of a mother to a child. The siren’s eye closes, and her brutalized body relaxes, her last breath a soft exhale of relief that echoes in my soul.
Relief. Something I’ll never have. And Niko—Niko is the epitome of it.
I shove the thoughts aside, turning away from him to lift the siren. Leveraging my arms beneath hers, I slide her as gently as I can manage toward the sea. I focus on the burn of my muscles, on honoring her last request, the task keeping me from dwelling, at least momentarily. On what happened with the Strayed. On what happened in the years before I fell into Letum.
The water is cool as it laps up over my toes, but the sand is still warm as my feet sink into it. I soak the hem of my dress, wading as far into the lagoon as I dare. The water is calm now, the violent waves having given way to gentler rolls that help me ease the siren back into the water. Welcoming her back home.
When I peer into the distance, it’s to find three more of the creatures bobbing above the surface, their emerald hair sparkling in the same manner as the waves. Her sisters, perhaps.
“I hope you find peace,” I whisper to the siren, feeling the weight of our unspoken bond, forged in those last few moments of terror. And then I push her out to sea. As a soft wave carries her body toward her family, a high, clear note echoes through the lagoon.
Beautiful and haunting, it threads through my ribs and tugs at my heart, like the layered melody is a whirlpool pulling things long buried up from the depths. A rush of emotion crests over me, as the sirens disappear beneath the surface, and Letum is quiet once again.
Swallowing roughly, I turn back toward where Niko lingers on the shore. His expression is indecipherable, and as I wade through the water and back up onto the sand, I steel myself for the weight of his fury.
For escaping after he’d warned me not to. For running straight into the dangerous hands of the Strayed. For taking the time to show the siren mercy when the few that escaped his wrath could return at any moment.
But Niko doesn’t scold me.
He sways precariously. His body spasms. His eyes roll back in his head.
And the King of Carrion collapses to the ground.