by Jessa Lucas
I wanted him to move closer, to do things to me I never thought I’d want any man to do, ever, and the force of it overwhelmed me.
“Kiss me,” I said, my song halting abruptly.
“What?” Jude looked on at me tentatively, as though I were a creature of fragility and touching me would make me shatter.
“I want you to kiss me, Jude.”
“I don’t—”
“Kiss. Me.” The sound of the command was a strange guttural growl that frightened me.
What was wrong with me? His attention, his touch, his rescue— nothing was enough. I needed more.
I’d been wrong. There was something in me that woke with every song, with every brush of skin. A ravenous beast. The needs of a woman far older than me. I couldn’t stop her. She was uncontrollable.
I lunged at him.
“Whoa,” Jude laughed uncomfortably, pulling back. “Calm down a little. Have you done this before?”
“No,” I purred. “But I want to now.”
“I’m not sure—”
“Why aren’t you listening to me?” I hissed.
I should’ve been happy Jude didn’t obey— happy that he didn’t seem forced to like every other man. But whatever monster was inside me was too far gone. She was hungry, and not all that delighted that her prey wouldn’t bow down to her will.
It was like there were two people inside me, the innocent girl who watched on with horror as I did it again, the one who mourned the friend she had been so close to having— and then these raging hormones, this ungodly need that no sex-ed class had ever prepared me for. I didn’t know it would be like this, I didn’t know that such wants could be so dangerous... that I would have to fight tooth and nail just to stay human...
“Jude,” I said, my voice pulled taut with seduction, but I heard the threat in it. Heard the disguised lies. “Jude, please,” I clutched for him, pawing at him to come closer, but he pushed his body back through the grass, a confusion in his eyes as he looked at me.
I followed, dragging my body along as I crept after him, the lust turning to a rage I couldn’t control.
He must’ve thought I was just playing because he finally stopped moving away. I crawled on top of him, and the girl in me thought, maybe... maybe this beast inside would go away now. Maybe Jude wouldn’t think me so savage and strange after all, and he would kiss me.
Maybe he would still think I was beautiful.
But I suddenly registered that the seductress in me was no longer interested in seducing. She was spurned, and I watched as my hands climbed their way to his throat while every part of the real me screamed for control.
She was too strong.
My hands wrapped around his neck. “Erin— Saylor, stop—” My grip tightened, fingers pushing into his skin. So soft. So delicate. “What’re you—”
Jude gasped for air, choking, and I just watched in horror as he thrashed against me.
I didn’t know I could be so strong.
I didn’t know I could be so cruel.
I didn’t know— I didn’t know I was capable of any of this—
Jude’s beautiful body stilled beneath my hands, his eyes glassy and unblinking, and when I finally peeled the monster off him, it was my fingerprints that burned red against his throat.
I gasped, wrenching myself back to reality. Back to where Jude’s arms cradled me.
He was scanning my eyes, petting my face as I tried to exile the ringing from my ears. And then I realized it was in my throat.
I was screaming.
“Saylora? Saylora, you’re okay. You’re okay.”
Jude tried to calm me, but the only thought that rattled in my emptied mind as I looked deep into those eyes was that moments ago, they’d been lifeless.
What had I done?
Part III
The Breathless Bowman
Chapter 9
A Victim and Her Prey
I’d killed him.
Eyes glassy, body lifeless underneath my weight. Even now, I could feel Jude’s heartbeat lurching to the end of its heady rhythm, imagine his skin cooling against the grip of my bare hands. Hands that now shook before me, despite my best efforts to hold them still in my lap.
I took a deep breath in, counting to four and then exhaling the same way, trying follow Jabari’s instructions and look as little like a budding psychopath as possible.
“Good,” Jabari said, placing a comforting hand against my shoulder.
Only a handful of minutes had passed since my screams had erupted in the night and clamored through the halls of Abduult; bets were high that my watchmen would now be adding ‘banshee’ to my growing list of unfortunate supernatural labels. Sy had found me first and, after scooping my trembling mess of a body from a horror-stricken Jude, carried me here, where the shadows stretched long and dark like open mouths crying out from the corners.
Seated on a slab in the middle of what’d innocuously been dubbed “the healing room,” I stared out absently at the unsavory bottles lining the walls. More than a few contained sinewy-looking plants and mystery body parts.
“No harm in the making of this room”... not so applicable, apparently.
I feigned a deep fascination with the thick white threads of hair which were swimming in one of the jars, refusing to look up as Sy, Jude, and Jabari made one hell of a tense semi-circle around me. It was pretty easy to avoid their gazes, what with the intimacy of all that concern searing in their eyes. Especially in Jude’s.
Even Jude’s presence felt inconsequential when all I could see every time I blinked were those dead eyes of his staring up at me. Glazed over. Unblinking.
I couldn’t shake the ghost of that vicious siren from my bones. I’d now witnessed just how starving and mad she could be. Dream or not, that monster was inside of me. A capability— a compulsion— to kill in cold blood...
That was inside me.
I stood suddenly, swaying as I moved quickly and thoroughly to the corner to vomit. I retched, my stomach already long ago emptied of my dinner.
Jabari moved to me and I spun around, holding up a hand. “I’m fine. Really.”
“Saylora—”
“Seriously Jabari? Back off.” My voice shook with the command, and my gaze darted up to his only long enough to see the suspicious way he was eyeing me.
Burning down a house with people inside it for my own safety? That’d been scarring enough, “justified” as it may’ve been. But killing someone who’d torn me away from the fucked up consequences of my life—
I clutched my stomach again as the word murderer gnawed at me, swallowing back the vision of Jude suffocating as quickly as it came. These three had front row seats to my potential meltdown and, being their only hope or whatever, I didn’t really think I could afford to shatter into a million little pieces right now.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure which was worse— that I needed them and they knew it, or that they needed me and this was what I was.
Jabari cleared his throat quietly, drawing me out from the deep place in my mind where I was spiraling. “Saylora, you are having a reaction to some sort of enchantment.”
I shook my head, opening my mouth to deny it... but how do you tell someone you’re having a reaction to yourself? The second I admitted what I’d seen, these guys would tie me up. And not in the fun way.
Then, they’d lock me in here and we’d definitely all die.
I began to pace, holding in my gut like it was about to leap away from me.
“You did not go near the corridor on the fifth?” I heard Sy breathe to Jude. I stole another glance at the two of them as Jabari hovered over me. Big mistake.
Jude was as pale as the moon on a starless night, lips a firm line as he shook his head in response to Sy, seeming afraid to say anything. And Sy-- those rationed emotions, those stewing thoughts, forever hidden beneath the shadow of a troubled brow that even I could read tonight. I saw it there, that thing hanging just behind their concern. It was so clear in th
e way Jude and Sy surveyed me from where they stood a few feet back. As though I were unhinged. Delicate.
Like they pitied me.
“Saylora, you should sit and keep breathing.”
“There were seven of you,” I swallowed, ignoring Jabari and speaking loudly enough that Jude and Sy could hear. “Seven, in the beginning when we left Lithron. What happened to the other two?”
Sy stared at me, a great sorrow knitting his brow. “Saylor, please. Sit down—”
My fury rose to meet his sympathy. His avoidance.
“I will not be treated like this!” I bellowed. I’d overcome the the trauma of assault, persevered on the streets, fought my way to a place where I could sleep again at night and even cobble together a vision of a future for myself. Maybe it’d all just been a dream, but— hell, I was the girl in Fairytale Land who fucking woke up, and no prince even had to kiss me to make it happen. “I’m no one’s victim. Not anymore, not ever again,” I said, the conviction smoothing over my initial rage, “and I sure as hell won’t tolerate being the fragile damsel you worry over and whisper about. If you’d prefer me to be, you can get out.”
I straightened my spine and dragged my gaze over them, daring them to see me as anything less than who I’d fought tooth and nail to be, and who I was trying my best to be now: someone worthy of their allegiance.
“What happened to me tonight is not your concern,” I continued. “That’s all any of you need to know, and if you have a problem with that— again, door’s right behind you.”
Despite my regal posture and attempt at badass authority, my grip on the table’s edge tightened infinitesimally, something that didn’t escape Jabari’s watchful eye. He nodded at the other two in that secret language they had between them. Sy and Jude slipped out in somber silence, the door clicking shut behind them.
“Saylora, sit,” Jabari ordered. “Now.”
Shocked into obedience by a force I’d yet to hear in that gravelly voice, I sat.
“I’m fine,” I protested, my eyes quickly falling. I shrugged as convincingly as I could, wishing the gesture hadn’t been immediately undermined by my uncontrollable trembling. Even I wouldn’t have believed me.
“I cannot help you if you are going to lie to me,” Jabari said.
But I’d always been a liar. I didn’t know how to be anything else, not when nine times out of ten lying had looked like the same thing as self-preservation. A lot like the way it did now.
“Did you not just hear my speech?” I growled at him.
“The bravado was nearly believable, Princess. You shall remember it rightly soon enough.” The words were so infuriatingly Gilles-like, but it was clear in Jabari’s gentle tone that he didn’t aim to provoke me. He considered me a moment and then sighed, voice dropping, “We swore an oath to protect you at all costs—”
“I don’t want you to ‘protect me at all costs’—”
“I cannot do my duty if you refuse to be honest with me. I will never deceive you. But in matters such as these, Saylora, you owe me the same courtesy if you wish my vow to be of any benefit.”
“I didn’t swear an oath to you, did I?” I retorted. The look I received told me Jabari cared very little about this technicality.
An often overlooked part of me wished I didn’t have such an impulse to fight. Wished I truly felt safe enough that I could offer this man the honesty he asked of me. But three days in to an unremembered life, Jabari was still as good as a stranger to me.
They all were.
“Tell me what happened, Saylora, if indeed this was not borne of enchantment.”
I swallowed, eyes flickering from his hands to mine in rapid succession. My mouth opened— and I was so close to telling him, I really was— but the words “I killed him” got lodged somewhere in my throat. My gaze finally landed on the folds of my skirt. I couldn’t stand looking into those sea green eyes; it was like they could see inside me, down to the very place where I held my shame tight.
I frowned, pressing my lips together as my fingers idly flattened the ridges of fabric. “I’m afraid of what’s inside me, and what you’ll do if I tell you.” It was the best I could do.
“Tell me, what you saw,” he said gently.
“What I... saw?”
Jabari’s eyebrows were raised in question when I finally managed to peer up at him. “You have always been... tenacious, Saylora. From the very day I met you. I am not ignorant to what you are, or to why your excursions have been rather forward as of late.” He inclined his head and I got the distinct feeling he wasn’t just referring to my little game of footsie with him at dinner.
“But what I cannot conceive of,” Jabari continued, “is that the Grimms, malicious and tactical as they were, would structure a dream where your powers might be considered kindly by you… and yet, since waking you seem prone to indulge your siren instincts. There must be purpose to something which surely causes you unease.”
Jabari folded his fingers against the top of my hand, a gesture offered in understanding. I studied the lines and curves of his hand as though it were the most interesting hand I’d ever seen. After a few seconds, my skin began to tingle, the contact taunting all the mysteries which could uncoil with more dangerous touch.
My words were a reluctant confession. “How do you know? That I saw something.”
Jabari chuckled to himself. “Jude always had far greater skills than he either recognized or was willing to admit. He was by your side for that first decade, relentlessly. In all the ways I could qualify that outcome, there was none which lead me to believe his pursuits had no effect.”
“But—”
“You are a siren, Saylora,” Jabari smiled softly. “Your body is how you communicate, your breath is how you persuade. Seduction is your instinct, even amongst those on whom your powers do not have such supernatural effect. The more intimate the touch, the deeper the well it draws from.”
“Doctor-patient confidentiality?” I whispered. He nodded, this Earthism apparently not lost on him.
I killed Jude. I wanted to make my mouth form the words, to relinquish them as if the confession would set me free. But something in me knew better; all that those three words did was condemn me. They were the first step to admitting what I was.
Murderer, murderer, murderer.
“Saylora,” Jabari said, taking my face into his hands, “tell me or do not. But realize this: it does not make you any weaker to have suffered. It does not lessen us to admit the things which have hurt us. Any man who believes otherwise is a fool.”
“Are you saying I’m foolish?”
“Certainly not.”
I considered him. “Suffering feels a lot like weakness,” I admitted.
“Suffering makes us choose between our best parts and our worst. Choosing the right things in their difficulty is a sign of our strength, not evidence of our weakness.”
“But how do I know what to choose? How do I know what’s right?”
I was pretty sure Jabari didn’t know what we were talking about, but he’d already seen through me a record number of times in the last five minutes. As I looked up at the worlds in his star reader eyes, I wasn’t all too certain that he didn’t know exactly what I was asking.
“Strength, always. Courage, always. Hope—”
“Always,” I nodded, getting the picture. I sighed, rubbing a hand to my forehead to dispel the image of Jude’s dead eyes that would probably haunt me for the rest of my life.
“What do these things tell you?” he asked gently.
I opened my mouth, but he put a finger to his lips; he wasn’t asking me for a profession, but for a pause of internal clarity. I breathed out slowly, trying to stop the silent sobs building up in my throat from rupturing my steady exhale of air. Out, two, three, four.
Strength said that I could be better than what I saw of myself in a bad dream.
Courage said that no matter the cost, I had to keep my watchmen safe— strangers though they were.
/> And hope, the final nail in what was not so metaphorical of a coffin after all, said that I had no choice but to persevere.
Chapter 10
The Big (Very) Bad Wolf
When I left the healing room, I found Gilles pacing up and down the length of the hall, his brow furrowed. I folded my arms and watched until he caught my eye, the look he harbored immediately dissipating.
“No snarky comments to remind me how much you enjoy watching me suffer?” I asked when he didn’t immediately say anything.
Gilles only gazed silently at me as though time stood still, eyes unyielding and heavy. Then he bowed his head at me, I guess in acknowledgement of my “recovery” or whatever, and turned swiftly, retreating down the other end of the hall.
Well, okay.
My eyes lingered momentarily on Sy and Jude who were both leaning up against the wall, attention torn between my strange moment with Gilles and any further plans they had to analyze my wellbeing. Sy straightened like he was ready to escort me and I shook my head in his direction.
My turn to make like Gilles and swiftly retreat.
I hurried back up to my room, hands bound around my arms as if they were literally holding me together.
“Saylora. It is midday. Time to rise.”
I stirred, instantly feeling sorry for whoever had the gall to wake me up. When I opened my eyes, it was Jabari at my bedside.
“But I was having such an epic dream,” I managed dryly, voice still husky with sleep. I cut my tired eyes to him over the edge of my pillow. He smiled, albeit warily.
“Did we not speak of lying just the other night?”
“The sooner you realize I’m not going to spill all the beans to you, Jabari, the sooner I’ll be willing to accept that you’ll Sherlock Holmes them out of my mind anyway.”
“Up,” he said, tugging on my arm. “Or I shall summon Gilles, who I fear is a much less sympathetic rouser of the sleeping.”