She begins to sing.
The sound is both haunting and alluring, both captivating and liberating. It’s deadly beauty, sultry and sonorous. Addictive. My mouth opens of its own will, and words I’m not aware I know tear from me and interlace with Estelle’s. The air stirs around us as if it too is singing as she weaves her magic into me through song.
The warm wind feathering my skin finally ceases, and I open my eyes. Estelle stands before me, shoulders back, steadfast. Her shimmering wings once again contract behind her.
And then at least ten other winged women descend from their cliff. I recognize a few of them from before—including the pixie-haired one. They form a half-circle behind Estelle, though she keeps her attention on me.
“Enjoy the song, sister. It will bring you peace when you need it, and if the intent is pure, it will be a protection for you.”
Then one by one, each of the sirens meets me with a kiss on the cheek. Each press of their lips strings the song deeper against my bones. The jealousy and anger I felt the last time I was here is nowhere to be found.
“Thank you,” I tell them.
Estelle brings the bottle of blue-tinted tears to her lips and kisses it. “I also make a promise to you,” she says. “I will not use the tears unless it is for a pure purpose.”
I wait. The tears don’t hammer at my neck, don’t cry out in any way.
“I believe you,” I say, feeling oddly lacking without their chirpy opinions.
Estelle cocks her brow. “Now return to your companion. I am sure he is worried about you.” The sirens behind her giggle, some covering their mouths with delicate hands. I fight away the unease. If only they knew how things are between Talon and me now.
I face the stone stairway leading back to the tree-lined trail, but a thought strikes me. “Will the song let me read other people’s hearts, the way you can?”
Estelle looks to her sisters and smiles, then gives a little shrug. “It is possible, but we don’t know. The song has never been entrusted to a human. Never without a commitment to give your own life and become a siren yourself.”
I shiver and check behind my back for wings. Nothing appears to be different, not heavier or anything. I shift my shoulder blades. “Then why—”
“Let it suffice that your offer was great indeed. Sing the song to Talon Haraway. See what will happen for you.” The other sirens giggle again.
My jaw clenches, and heat weaves down and curls in my stomach. Regardless of what they think, there’s no way he’ll still love me. Not after he finds out what I’ve done.
Estelle’s wings spread, glistening like fabricated gemstones in the sky. The other sirens follow, lifting into the air, more graceful than any bird, rising to their meadow within the mountain.
“Well, well,” says an old voice as I reach the grass and the mossy rocks at Mt. Rhine’s base.
Solomus steps out from behind a tree. He’s changed into ratty-looking jeans and a different t-shirt. His two chunks of hair are tied in a knot directly on the back of his head. “Not just anyone can befriend the sirens. And yet, Ambry Csille from Cadehtraen, you’ve done it.”
My heart gambols inside me, wanting to test the old man’s self-control. I have to consciously settle it down. It’s rebellious, this newfound Song, and I’m tempted to give in and see how easily the old man can be ensnared. To have power over a wizard…it’s a daunting thought. So tempting.
“How do you know they’re my friends?” It feels weird to call them that, but I guess they are now.
“I watched you climb the mountain. It’s rare that anyone who ascends ever comes back. And, if I’m not mistaken, this is the second time you’ve done it.”
How does he know that? “What do you want?”
“Walk with me back to camp. It seems I am in need of some company.”
“Did you follow me here?”
“I was curious when you stalked off in the middle of the night,” he admits.
“I knew it. Those snores were way too loud to be real.” I begin walking, and he keeps pace in spite of his hunched-over hobble. “You heard Shasa attack me, too, didn’t you?”
He tilts his head to one shoulder. The sky mocks me—a cheerful blue with hints of yellow sunlight dabbing through to the gathering of trees in the distance.
“Why didn’t you do anything?”
“Talon needs to clean up his own messes,” says Solomus.
“You know everything, don’t you?” I ask with resignation.
Solomus has a shrug in his voice. “I know that he was scared when he awoke to find you gone.”
I’m not sure exactly what his powers are, but I’m starting to wonder if he can read minds or something. “How can you know that if you were here the whole time?”
“I don’t just see with my eyes.”
I wiggle my fingers in front of me. “Well, that’s a very wizard-y thing to say.”
He chuckles, and I’m surprised that a smile creeps to my lips, too.
“You’re not going to tell him, are you? Where I’ve been?” Solomus probably also knows what I just did, too, but he doesn’t seem to be upset about it.
“I’m not one to break confidences. I’ll let you deal with the consequences of what you’ve done.” His voice is lighthearted, as if he made a good joke.
“Just like you’re dealing with your consequences?”
“You really want to open that can of fish this morning?” he asks, still smiling.
I stifle a yawn. Now that it’s done, my mind is shutting down, drawing out the parched sleepiness under my eyes. “No. I guess not.”
Though Solomus slouches, he keeps pace with me easily. I’m a little worried about wearing him out, but he seems fine.
Talon clings to a tree branch, pulling himself up over and over. When we approach, he drops to the ground and runs to us. My skin pulls tight at the sight of him, and I tremble. His face bent toward me is more amazing, more heartbreaking than before.
His height, the breadth of his shoulders and lines of the muscles cutting beneath his shirt…One more step and he’s here. Heat creeps up and constricts in my chest.
“Ambry!”
My name on his lips, the relieved way he speaks it, is disarming. Sweat trails down his temples and circles the neckline of his shirt. “You’re back. Where did you—?”
“I told you I would find her,” says Solomus, covering for me.
Talon inclines his sweat-beaded head toward the wizard and moves closer. He must be really upset if he’s working out this hard.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
The question is a splinter. What am I supposed to say? You let me down, lied to me, sided with the enemy, but other than that everything is peachy.
Something pricks my heart like a gentle, learned hand striking the strings of a harp. The song nestles in as I look into Talon’s question-filled eyes. He seems to accept the fact that I don’t respond and nods, lowering his hands.
“I’m glad you’re back.”
I exhale. That’s it? I grunt and roll my eyes, striding past him, all of my nerves unstrung. In that moment I fully understand why Talon always trains when he’s upset. Right now I want nothing more than to kick some trees and picture them as Shasa.
“I keep screwing things up,” he says from behind me, tripping my resolve. His voice sounds different. Hopeless.
The sorrow in his voice extinguishes the fire in me. I pause and face him. Guilt gels in my stomach, especially now that I know the real reason he wants the tears. I’m far from anxious to find out what he’ll do when he learns I don’t have them anymore.
“But I’m going to fix it,” he says with forced assurance in his withered voice.
“How?” I glue my eyes to him. My heart beats just to hear his answer.
“Shasa needs my help,” he says.
Right. So much for expectations.
“I’m going to help her free Solomus’ granddaughter. And I’m going to kill Tyrus.”
“And that’ll fix it all,” I say, and it’s not a question. Where do I fit into that? Oh right. The tears.
Shasa needs help. Shasa Shasa Shasa.
The tiredness, the hurt, the anger, it all empties in an instant. With a heavy sniff, I scream and round on the nearest tree, kicking it as hard as I can in the center of its trunk. I chip several pieces of bark off, but all I really accomplish is a slightly hurt leg.
“What was that for?” Talon asks, a look of shock on his face.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? That you’re going to fix everything?”
“I don’t—”
“I’m glad you’ve got it figured out. Because you know what? I’m going to find Ren.” I trudge away from him.
“What?” He grabs my arm. His eyes crawl all over my face, open and completely exposed.
“Shasa’s a lovely girl, Talon,” I say as sarcastically as I can. He exhales and presses his lips together. “I’m sure you’ll be, you know, happy or whatever.”
“Ambry—”
“You found your wizard, got to the Arcs. And now I’m going to get Ren.”
He curses under his breath. “I told her not to talk to you.”
“Yeah, well, have fun with someone who doesn’t obey your every word.”
My feet smash the grass. “Ambry,” he calls behind me. I whip around, ready to retort. But his face is helpless and vulnerable—boyish—the way he looked the night of the backrub. The night he told me he loved me.
My pulse swivels. Let him say it again. Say you’re sorry. Say the tears don’t matter.
“There are things you don’t understand.”
The same line he used with Shasa. I deflate. “Do you think maybe it’s because you don’t bother explaining them to me?”
“Please don’t leave.”
“Where is Shasa?” I ask, unable to help myself. “Are you really going to marry her?”
His hand grips his belt.
“There’s something…I should…” He clears his throat, and I raise my eyebrows.
“You should?”
“You are…you’ve become…” He pauses, categorizing his words. “I’m not a free man, Ambry.”
“Just say it, Talon. Yes or no.”
“I am bound to my people by magic, and I can’t…I never should have led you on like this.”
“What are you saying?”
“Ambry, I’m—”
“You know what?” I don’t want to hear anymore. Don’t want to see anymore. “Go find your Feihrian and her maiden wizard. Don’t worry about me. I can hold my own. Thanks to you.”
Blood whirrs, pulsing against my neck. The stomping helps, but the racing thoughts don’t. After a few moments of stomach-punching silence, Talon is at my side.
“I need—” He exhales. “I need the tears.”
I throw my hands up. Of course. The only reason he kept me with him in the first place.
“I don’t have them anymore. I gave them to Estelle. To the sirens.” A nudge at my stomach comes from the mountaintop. As if the tears call out to me while I speak, letting me know they’re still where I left them. For a small second I wonder why they did that. I thought I was done with them.
Talon’s face goes from apologetic to enraged in an instant. His eyes turn to molten liquid. “You did what?”
“Search me if you want. You won’t find them.”
“I told you I needed them. Curse it! What do they need tears for?”
My eyes sting, drier than ever. The blade is back, digging at my heart.
“Go find Shasa. And her precious mistress. You don’t need me anymore, since I no longer carry your dumb tears.”
“Ambry!” he calls, but I know he won’t catch up this time. He has more pressing matters.
Everything crumbles in my chest. Talon doesn’t need me. The tears don’t need me anymore, either. They’re safe with the sirens. Gwynn hates me, thinks I want revenge for who knows what. I planned on telling Talon that I have the song and I have a way to break through the soldiers. But he’s too busy with his own agenda.
I’ll have to find Ren myself.
Shasa and Talon crouch near a log while Talon scrawls in the dirt with a long stick. He also points to the map spread beside him, muttering soft words. Shasa notices my entrance, and she devotes every ounce of her attention to me, lips tightened, eyes locked in a scowl so stark I’d be a fool not to notice it.
I glare right back, though I’m tempted to smile cheekily and wave at her. Or spew every nasty thought brewing through my head at this moment. I half consider sending the sirens to tame her vindictive attitude. No doubt they’d have my back, especially with Talon entangled in the mess.
Solomus sits on his red camp chair, flipping through a leather-bound book, its pages embellished with thick scrawl and the occasional image. He looks up when I approach.
“Ambry,” he says, smiling at me. “Just looking over a few last things before we move in. If you’re interested, we could use your help distracting the nymphs at the—”
“You said you’d get me back into the city if I asked.”
He lowers the book. “So I did. Are you sure that’s what you want?”
Chin high, I refuse to look at Talon, though I sense his gaze on my back. “Yes. More than anything.”
He gestures to Talon and his betrothed. “We will be leaving in a few hours. Would you consider waiting and accompanying—”
“I’m not waiting. Not anymore. I’d like your help, but if you’re not going to give it, then I’ll go by myself.”
Solomus closes his book. “Very well. A promise is a promise.”
Solomus leads me back to where the door was shattered the night before. He bends for a shard of the glass that was once a window back in Valadir and turns it within his palms. The sharp edges would cut anyone else, but they expand for him, stretching and forming the shape of a large mirror. Solomus props it up so it offers my full reflection.
I’m a mess. My long hair is still in its ponytail, my clothes are filthy, and dirt streaks from my cheek to below my ear.
“You could have done that at any time,” I say in awe. “Why didn’t you?”
Solomus raises an eyebrow. “Talon wanted you with him.”
“I had the tears,” I counter, not mentioning Solomus’s stint of thievery. He wouldn’t have cared what Talon wanted. Not that much.
“Touché, Miss Csille. Where to? Do you have an idea of where your brother is?”
Umm… “Not specifically.”
The only place I can think to start with is Tyrus’s barrack, near that large, white building. Or maybe the Triad palace. If Shasa wasn’t such a wench, I might ask her to go with me, since she just came from there.
The wizard steps away from the mirror, still reflecting my confused glance. It remains upright even though he no longer supports it. “Do you mind if I ask whether you have a plan or not? Talon was correct last night when—”
I cut him off. “I have a plan.”
He inclines his head. “Your brother was taken as a recruit, if I understand correctly. Let’s start with the soldier barracks then, shall we? I can’t set you directly there—too many people will notice your entrance. I’ll have to place you a ways outside of it. But you should be able to find your way once you arrive.”
My reflection vanishes, replaced by an expanse of street cutting between brick buildings.
“That’s what I was thinking, actually,” I say. “But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?” Solomus narrows his eyes at me. “How much do you know, Solomus? About what will happen? Do you have Sight, like your granddaughter?”
“I know enough from studying the prophecies, Ambry. But no, I don’t See, not the way Jomeini does.”
“What will happen once you get her back? You’ll infringe on Craven—you could start the war by doing this.”
“Don’t think I haven’t considered all the options,” says the wizard. “We will deal with what comes. But S
hasa has told me enough of how my girl is being treated. Mistreated or not, no one should live under tyranny, unable to make her own choices. It’s more than just slavery when you literally take a person’s will from them.”
It’s not just Jomeini he’s talking about either. I think about Weston back at school, about the people who were attacked at Black Vault, people who now belong to an Arcaian soldier, forced to do that soldier’s bidding.
“Is there a way to get the magic back, sir?” I ask. “Once it’s been taken?”
Solomus inhales and stares up at the tree-spoked sky. The mirror flickers for a small moment. “Not that I’m aware of, child. You’d better run along, before this door expires.”
The mirror flickers once more. Makes me wonder the extent of his magic and why something like this lasts only moments and yet his emotion-banishing spell has crossed generations.
For whatever reason I tiptoe up and kiss him on the cheek. His brows rise. “Goodbye, sir,” I say before stepping through the mirror, my feet crossing from dirt to pavement. I jump when the glass shatters behind me once more.
The street extends to the right and the left, bordered by tall brick buildings on either side. An odd smell hits my nose, like sulfur mixed with dirt. The white building, the Station Talon and I’d passed before, rises in the distance, reminding me of the tall white water tower back home.
I think about Grisly and the other deserters being led to where all those tents had been set up. I’ll start there. And if anything, that white building is probably a good indicator.
The teardrop jounces beneath my shirt as I run past buildings, tripping on debris, riding on the hope that the next corner will reveal my direction. Or the next, or the next. But one street wires into another, curving one way before taking another course entirely. I slow outside the windows of a bakery, smelling the aftermath of freshly baked goods, taking in street signs, looking past the panicked glances of my reflection. Harbor Corner Crafts, D Street, Willner Avenue, none of these sound familiar in the slightest.
The streets are completely empty. No shoppers, no frantic citizens, not even the stores’ proprietors staring at me from within their stores.
Such A Secret Place (Stolen Tears Book 1) Page 25