by Sacha Black
“Was it a bad one?” he says, stroking my hair.
I look up at him. I don’t need to say anything; they’re always bad.
“No one is going to hurt me, Eden. They’re just dreams, and that’s exactly what Sheridan will tell you a couple of nights from now.”
“I know,” I say, weakly.
“Go get ready,” he says, and the excitement bubbling in his eyes makes the last of the dreams disappear.
“Okay,” I say, and take myself into the bathroom to shower and get dressed.
A couple of hours later, after breakfast and coffee with Kato and Bo, we leave our penthouse apartment and take the public train back into the center of Siren City and to Trey’s mansion.
Trey leads me down a mansion corridor I’ve not been through before. Even though I’ve spent most of the summer in the South, I still find corridors and rooms I’ve not been in. We walk down a set of marble stairs that spiral all the way into the basement. The walls in this corridor are dappled white marble that suck the heat out of the air. It’s strange to feel cool in the South. Hanging on the walls are fire lanterns, which at least give the perception of warmth.
The floor is made of white marble too, and etched into the stone at regular intervals is the Siren symbol: a pair of hands controlling a heart. Instead of gold etching, like I usually see, the symbol is white. I stare at each passing symbol, a gnawing in my gut as I try to work out why they feel odd. Kneeling on the floor, I touch the marble. The etched symbols are cold and hard like a floor should be, but I’m sure the symbol is moving. Maybe it’s the light from the flickering fires. I raise my hand, drawing on my element power to siphon a small orb of fire from the closest lantern. Once the fiery ball is at my eye level, I move it over the symbol. It is moving. Rippling almost, like it’s not made of cream stone but liquid sprinkled with shimmering gold.
“What is that?” I say, pointing to the liquid running through the symbols.
I return the fire orb to the lantern and stand up.
“Power,” Trey says, and continues walking.
As we move through the basement, a light thud beats around the hallway. It’s musical almost, and the further we go, the louder it gets. It vibrates the walls, the floor, and as it crescendos, my chest too. I’m no longer sure if I’m hearing it in my ears or feeling it in my body.
“Where are you taking me?” I say.
“To the source.”
“The source?”
“Yeah, to the source of all our power.”
“What do you mean? I thought the First Fallon was the source of all our power?”
He stops and turns to me, “What I’m about to show you, only the most trusted of Siren elders know about. As a Fallon you swore an oath to the East and the elements; a Siren Fallon has another oath. One of protection, one of dedication, and utmost secrecy. The First Fallon isn’t the source of all our power; she’s just the first embodiment of it. She might be more powerful than us, but she’s no more a god than you, or I.”
“Why doesn’t everyone know about this? How do you even know?”
“I know because of the time I spent with her after I Inherited, but as for everyone else… How many centuries has war governed the border between the East and the North?”
“For all of history,” I say, shifting on the spot and wondering where this is going.
“Exactly. There have been wars over: power, who the most powerful Keepers are, who deserves to reign over Trutinor, and who came first, the Elementals or the Shifters. But do you not find it odd that we Sirens, who can control any Keeper we wish, have never contested that right?”
I cock my head at him. The Book of Balance says that the first Keepers to be created were the Elementals followed by the Shifters. I’d never considered that the Sirens might think of themselves as the most powerful.
“I suppose I’d never thought of it like that. So why haven’t you contested it?”
“Because we don’t need to. Our true purpose is to keep the source of all power safe. Even from the First Fallon. If a constructed state hierarchy has bred a centuries-old civil war between the East and the North, can you image what the possibility of harnessing power like this would do?”
“But what is it you’re protecting? What is the source of all power?”
“The Heart of Trutinor,” he says.
I stare at the walls, my eyes bugging wide as I realize what he’s saying. “The beating…” I say, “it’s real?”
“It’s real.”
“A heart?”
He nods.
“So the liquid…?”
“Blood,” he says, and continues walking.
I stare at the floor, looking at it in a new light, and make sure to pick my feet up off the symbols as if it might somehow hurt the heart.
“Why do you want to do this?” I say, a sudden nervousness attacking my insides. “You haven’t spoken much about what happened between you and the First Fallon, but is this some kind of revenge plan? Gain enough power you can destroy her before the prophecy makes us?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Not revenge.”
“Then why?” I say, relief washing over me.
“Because I don’t want to fear her anymore.”
I reach for his hand, wondering what awful things she did to him.
“If the prophecy is true, and war is coming, then yes, one day we’re going to have to destroy her. And controlling both parts of the Heart of Trutinor will help us to do that. But it’s also a sacred Siren ritual, and it will connect us in ways even I can’t imagine.”
“Okay,” I say, and continue to follow him.
We reach a set of iron gates, with three interlinked cogs attached to a lock. Trey puts the palm of his hand out flat and commands his essence to appear; a head, with a flurry of flashing images flying around its skull – memory – materializes, and the cogs twist and turn, grinding as the gates creak open. At the next set of black wrought gates, the same cog lock secures the gate but attached to them is a black spike. Trey presses his index finger to it, and a drop of blood rolls down the spike. The gates groan open, and we pass into the next corridor.
We pull to a stop outside a large black door. Engraved on the door are the words:
DEFENSOR CORDIS
“Keepers of the Heart,” Trey says, nodding to the words. He takes my hands, “Are you sure you’re ready for this? Once you pass this door, you swear a lifelong oath to protect the Heart of Trutinor.”
“Trey, I am ready for anything as long as I get to spend the rest of my life with you.”
He pulls me into his arms and kisses me, his lips moving over mine in slow, hungry circles. I kiss him back, pushing my body against his. I have a fleeting desire to skip the whole mystical Siren Ceremony and head straight to his room instead. But I think I’m starting to understand why he wants to do this.
He pulls away to look me in the eye. “I mean it, Eden, this will be…” he pauses and scratches the stubble across his jaw, “intense.”
“We’re already Bound. Our souls are literally connected for eternity. How much more intense can it get?”
He smiles, soft, wanting, his eyes glittering in the fire lanterns hanging above us, “That’s the point, Eden. I want to give you everything. Every part of me. Always and forever. My parents never did this ritual together, so my mother was the only Keeper of the Heart. But I don’t want any secrets between us. I want to give you all of me, and this is a part of me.”
“Okay,” I say, reaching up to kiss him again, “okay.”
He brushes his lips over my jaw and neck occasionally kissing my skin. When he reaches my ear, he whispers, “Do you consent to compulsion?”
I pull back, “Why do you need to compel me if I’m willing to take the oath?”
“This isn’t normal compulsion. They won’t command you to do anything you don’t want to, and I will also be under compulsion. The compulsion will only bring to the surface whatever is already in your heart.”<
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“Then I consent,” I say, and he smiles into my neck, picks me up, and pins me against the wall, kissing me hard, his hands roaming over my top, his fingers skimming the skin under my waistband. When he draws a breath, his eyes are fiery blue, and we’re both breathing heavily.
“I love you,” he says, then he puts me down and pushes the door open behind us.
The room is grand but simple. It reminds me a bit of Trey’s bar, and I wonder if that’s a subconscious choice on his part. The walls are split in half, the lower part made of soft maroon leather, with chesterfield buttons depressing the fabric at uniform intervals. The upper part is one long continuous mirror, looping around the room and framed in gold. I can’t help but feel self-conscious as I see my face repeating infinite times in the mirror’s reflection. The floor looks like black marble, but my feet sink into it as if it’s plush tufts of carpet. Hanging from the mirror on the back wall is a large carving of the Siren State symbol. There’s no furniture in this room. Except for a collection of cushions, a small circular table with a cup, knife, and ribbon on it, and in the center of the room, a marble fountain with the heart resting on a plinth in the center. It’s gigantic, perhaps bigger even than a full-grown wolf. It beats, slow, rhythmic, and loud. The vibrations, or maybe it’s the power in the air, make my head giddy as I make my way toward it. I walk around the fountain and take a sharp breath; the white heart is damaged. Cut in half. The other side is missing. The room smells like Trey: thick with frankincense and summer breeze and something else – the metallic tang of blood. As the heart pulses, it bleeds. Shimmering cream blood flows from the heart, pouring over the plinth and down into a circular hole in the floor surrounding it. It must be how the blood is flowing under the symbols in the corridor.
Glancing around the room, I realize we’re not alone; there are two elder Sirens hovering in the corner. I only recognize one of them: Bertrum.
“Bertrum,” Trey says, holding his palm up to greet him.
Bertrum bows deeply. “Fallon Luchelli,” he says before putting his palm up to exchange a little power between them.
I shake his hand and frown. It’s cold, icy almost, and the sensation travels up my arm and into my throat where it sticks. Did he just compel me?
He smiles, but he doesn’t respond to my pinched expression.
“And this is Amori,” Trey says, gesturing to the young Siren woman on Bertrum’s left. She is breathtaking, and it makes me feel even more self-conscious. Most Sirens are brunettes, all bearing the same year-round tan, locks of thick brown hair, and blue eyes. But she is different. Her hair is golden blond; it reminds me of Evelyn. Her skin is smooth and appears even more tanned against her golden waves and watery grey eyes.
“Bertrum and Amori are Siren elders. Both are rare and gifted Sirens wielding two of our most powerful abilities: truth and love.”
“It’s an honor to meet you,” Amori says, her voice full of the familiar silk of compulsion tones. She lifts my hand to her mouth and curtsies as she places her lips on the back of my hand.
I suck in a breath. Where her lips meet my skin, a pulse of electricity squeezes through my hand and up my arm and into the same spot in my throat as Bertrum’s icy compulsion. When she removes her lips, her eyes remain on me, a sly smile spreading across her mouth. There’s a tingling in the imprint of her lips.
“What was that?” I ask, but she continues to smile and doesn’t answer.
I blink, suddenly feeling woozy. The room throbs in time to the heart’s beating. Even the walls and mirrors seem to wax and wane as if they aren’t glass and stone but flimsy rubber.
In turn, they take Trey’s hand and bow, kissing his skin like they did mine. His eyes gloss over. At least whatever compulsion they’ve placed on me, they’ve put on him too.
“What are we doing?” I say, but the words slur in my mouth as I speak. My legs weaken, so I lean on the edge of the marble fountain.
This close to the heart, the stench of iron and blood makes my nose wrinkle.
“How can half of it be missing and it still beat?” I say.
“We don’t know,” Trey says, coming to my side, “we also don’t know where the other half is.”
Standing this close to the heart, I notice that as it squeezes in and out, so too do six faint threads of essence: violet for the East, black for the North, green for the West, maroon for the South, blue for the Ancient Forest and silver.
“There’s six, not five,” I say, my words jumbled. Bertrum puts his arm around me, helping me down onto some cushions. The plinth the heart is resting on lowers in silence until it’s at our level on the ground.
I sit next to Trey, and on the other side of the small coffee table, Amori sits. Bertrum takes the knife, cup, and ribbon and sits on the other side of the coffee table with her.
“Just because the First Fallon banished Aurora and her kind, doesn’t mean Trutinor has forgotten her,” Amori says.
“Their power still exists in Trutinor,” Bertrum adds.
Oh, I think, my head thick and foggy. The walls pulse harder, and the vibrations from the heart beat inside my chest making it hard to breathe.
I grab Trey’s shoulder to steady myself.
“Defensors Cordis, Keepers of the Heart,” Bertrum starts, “do you swear to give your life, your essence, and your Binding to the protection of the Heart of Trutinor?” He turns to me first, indicating that I should place my palm out flat.
“I swear,” I say, and he draws the knife over my palm. I wince, as warm red blood pools in my hand, then I’m giggling, and I’m not sure if it’s the compulsion or the lightheadedness from blood loss.
Bertrum passes Amori the knife. She speaks to Trey, “Defensor Cordis, Keepers of the Heart, do you swear to give your life, your essence, and your Binding to the protection of the Heart of Trutinor?”
“I swear,” Trey says, and she draws the knife over his hand.
Amori and Bertrum tip our hands over the edge of the fountain, and droplets of our blood pour into the fountain of white. Steam sizzles up from the circular pool, forming smoky strands: one violet, one maroon. Amori takes a cup from the table, dips it in the fountain, and fills it.
“Drink,” she commands.
“The blood?” I say, my face creasing.
“Don’t think of it as blood but as the life source of Trutinor,” she says, her voice smooth and comforting.
“Okay,” I say, my words sounding more and more slurred.
I take the cup with my non-bloody hand and drink. It’s hot, burning hot, and I cough as it slides down my throat. My vision brightens as if someone switched on a blaring spotlight. Everywhere I look there’s color. It threads through the room, the walls, the floor, and the air, hovering around Bertrum and Amori. My mouth falls as I realize what I’m seeing: Trutinor’s essence. It’s in everything, reflected in the mirrors, flowing, pulsing through every atom like a rainbow of oxygen.
“Woah,” I say, wobbling in my seat. Bertrum catches me and holds me upright.
“Now Trey,” Amori says, taking the cup and handing it to him. He sips, and his face falls slack as he observes the same intoxicating mirage of color I do.
“Your hands,” Bertrum says. I raise my good one, and he smiles, “I know this is difficult, but try to stay conscious a little longer.”
I giggle as my arms refuse to respond, but eventually, with a little aid, I manage to raise my bloody hand up to where Trey is holding his. He’s grinning like an idiot, and I wonder if I look as silly as he does.
Bertrum holds our hands together. “Palm to palm, blood to blood, essence to essence,” he says.
Amori picks up the maroon ribbon and wraps it around our wrists and hands. “Each of you must answer two questions of the soul. These answers will seal the oath. Bertrum…?”
“Our greatest strength lies in overcoming our greatest flaw and our deepest fears,” he says, one of his hands gripping my wrist and the other, Trey’s, “as Keepers of the Heart, we must share
our greatest fears so that together we can overcome them to honor our oaths. What is your greatest fear?”
Trey doesn’t speak. There’s a cold tug in my throat, the nudge of compulsion. I answer because it’s an easy answer. Losing my parents was one of the worst things that could happen to me. There’s only one thing I fear more. “Losing everyone I love,” I say, “losing Trey.”
Trey’s gaze falls on me, pain behind his eyes; he’s lost as many people as I have. But I know that’s not what plagues his heart.
“Losing control of my emotions,” he says.
Amori dips her fingers in the cup of blood and dabs them on our free arms where our wrists meets our hands, “And what is your greatest desire?”
This answer is even easier.
“Trey,” I say, blushing.
“Eden,” Trey says, leaning toward me. “In this lifetime…”
“And all the lifetimes to come,” I finish the sentence for him.
I lean the rest of the way in so I can kiss him, but Amori places her hand between us, “Not quite yet, you don’t…”
She nods to Bertrum, and they speak together, “We Bind you with truth and love, blood and heart, essence and oath, to serve, protect, and keep the Heart of Trutinor with your life, your essence, and your Binding. You have taken an oath, which you must honor till death. This mark, is the promise you have made to Trutinor.”
Where she dotted blood on my wrist, it heats up, a white scar appearing. It’s shaped like the half-heart that beats before us.
“Will you honor this oath?” they ask.
“I will,” Trey and I mumble.
I gasp as our words pop into existence. Like molten gold smoke, they hover in the air, the smoky words joining to form a thicker, singular ‘I will.’ They quiver and disintegrate into a thin strip of smoke that loops around our tied hands, splits in two, and burrows its way into our skin.
I yelp as heat floods my system. My head kicks back; a bright blue spark pulsates in my vision, spreading into my chest. Between the folds of my V-neck shirt, it beats in time with the Heart of Trutinor. When I look up at Trey, the same spark is nestled in his bare chest. Then it winks out and reappears in our wrists, turning the white scar momentarily blue.