Black Pearl

Chapter 21

I should have wanted to fight. I should have wanted to scream and yell, even though I knew that no one would be close enough to hear. I should have done something to save myself, dagger or not. There should have been some part of me that wanted to walk away from this.

But something in me was twisted and spent. I felt like I had already beat the odds once. I had broken the rules and escaped by the skin of my teeth. It had been luck that had saved me. Now, I had been foolish and the universe was punishing me. Or maybe this had always been my fate and no matter how hard I fought it, it would always return. I could escape this time, only to be hunted again or to walk into another trap.

I could not defeat three men who were experienced in this kind of thing. Maybe if I had been like my sisters, I could have commanded the swamp water around me. It wasn't much and it was impure, but it might have been enough for the stronger sirens. I could have raised waves that would strong enough to knock them all off their feet. I could have spoken in a sweet song that convinced them to let me go.

But I was not a siren equipped with powers that made the common man tremble. Just as I was not a resourceful, scrappy human woman who would have been smart enough to avoid this situation entirely. I was some kind of useless mix of both, powerless and raised in ignorance.

I tried to pull my hands apart once. The rope didn't give, biting into the skin on my wrists instead. 

After that, my shoulders slumped with defeat and my head dropped down.

"That's a good lil thing. You aren't gonna give us any trouble. Are you?"

I said nothing, just stared at my quaking hands, wishing so badly that I had turned a blind eye and remained seated in that noisy tavern. It seemed that those who minded their own business and didn't interfere with the works of the world were the ones who stayed safe.

Geoffrey stepped towards me, releasing his grip on my bound wrists, and his fingers moved towards the strings that laced up the front of my bodice. I was barely able to raise my eyes, feeling so sick before he even touched me. A deviant smirk stretched over his features, his eyes so hungry. This was it. This was the nightmare that haunted me whenever I was alone in the dark, whenever I walked through a narrow alley or someone spoke too loudly.

A glint of silver flashed and a blade was pressed up against the man's thick neck.

"If you value your life, you best not lay a hand on her," a voice warned from the dark. It was a voice I had committed to memory. 

Leo.

My legs would have given out with relief had I not seen the two other men, John and William, both retrieve arrows from their quivers. They might have struggled with killing werewolves, but I didn't doubt that they could take out a single human.

I let out a soft whimper. But the sound was covered by a whizzing noise, then a solid thump. 

Both John and William froze. In the dim light only offered by the flickering lantern, I could see the feather of two arrows, the heads buried in the trunks of trees on either side of the pair.

"I wouldn't do that either," Leo said. I could hear a smile in his voice.

Geoffrey's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed audibly. The short knife remained against his throat, at the ready. His hands slowly came upwards in an act off surrender. "Listen, if you want her, you can have her. We don't want any trouble, we can just put all of this behind us."

The blade twitched closer to jugular. 

The arrogant smirk was no longer carried in Leo's tone when he spoke again. "She is already mine. And if you didn't want any trouble, you'd let women walk home alone at night with no problems. You wouldn't hunt werewolves for sport. You wouldn't be giving my kingdom a bad name with our allies."