Josephine's voice kills any man who hears it-except for the assassin sent to capture her for the king that's been chasing her all her life...but what happens when he decides he doesn't want to hand her over and keep her for himself instead?
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"So, here's the plan," I began, Inala watching me curiously through half hooded lids in the idle rocking of the carriage.
The Siren stared at me as if I'd interrupted her precious mealtime with her favorite food.
"Plan for what, exactly?"
"Getting away from Oren."
Her lips tipped up in an indulgent smile.
"Go on," she touted, amusement flickering through her blue eyes.
"First, we wait until the carriage makes it out of the caves. Then, when he stops again, the both of us will attack him with this."
I presented my dagger, the very same one that Oren had given to me before the kidnapping had commenced.
I wasn't prepared for Inala's laughter, loud and cackling and outright obnoxious.
Daggers shot from my eyes toward her as her lithe frame continued shaking from her peals of chuckling until they finally subsided.
"I'm sorry, master, but why would you want to escape Oren?"
She said his name as if he were a harmless insect and of little significance.
"Why wouldn't I? He's an incompetent brute who stole me away in the night to serve his own purposes. Not to mention he transforms into a beast at night."
"Ah, I actually forgot about that. Well, you'll be happy to know that aside from turning into a dog at night, Oren is relatively harmless."
"A dog? Really, Inala?"
I jumped at Oren's voice as it reached us toward the back of the carriage where he was astride his small brown mare, far enough away from us that he shouldn't have been able to overhear our conversation.
"Ah, the mutt has the ears of a dog, as well. You'd better get used to that, too," she remarked, kicking her newly booted feet atop the bench beside the two of us, hands cocked back behind her head as she rested her eyes.
Well.
Apparently I wasn't getting anywhere with her.
I eyed the small window in the carriage where I could spot Oren straddling his horse, eyes forward and large frame corded with sinewy muscle glowing in the shafts of light that protruded from the holes in the rock installations above us.
Crystals glowed along the walls of the mountain cave as we traveled further into its inky depths, the musty scent clinging to the insides of my nose as it grew darker and darker until even the smallest of holes in the foundation could barely let the light in from the outside world.
For a moment it was pitch black, no light to be found anywhere, as if all of the brightness in the world had been leached out.
I was about to cry out to Oren and demand he turn around, or even jump off the carriage and run the opposite way—until something very peculiar happened.
