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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"She's gone! Someone, help me! Please—she's gone!"
The Siren's begging turned hysterical as night fell upon the Siren community of Hefeta.
Oren's beastly cry rattled the night.
"Inala, Warrick, get Josephine back in Sabira's home. Protect her at all costs."
Blocking the scene of a Siren crying on the ground clutching a torn wisp of a white and golden robe in the grass beside the meat smoking building, Warrick turned to me with a grave seriousness robbing all his features of any light there might've been when he was clutching Erinna to his chest.
Warrick followed Olesia's order even as considering her elderly state I would've assumed her to be more at risk than me if danger was near, but when Warrick spotted the soldiers on the hill just as I did, he seemed to relax at the fact that the reinforcements were on their way to protect their Elder.
Inala clasped a rugged hand on my upper arm and didn't let go even as I protested.
Even as I pulled and tugged and tried to get one last glimpse at what was left of the girl who'd been stolen.
"Please help me! She's just a little girl! She's my little girl—dear Etana please please don't let her be residing in your world already! I pray to you Etana, Goddess of the Everworld, don't take my baby from me yet. Don't take her, it's too soon! She's too young!"
The Siren's wails turned to something resembling a song, and just as Warrick plugged his ears to hide from the force of the Siren song that would kill him, Erinna was there, placing cotton in his ears and tugging him forward into Sabira's doorway, out of earshot of the deadly song piercing the night.
Though she did not have the strange white milky smoke pouring out of her mouth like I did as of late when the song spilled out of me, the agony dripping off her song burned me just as much as my acidic cloud of demise that seemed to destroy anyone or anything in its path.
"Josephine, let's go. You need to get inside."
Except Inala's words weren't as fervent as they should've been.
Instead, I could tell she found herself wanting to join in on the song the woman in front of us was suffering out, her notes weaving a tale of a loss and heartbreak so potent I found myself falling forward on my hands and knees, the lilting pull of my very essence begging me to join her.
The men were already searching the thick copse of trees surrounding the mountains on all sides of the Siren community. They'd have had cotton in their ears for situations just like these.
I pushed forward through the crowds of Sirens standing about whispering and crying and hugging each other until I knelt before the woman lost in her trance that had barely reached a volume for the others to hear.
Olesia and the other Elders were nowhere to be found in the crowd of Sirens all gathered around a grieving mother who'd just lost her daughter somehow to what had to be the King of Valencia.
