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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"You sure that collar will keep her mouth shut? I don't have any cotton in my ears at the ready."
My back slammed against a hard surface every few moments, and there was a pounding pain behind my eyelids.
Something sharp was digging into my throat, but I couldn't reach up to remove it.
What was going on? Where was I?
I must've made some kind of nose, though, because the thing around my neck—the collar—tightened ever so slightly against my neck.
I would've whimpered again had it not been for the not-so-subtle warning that one simple sound and I would be impaled on the spikes wrapped around me piercing like daggers.
It wouldn't kill me...but I wasn't sure about the powers imbued in the collar around my neck, if it was equipped to decapitate the wearer after one too many sounds...
and I wasn't brave enough to find out if it was capable of one of the few ways to kill a Siren.
"Shit. What the Everworld was that?"
"What? I didn't hear anything."
Oren's voice rumbled from the uncomfortable surface my head was lying on, so that must've meant that it was his chest.
"Shut the fuck up, Briggs. You hear that?"
The soldier named Briggs cursed again at Oren who'd told him to be quiet and then suddenly I was falling, falling down toward the ground still soaked with the rain from the tempestuous storms that had threatened to drown us all with its might and power during the attack on Hefeta.
I had no idea if we were still there, in Hefeta, or if they'd stolen me away somewhere far enough to keep the Sirens and soldiers from being able to come after me.
And then the most peculiar of things began happening.
Shadows slithered from the dim light cast off from the lonesome moon in the sky.
They seemed to writhe around as if they had a mind of their own, careful not to touch a single living thing, for when they scraped across the ground—ashes.
Nothing but blackened ash arose from the dead leaves on the ground where the shadows touched them.
Coiling around live oaks and towering pines, the shadows seemed to swirl and unfurl in the air around it, as if afraid to do anything other than search.
Not to destroy, but to seek for its one purpose.
The subject of that purpose, I was unsure, but I kept my mouth shut, even as I sailed through the sky and was one second from hitting the ground beneath my face.
Until a strong arm reached out and grabbed me, yanking me against a rough, hard chest.
