Siren's Song Read Online Free Page A

when he turns is quite clear. Like hulls.
    Not that it matters because the next second we’re doused in torchlight—hundreds of flickering beams igniting the dark and splaying out beyond the airship. Shouts surround us—sharp and angry above the noise of the broken, whining engine.
    There’s a sound of scraping and bumping, and something’s being shoved up against the ship’s side while the furious voices beyond only grow louder.
    â€œHalt where you stand!”
    The man’s accent is odd. Like Princess Rasha’s.
    Tramping feet draw closer as a head appears above us, from the ship’s side that’s tilting upward.
    â€œWe’re refugees come from today’s battle in Tulla,” Eogan calls out in a weakened yet somehow still king-like tone. “I demand to see Queen Laiha.”
    A commotion beyond the man grows and suddenly he moves aside, and the boarding plank he came up on is swarming with guards dressed in the same purple colors I’ve seen Rasha wear so often.
    Eogan raises his arms. “I’m Eogan, king of Bron, elder brother to the once-king and now-deceased Odion whom I slew in battle. I have urgent news for your queen regarding Princess Rasha and the monster Draewulf.”
    His next words are lower, muttered, and it’s not until a few heartpulses go by that I realize they’re intended for me. “Do not react.”
    Because two seconds later a scuffle erupts and I’m watching what looks to be a black bag shoved over his head just before one comes down on my own.
    And everything is dark.

CHAPTER 3
    T HE SKY OVERHEAD BARKS LOUD.
    Fingers grab the collar at my throat and yank me forward while others grip my wrists and in three seconds bind them before feeling down the outside of my dress skirt.
    I wrench forward and kick out, but my foot connects with only air as the hold on my neck tightens and forces me still. They’re searching for weapons, not pleasure.
    When the hands reach my ankles, the owner grunts. He’s found my knives. The groping fingers confiscate them, and the hand at my throat yanks me forward to walk up the sloping deck. I feel out the grooves in the metal boards beneath my leather boots to help me shuffle the unreasonable number of paces before my toes bump into the plank.
    The hand tugs again and I step up onto the wood—and it’s all I can do to blindly focus on my footing while the blasted guard leads me by my dress down from the ship. Like a heifer for auction.
    It sparks sickly recollections of being led to auction five, ten, fifteen times from the age of six until my final selling two months ago in the autumn of my seventeenth year. Except the hoods I wore then were used to hide my waist-length, stark-white Elemental hair, not to hinder me from seeing where I was headed.
    I always knew where I was headed.
    I let the sky crack another angry growl. I’m tempted to be done with this and light up wherever we are with a burst of energy, but Eogan’s caution moments ago rings in my ears. “Do not react.”
    Fine. I purse my lips—only to have my feet stumble when I reach the plank’s base. My boots barely stop me from tripping onto what feels like slick stone slabs beneath them.
    The fingers at my neck stiffen and snag the edge of the hood over my face. Rather than yank it off though, they wrap into it and tighten until the cloth is clamped and sticking to the blood on my nose. Every inhale pulls the material into my mouth, and I jerk backward and twist my hands behind me. But again I touch nothing. Just like I can’t hear anything other than the hurried tramp tramp tramping of boots and stifled voices speaking to each other.
    Slow down, Nym. Inhale through the cloth.
    â€œThis one claims . . . of Bron . . .”
    â€œTake these . . . rest . . .”
    â€œThe girl’s with me and . . . stays with me. So are . . . two boys,” Eogan’s muffled voice says from somewhere