TRIGGER WARNING: Major character death, it’s a violent death and is of a main character, grief over the death

Chapter 11

Hypnotizing Predator

I start to lull off into a trance, pulled into the Siren’s song, but I yank myself out with gritted teeth, and not without great effort.

I hear chattering clicks and hums that pitch high and low, an entrancing kind of song that draws louder and louder until I finally see the Siren.

The Siren bursts from the waters below, erupting in a spray of colors that I know would be far more vibrant if I could see more than greens and blues and greys. Some small part of me wishes I could see it all, but the rest of me is seized by a fear so strong that I very nearly turn around and bolt, the deep, primal instinct to flee hovering over me so thick and all-consuming as it is.

Mist hangs in the air for several moments before tumbling back down to the roaring waves.

Two toes and a dew claw sink into the stone cliffs like its soil. Sunlight glints on the surface of the Siren’s skin, reflecting off the dripping water, the lines of its gills as it draws in a breath.

How can it breathe out of the water? Shouldn’t it be suffocating right now?

Milky, murky creamy yellow eyes streaked with lines of every color but no pupil gaze at everyone.

The Siren inhales a long breath, baby blue chest seeming to suck up all the air through flared blue-grey gills that I know in my gut are purple because it’s the exact same shade of blue-grey as the King’s damn fucking suit as he sat on the Amethyst Throne and its constantly shifting mirage of purples. The Siren opens its jaws, full of long, mismatched teeth that don’t line up but somehow make it all the more unsettling. Its frills of jagged teal-green lines against a greyed-out yellow I guess is a blinding orange that would make for a dizzying display flare out as it chatters its jaws, then begins to click, a thrumming sounding in its stomach and deep in its throat as its body spins and contorts in a twisting motion like a hypnotizing predator.

I nudge Astra beneath my stomach, wondering if I should tell her to run as far and as fast as she can or if it’s safer to keep her here with me where I can see her. She can outrun any arrow the Guard can fire at her, any dagger or sword hurtled her way, but Ky said no one can outrun the Siren’s song. With no pupils, I cannot tell where the Siren’s attention is, and I’m certain movement will draw its focus straight to her.

Ky said to stay in place. Perhaps this is why; if the Siren got summoned like it did by the Dust Devil, stay in place and hope for the best.

I hate this decision though. It’s no decision; it’s no choice. I don’t know that it’s the safest option, but I don’t know that the alternative is any better. I’m too worried to run through the potential probabilities, the ways things could go right or wrong and what I’d do. I’m too scared to talk it through with Freedom and Jabez and Camden and Katelin and Icarus. Astra, too. She’s not helpless. She can fight, even though I don’t want her to. I never want her to have to. We have numbers, but the Siren could sing us all to death.

All I can think of is the promise I made to Freedom.

I flick my tail and look to her, hoping she knows that I’ve tried my very best to keep my promise. Astra’s in one piece, but I don’t know what sorts of scars she carries on the inside. I hope Freedom knows how scared I am that I know I might end up breaking the promise because I didn’t choose right.

“Stay here and don’t move,” I tell Astra, leaning my head down to make eye contact. “Stay with me, ok? We’re a team, got it?”

Astra nods, pupils wide with fear but she still trusts me. That much I can tell. “Got it!”

“Ok.” I nuzzle her, breathing in her scent and closing my eye and soaking in the brief moment of peace, however much we have.

If Astra’s with me, then at least I can keep an eye on her and do my best that way. If she’s with me, it means I’ve done something right thus far.

I just have to keep it that way.

xxxx

Ky and Phoenix stand with Seneca and the Blood Demon at the cliff face of Siren’s Lookout near where the Dust Devil kneels beside the Guard’s body. The Guard is still far too pale, blood leached from his body to summon the Siren in a way that would almost make me feel bad for him if I didn’t know that he would’ve tried to harm myself and Astra if the King had told him to.

He very well might have walked himself willingly to his death, and there’s something so fucked up in that I can’t quite turn it over in my head to look at it in a way that makes sense.

What have you done, King? What sort of spell did you put on this island? What did you do to Ragdon?

The Siren drags itself further onto the cliffs, and the crowd of Ragdonians gasp and scream, beginning to try to scatter, but the Guard and Soldiers in and amongst them keeps the crowd from dispersing easily. With metallic shings of swords being drawn and the flash of arrows pulled from quivers, the crowd goes silent and stops moving.

Apart from the background whispering and murmuring of the Wailing Marshes, the only sound I can hear over my own breathing and racing heart is the Siren’s low rumbling, somewhere between a purr and a rhythmic moan.

No one dares speak, not even the lead Guard. I don’t see any Generals, nor do I see the pangaré bay colt. A part of me expects the Judge and Justice to appear, to say that this is what we deserve, that there’s been another trial, and the punishment, the consequence is the Siren, whatever it desires and does is what’s supposed to happen.

The siren opens its jaws, and its long, thin teeth —each a different length— glint with strands of saliva. The gills on its throat and muzzle flare as it shifts its tiny ears and shakes its frills, disorienting me. It chitters low in its throat, humming.

Jabez stumbles, gaze distant as he twitches and sits down clumsily.

The Siren lowers its head and creeps a step closer, then another.

I want to charge in front of Jabez, to make a scene and summon my power to my horn and create a portal to put the Siren directly in front of the King in the Throne Room, or perhaps set aside, tuck in my desire for revenge and let it rest for Astra’s sake, and put the Siren somewhere far, far away— as far away as I possibly can put it. But terror keeps me frozen in place, legs locked tight to the point I cannot move.

The Siren is so enormous, head bigger than my body. Jabez could fit in its mouth easily, as could any human. The thought makes my stomach twist, and I kick up at my abdomen at the thought of the pain.

Icarus shrieks, feathers rising as he raises his free wing and tries to move his bound wing but doesn’t succeed in moving more than his shoulder joint a little.

The Siren bellows in reply, but it’s not the same sound the Blood Demon makes. While the bellow of the Blood Demon is a roaring, dominant call, the Siren’s sound is something far more piercing and eerie.

Astra whines and Camden shudders, muscles spasming as he presses his hands to his ears. I bray and whinny, throwing my head as the sound shudders through my head and mind, scrambling my thoughts and destroying anything I tried to plan before I could string more than one or two things together.

I manage to catch Phoenix roaring and snarling and trying to charge at the Siren, flames blazing high on his pelt and Ky’s frantic look, panicked beyond anything I’ve seen on him before. His eyes dart all around, blown with terror, before something resigned passes over his expression.

Blood drips from Ky’s nose as his eyes glaze over and he whispers something that looks like an apology before Phoenix slumps over mid-stride, breathing evening out. Ky tilts his head to the side, seemingly casting another illusion.

The Blood Demon turns its attention to him, and Ky looks up at it, then nods.

What are you going to do?

I see the Blood Demon step up to Ky, reach out its three-fingered hand, clasp onto Ky’s forehead and press its thumb into his fur deep enough to puncture flesh. Ky seizes up as the Blood Demon allows him to access its power and draw upon it. Ky’s eyes glaze over again, but this time with a flare of bright brown behind the cloudiness.

The Siren draws in a deep breath, deeper than all the others before, and Ky screams. He scrambles to scan the landscape and find us. He finds his brother, and Phoenix is still asleep on the stone of the cliffs.

Time seems to slow down as the Siren opens its jaws to begin to sing and Ky slams his paws down as he pulls from the Blood Demon’s power.

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xxxx

A fuzziness settles over me. It comes at me in a brutal, slamming force that I cannot resist. It’s insistent in a way that wriggles its way into my mind before I even truly realize what’s going on.

Ok, I find myself saying as I agree to the secondary presence sharing my mind and my headspace. I could fight it and try to push the presence away… but why would I?

I forgot why sharing my headspace was even a bad thing. Was I supposed to be the only one in my mind? Were there not supposed to be two minds in one?

I feel a twinge of guilt that accompanies the presence in my headspace. It’s not mine; the guilt belongs to the presence.

Why do you feel guilty?

I study the presence.

It clings to every bit of my mind, paying extra close attention to my hearing, leaving me feeling like someone stuffed my ears full of the fuzz of cattails Jabez told me Astra once got into as a young kitten. Up close, something feels so familiar, like I know the presence from somewhere. I dig through my mind to try to figure out why, but I feel so slow, like I’m wading through the fuzz of cattails.

I’m barely aware of anything going on around me; I don’t know, and there’s a reason I should be panicking about that. I know that much, but I cannot figure out why. There’s something I need to be doing, something I need to be keeping an eye on, but I cannot remember what, and that should be making me panic but it’s not and that should be a problem but it isn’t.

What’s going on?

I want to hear, but I can’t and I’m sure there’s a reason why I cannot hear but I don’t know what that is and that bothers me. It should bother me more, but I don’t know why it doesn’t.

Blinking heavily, I try to make sense of what I’m seeing, but everything is blurry and a mess of jumbled shapes that I cannot make sense of.

I know that panic should be rising within me faster than I can handle it, but for some reason it’s not; I remain calm. Too calm. Far too calm. Fear swirls within me, but the second presence in my mind —the one that hangs over me and clings to every part of my mind like fuzzy cattails— washes it away before it can truly gain a hold within me.

What’s going on? I think yet again, but I’m unable to think things through with how heavily the second presence in my head keeps me feeling slowed down and sleepy.

xxxx

Before I can think any more, I’m thrust back into reality so fast that I stumble a step forward with a snort and a whinny. I throw my head, exhaling sharply through my nose and swishing my tail. I shake off the strange feeling of the cattail fuzz feeling of the secondary presence in my head. Stomping a hoof and snapping my tail again, I try to rid myself of the crawling feeling across my skin, the skittering sensation across the still-healing wounds on my body.

Astra rubs her forehead against my foreleg, whining. She curls in on herself, wrapping her tail tight around her paws.

“What was that?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I murmur, looking around in hopes that I’ll see the answer.

All around us, people are rising to their feet, but some lay on the ground and they aren’t moving.

When I see Ky, I remember.

I remember his panic and his terror at whatever the Siren was about to do, the song it seemed like it was about to sing.

What could have him so scared?

I inhale sharply. I remember what he said about the Lullaby.

Except as I get a better look at Ky, I see that things aren’t right. There’s a ring around Ky, a ring of beings including us; me and Astra and Freedom and Camden. A large ring where those outside are all unmoving —not even one— and those inside are virtually all rising to their feet. Along the edge of the ring is the only place where there’s a mix.

As I look at Ky himself, I watch him sway on his paws. He watches Phoenix for a brief moment, and I watch as blood streams down his nose and muzzle in thick clumps. He coughs, hacks, then goes entirely still as his eyes stare through the world.

Ky whimpers high in the back of his throat, a shrill final cry.

A swan song.

He shudders, eyes rolling in his head. Blood streams from his mouth and nose, dripping from his eyes like twisted tears. His legs give out, and all at once his muscles go limp and he sags.

“Ky!” Seneca cries out as she rushes over as the first spasms wrack the illusionist’s body, having shifted mid-sprint.

Realization passes through me as Icarus chirps in a series of chitters and chirps.

“Was that you, Ky?” I ask, though I doubt he can hear me.

Ky continues to shudder as his muscles alternate between trembling and locking up, twisting at such unnatural angles that I worry bone will break. Blood foams in his mouth, and his teeth chatter together as his jaws clack against each other. His toes flex as his spine contorts. Ky’s tail curls and twists, and I almost scream.

I don’t know how much time passes as Ky shakes. It feels like eons stretched into eternity. Astra whimpers and squirms as if trying to crawl into my skin from worry and discomfort.

When Ky finally relaxes, I feel Astra do the same against me, except that Astra draws in a breath.

Ky does not.

Ky does not breathe. He remains still. Far too still.

“Ky?” I ask, finally moving from the edge of the cliffs and creeping up to him.

Siren’s Lookout stretches far too far, becoming longer than it’s ever been. The gouges the Siren carved with its claws look like endlessly deep trenches I could fall for ages into. The edge of the cliff looks so far away I’d have to walk all day to reach it.

Grey follows close behind me, as do the rest, but I hardly notice them, too caught up in the absolute stillness of Ky’s body. It’s too still for the chaos of life. It’s unnerving, unsettling, and I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t like it.

When I reach Ky and he’s beneath me, there’s no recognition in his brown eyes, even with Seneca in front of him. I look over at Phoenix, who’s the only one still sleeping. His flank definitively rises and falls in clear breaths, but Ky does not move.

I nudge him with my nose, all too aware of Astra right behind me, but it’s too late to try to shield her from this. I can scent the light cloud of death hanging over Ky’s body, and I know it will only grow stronger.

Body.

The word hits hard, striking through me and leaving a wake of pain and agony wide open behind me. The word hits like an arrow through the chest, straight to the heart. The wake is the worst, coming right after the initial blow, right when the sting is the strongest and the bottoming out of the pain is falling into the deepest chasm.

Ky’s body is a mix of life and death, and I know Lucius and Ananta must be wandering somewhere around here. Erebus’s claim over Ky’s being has left; their gift of life snapped, and now Lucius has laid claim to whatever’s left of the illusionist.

I look up and see bodies laying around Siren’s Lookout, along with the massive gashes carved through the stone of the cliffs, where the Siren had clung to Ragdon before everything went as fuzzy as the fluff of cattails.

How many did the Siren sing to death with its Lullaby? How many has Lucius taken and brought under their claim?

I look between the gouges in the cliffs of Siren’s Lookout and Ky, and I realize what he had done.

“He drained the Blood Demon of the last of its power to cast an illusion to make us believe we couldn’t hear,” I murmur.

Icarus chatters.

“Ky could do that?” Seneca crouches by his body and gently smoothes out fur ruffled by the wind.

I nod. “Ky was a very powerful illusionist. He can—. Could do almost anything if he could imagine it.”

I cringe at the slip-up in tense. It doesn’t feel right, talking about Ky in the past tense. He’s right here. I can see him. He’s whole, just with blood staining his fur. But blood washes out.

I can see Ky, and he looks just like Ky. Yet at the same time he looks wholly different. Something isn’t right, but I don’t know what. I cannot quite say, but it’s everything that makes Ky Ky.

I don’t know what that little piece is, but it’s missing.

Lucius took it away when they came for Ky and claimed him. Maybe that’s what Lucius takes. They take that little piece that makes someone who they are. But if so, then why does it feel like such a massive piece? Why does it feel like Lucius has ripped away such a massive part of Ky’s body, his being?

I stomp a hoof, squeezing my eyes shut. I want to scream, to roar, but I can’t. I’m reduced to silence.

Grey places a hand on my shoulder, leaning into me, eyes watery.

How can Ky just be gone?

“Wake up, Ky!” Astra cries, tears dripping down her cheeks. Her wings droop, and her tail sags and drags on the ground.

What can I say? What can I tell her? How I can even begin to try to help her start to make sense, begin to wrap her mind around a loss such as this? How can I tell her that this won’t be like Freedom’s death, where Ky won’t come back? She’d understood that Freedom wouldn’t come back, but then she did. How do I tell her that Ky will never return? Lucius has him, and they don’t give anyone back. Freedom’s return was a one-time event.

How do I support her when I cannot even believe Ky’s dead myself, despite how I can see his death and tell Lucius has brought him into their claim with every sense I have. He no longer exists in Erebus’s realm.

Come back, I want to say, but I know that’s not possible.

“Why?” Grey whispers.

Ky looks so small, lying on the ground as he is. He looks like a kitten, a child. He looks years younger all of a sudden, so young in death, and really, he is. He’s too young.

I shake, trembling as my teeth chatter and I draw my ears back.

I cast an illusion so he wouldn’t have to see me die, I hear over the wind. Perhaps it’s the reeds in the Wailing Marshes or something else, but I recognize the voice immediately; it’s Ky’s.

“What?” Seneca asks, standing up and looking around.

Grey looks to Ky’s body, which hasn’t moved.

Katelin takes a step back as Freedom turns around, raising her trunk toward the Wailing Marshes.

“Is he talking about Phoenix?” Camden asks, looking at the black cat, who still sleeps.

Before anyone can continue, Ky’s ghostly voice continues.

I made him sleep longer so he wouldn’t have to see me die. There was no time. We couldn’t say goodbye. This was the next best thing.

Tears drip from my eye. He sounds so much like a child. What Phoenix wouldn’t have given to say goodbye, even if he had to see Ky die, I’m sure, but that it also would’ve been the most painful memory of Phoenix’s life, perhaps, to see the last of his family die at the hands of another one of the King’s decisions.

Another glance at Phoenix shows that he’s still asleep, still blissfully ignorant to the fact that the last of his family just died, and I wonder how many more moments will pass like this; we all know and he doesn’t. Some tiny part of me hopes that he will sleep forever, and he can never know but not join Ky in Lucius’s claim because I don’t want another entire family to die at the hands of the King, even though I can only imagine the pain Phoenix is about to feel and I know there is nothing I can say or do.

I can almost see the waves of hurt rolling off of Astra and she was only friends.

The bond Phoenix had with Ky went deeper than family or brother could ever describe.

How could you take Ky? I want to demand of Lucius, but I know it’s not my place. How could I ask a being such as Lucius or Erebus such a question?

Who decides who is born when and who dies when?

xxxx

Far too soon, Phoenix begins to move. He twitches his paws and takes his time as he awakens, but he wakes up. Flicking an ear, he yawns, still unaware of what awaits him, and I feel a tear track down my cheek, tracing along my jaw until it drips to the ground much like Arcane’s Midnight Tears had done when he sacrificed himself.

I want to tell Phoenix to run, to leave. I don’t want him to have to face what has happened, but he will not go without his brother.

Scrunching up his face in sleepy confusion, Phoenix gets to his paws, back to us and Ky’s body. Camden watches, and Grey holds his breath, a finger over his mouth. Jabez sits, staring blankly at Ky’s body. I don’t think he blinks.

Phoenix stretches, arches his back, then begins to look for his brother.

“Ky?” he calls. “Ky, where are you?”

I draw in a sharp breath, but it must be loud enough to draw Phoenix’s attention, because he turns around, and I see the exact moment he zeroes in on his brother.

Phoenix charges forward, and all the hazy exhaustion in his body vanishes in an instant like evaporating water in a fire. His flames bristle and blaze, exploding in massive plumes of fire and smoke.