Lydia the Siren's Arc

Chapter 10 of 37

Lydia chose the beast. She let her true form tear loose. Feathers burst along her arms. Talons split her boots. Her scream filled the passage as Gregorio's blade bit into her shoulder. The wound burned, but the sound she made was worse. It broke out of her, high and raw, a note no throat should hold. The knight staggered. He pressed both hands to his ears and dropped to his knees. His sword rang on the stone. "Enough," he grunted, but he could not stand. His head hung low. Even the man who killed dragons could not fight the pain of that scream. Lydia's shoulder ran red. She should have finished him. He knelt within reach, sword down, helpless. But something under her ribs woke and reached with her. Hunger. The old, blind urge that told her to feed. His blood was in the air now. Her talons twitched toward his neck. She pulled back. She had waited a year for this man. She wanted him alive and beside her, not cooling in the pit like the others. So she fought two enemies at once: the knight below her and the beast inside her. She locked her jaw and turned her body away from him. Feeding on Gregorio would end everything she had built. She ran. Her wing dragged along the wall as she fled the passage. Behind her, Gregorio's voice found its edge again. He shouted for others. She had not known he came with men. Now boots crashed on the road above, and steel flashed at the cavern mouth. Lydia dove into the pond. The cold clamped down on her wound. She swam deep, past the place where she had dropped the trader's body, until she found the underground channel. The current grabbed her. She let it drag her through the dark, lungs screaming, until light broke ahead and she surfaced in open air beyond the cavern. She launched into the sky. Blood streaked from her shoulder. Then arrows came. They whistled past her wings, one after another, from the men who had climbed above the road. She banked hard and beat toward a clifftop. She dropped behind a shelf of rock and pressed herself flat. Her chest heaved. The wound throbbed with each breath. Below, she heard the men calling, hunting the road for her body. Gregorio had not come alone, and Gregorio had not come to be lured. He had come to end her, and he had brought a hunt. Lydia touched her torn shoulder and stared toward the cavern she could no longer reach. The song had failed. The beast had spared him. She was hurt, driven out, hunted in her own sky. But she was alive, and so was he. If she meant to keep him, she would have to take him another way now. And first she would have to survive the men who wanted her dead.