Lydia the Siren's Arc

Chapter 11 of 37

Lydia lay flat behind the rock shelf and listened. Below, the men still called to each other along the road. An arrow had grazed her wing. Her shoulder burned where Gregorio's sword had opened it. She could not stay here. The hunt would climb these slopes soon, and she had no cave to hide in now. Her home was lost to her, filled with the men who wanted her dead. She needed a place to rest and heal before the beast inside her tore free from hunger. She forced her wings open and rose. Pain shot down her side. She stayed low, skimming the treetops so their bodies could not track her against the sky. Ahead rose a great cliff wrapped in trees. Vines hung down its face. Thick green growth spilled from every ledge. The men could not follow her up there on foot. She beat toward it and dropped into the canopy. Branches caught her fall. She crashed through leaves and landed hard on a mossy shelf. For a moment she only breathed. No shouts reached her here. No boots. The forest swallowed all of it. She had escaped them. She pressed a taloned hand to her torn shoulder and felt the bleeding slow. But safety was not enough. The hunger was waking. She felt it under her ribs, the same blind urge that had reached for Gregorio's throat. If she did not feed, she would weaken, and a weak siren could not sing, could not plan, could not take the knight another way. She had spared him. Now her body demanded payment. She crouched and went still. Her hawk's eyes swept the growth. A rabbit moved in the ferns below. She dropped on it before it could bolt. Her talons closed. She ate fast and raw, the way she had eaten fish in her cavern pond. She caught a second creature near a hollow root, then a bird startled from a branch. Her strength crept back with each kill. The wound stopped weeping. The trembling in her wings eased. When the hunger finally quieted, she perched high on the cliff and looked out. She could see the pale line of the western road far below. Somewhere on it, Gregorio moved with his men, alive because she had chosen to spare him. He believed her dead or fled. He would let his guard drop. Lydia flexed her healed wing. Her cavern was gone, but that no longer mattered. She did not need to lure him to a stone anymore. Her song had failed because she waited for him to come to her. This time she would go to him. She fixed her eyes on the road and settled in to watch which way the knight would walk.