Lydia the Siren's Arc

Chapter 13 of 37

The bone horn gave Lydia her reach again, but not her home. She needed the cavern. Its stone walls could hold her close song, the one that would bind Gregorio to her side. So she climbed from Timbermane Cliff and down toward Rou-Do Cavern Pass,She arrived at the mouth. The passage yawned dark and quiet ahead. Then a shape stepped from the shadow of the entrance. Gregorio. He had been waiting. His armor was dull with weeks of dust, and his sword was already drawn. He had killed every beast the kingdom feared, and he had spent those weeks camped here, guarding the one stone he knew she would return to. "You came back," he said. "I knew you would." Lydia backed toward the ledge. Her horn would not help her now. He was too close. She opened her mouth to scream, the sound that had felled him once, but he closed the gap first. His shoulder drove into her chest and slammed her to the stone. He pinned her with his weight. One gauntlet clamped her throat, cutting her voice to a thin rasp. His knee pressed her wing flat against the rock. "Change," he said. "I want the beast. Not this." He shook her against the ground. "Show me the thing I came to kill." Lydia understood. If she shifted, her true form would rise with all its strength, and it would tear him apart before he could strike. She would kill him. She could not do that. She needed him alive. She needed him whole and beside her, not bleeding out on her doorstep. So she held the change back. She fought her own body, the part of her that wanted to break free and rend. Her talons stayed half-formed. Her scream stayed locked in her crushed throat. She lay under him as small as she could make herself, refusing to become what he demanded. His face went hard. "Change," he said again, louder now, though his voice stayed flat. He pressed harder. "I don't kill women. I kill monsters. Give me the monster." She shook her head against his grip. Tears cut down through the dust on her cheeks. He stared at her, and something in his jaw tightened. He wanted a clean kill with a clear name. She would not give him one. His hand shook on her throat, caught between the sword and the woman under it. Lydia felt the panic rise. She could not sing. She could not shift without killing the one thing she wanted, or him killing her. She could not throw him off. For the first time in her long life, she had no plan and no song and no way out. Her breath came in short, wild gasps beneath his hand, and the cavern that had always answered her stayed silent.