Selene Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Selene Nightshade turned eighteen on the night she first heard her own song. It had always lived in her throat, silent and sharp, pitched too high for her own ears. Her mother had warned her it would come. The Nightshade women carried a siren song that could lure one soul, the same soul, reborn across every lifetime. Tonight the sound finally bloomed inside her skull. She pressed both hands to her ears and could not stop it. She ran deep into the grove, between the giant pines crowned with glowing blossoms. The fae-made patterns on their bark pulsed as she passed. She needed to learn the song before it ruined her. If she could shape it, she could bind her soulmate to her at last. That was the whole reason she had waited her whole life. But something followed her. A slender shape drifted between the trees. Its eyes caught the glow and threw it back like two round mirrors. The grove wraith. Her mother had named it the punishment for sirens who tried to bind a soul. It fed on their song until nothing was left. Selene froze. The creature glided closer, silent, elegant, hungry. She opened her mouth to scream and the song came out instead. It poured from her, high and clear, a note she had never made before. The wraith flinched and its mirror eyes dimmed. Then a small winged shape shot between them. A faerie, shaped like a fox-cat, its wings scattering pale light into the wraith's face. The creature recoiled. The faerie darted at Selene's ear and chirped one urgent word. "Sing higher." Selene obeyed. She reached for the top of the note and held it. The sound bent the air. The wraith shrank back, its slender form thinning, and slipped away into the dark between the pines. The faerie spun once in triumph, then vanished into the blossoms. Selene stood shaking. She had mastered it. The song was hers. Twigs snapped behind her. A man stepped from the trees, a crossbow loose in his scarred hands. He was tall, broad, his face marked with old cuts. Garrett Wolfe had been tracking the wraith for three nights. Now he stood still, head tilted, listening to a song that had already ended. "I heard you," he said. His voice was rough. His eyes did not leave her face. "From the ridge. I thought it was the thing I hunt." He lowered the crossbow. "It wasn't." Selene's heart lurched. His stare was too soft, too sudden. She had not meant to sing to him. The song had reached for the nearest soul and taken it. "You should go home," she said. "I can't." He stepped closer, helpless and certain. "I don't know why. But I can't." Selene saw the truth then. She had caught a soul tonight. Only she did not yet know if it was the right one.