In a strange way, Mantis had become so closely acquainted with Teela that she could no longer experience the levels of indignation the child had been able to evoke in her in the beginning. But seeing her now, running toward them with Mantis’s own cloak wrapped around herself, with the hood pulled up, and what appeared to be a kitchen knife in her hand, Mantis remembered.

  “What are you doing here?” The words came to her mouth like a bark when the girl reached them, panting and sweating.

  “You have to kill the prince,” Teela said.

  Mantis only blinked at first, too surprised to reply. That had been the last thing she’d expected the girl to say. She let out a laugh of disbelieving, hysterical amusement. “Done. What else would you like?”

  Teela blinked too.

  But Leroh was the first to overcome his surprise. He said, mortified, “You killed him, just now?”

  “Then, we need to leave,” Teela declared, suddenly very impatient.

  “I think that is an excellent idea.” Mantis was becoming exasperated already. “Where is Yilenn?”

  “Waiting in the coach, just that way.” Teela began to walk ahead, only briefly turning to motion for them to hurry with a gesture of her hand.

  Mantis could only follow, still struck with numbing shock over the girl’s behavior. For a moment she almost wanted to laugh again, and that made her wonder what was happening to her today.

  The carriage, Mantis was dismayed to find, was surrounded by a small group of servants. What appeared to be a couple of important clergy members, a man and a woman, had approached the vehicle and were standing just outside speaking to Yilenn through the window. From their facial expressions and gestures, Mantis could gather right away that their tone was unfriendly. Behind them stood a slave girl, no older than Teela, holding what would likely be their infant in her arms. Perhaps she’d at one point known Teela, even. The thought stung Mantis sharply with distaste.

  “Then tell us what your intentions are. Why are you still here?” the woman demanded of Yilenn, whom, now that they’d gotten closer, Mantis could see sitting inside the carriage defensively with her arms braced around herself and her head lowered. She must have been suffering from her own mental struggle against her God, and these people were probing at her debilitated composure like rats gnawing on a frayed rope.

  Mantis caught up with Teela to tug at her cloak and indicate wordlessly to return it. When the girl took it off and passed it over, she hastily threw the heavy garment over her shoulders, raised the hood to her head, and walked past the couple of Sunpeople to step up to the driver’s seat. “In!” was the only word she could find for her slow-moving charges, who seemed startled at first by her bluntness, but then hurried to do as she’d said.

  “What is happening here? Are these people unclaimed?” one of the two nobles asked with condescending authority.

  “They’re ours. We’re sirens,” Mantis came up with something to say—anything. It didn’t matter, really, so long as it didn’t arouse more suspicion than their being there already had. “Find concerns of your own to fret over.”

  But they didn’t like that. Mantis regretted saying it almost immediately. She could not take the confrontational words back, though, so with the background noise of the couple’s affronted rambling, she started the horses into a walk, purposely making it seem like they weren’t in a rush to leave.

  Those people would relay to someone what they’d seen. It was now up to whoever that person was to take their report seriously and aid the Sun in his silent pursuit of Mantis, or to disregard the words of these highly irritating people and unintentionally aid her instead. Mantis could only wait to find out the outcome.

  In the meantime, she kept the over-laden carriage moving at a steadily-rising pace that was sure to put a tremendous strain on their poor horses, attempting to not invite too much attention as she hurried in quiet desperation for the dark woods just past the western edge of the city.

  Leroh swept his sister from head to toe with his gaze, still unsure of how he felt regarding her actions. He couldn’t quite get angry at her now for risking her life so recklessly, seeing as she’d gotten away with it perfectly unharmed, and conveniently facilitated their escape from the city in the process.

  Understanding of the stupid thing she’d done had only dawned on Leroh too late, as it’d simultaneously become clear that there had been no negative repercussions to it, so he was currently nonplussed and trying to decipher his own feelings on the matter.

  “Why did you do that?” was what he decided on.

  Teela looked lost in thought, and seemed not to hear him initially. Then she bristled and lifted her vacant eyes to him, furrowing her brow. “What? Why did I come?”

  “Yes. It was…it was very dangerous. You could have been killed, Teela. Or worse.”

  “Yes, I know,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. I just thought that…she wouldn’t do it. I was sure Mantis wouldn’t kill that man. Ombira has been lying to her, or playing games with her mind. I wanted to help.” She paused for a moment, as if reminded of something. “We still have to tell her. I didn’t get a chance earlier,” she turned to Yilenn, agitated.

  “She heard you,” the siren replied tremulously. She was slouching on the seat with her head resting on the wall of the coach as if in great pain.

  “Are you all right?” Leroh asked her.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “She’s fighting a command from the Sea. Is Mother dead then?” Teela answered on the siren’s behalf, and Leroh physically recoiled with the abruptness of her question. He’d forgotten to deliver that major piece of news to his sister.

  How could he have?

  “Teela…”

  “That’s fine,” she silenced him and turned on Tem, who was sitting on the bench at her side. “It’s only you?”

  “Uh, yes,” he said uncomfortably, looking away in embarrassment.

  Leroh broke into the conversation again to free his chest of the guilt that had at once built to a choking point inside of him. “I’m sorry. Yes. Mother chose death. Most…most did. She didn’t suffer. There’s this pool of…” Leroh shook his head, unable to describe what he’d seen. “The Sun makes them jump into a sort of liquid that is really hot, to eat them. She died instantly.”

  Teela’s eyes narrowed at that, but only for the duration of a couple of heartbeats. Then she slowly nodded. “Good. That’s good that she didn’t feel much pain.” She looked out the window ponderously for a moment and then spun on Fala. “Are you from Pirn? I don’t recognize you.”

  The girl with the greyish blue eyes warily lifted her gaze and studied his sister back. She reminded Leroh of a trapped wildcat, an animal forced to live in captivity who was never meant to do so. She gave a curt shake of her head in answer.

  The young woman had barely said anything since Leroh had made her acquaintance. And she’d changed. As Tem had, she’d lost the bright golden tone of her irises, which had been replaced with a surprising shade of dark, muted blue, like that of a storm cloud. Her hair, too, had gained more ashiness to replace the gleaming yellow color from before. She looked like a normal human now.

  “Then who are you?” Teela demanded rudely as ever.

  “My name is Fala. I am—I was a slave. In the castle.”

  His sister absorbed the information and turned quiet for a long time, but her eyes stayed busy studying the girl—who was perhaps two years older than her—like a person reading a written text. Then she finally decided on something to say: “You talked of the prince to Mantis.”

  Yilenn lifted her gaze from the floor of the coach and brought it over to Fala, heavy with pity. Leroh understood what that meant—what his sister was implying. He glanced at the new girl sitting on his right from the corner of his eye and then looked away.

  A tension that hadn’t been there before built among them and stole the words from everyone’s mouths. Leroh made an attempt to defuse it by finding Tem’s gaze and offering a stiff smile. Things were uncomfortable between them now, and Leroh didn’t understand why. They shouldn’t be. “How do you feel?” he tried.

  Tem’s eyes were back to normal, and that was a bigger relief to Leroh than he could have known. The brown irises with little streaks of greenish yellow that he’d come to know so well over the years, the eyes of someone Leroh trusted and loved, lifted to him a little apprehensively. He only said, “I’m fine.”

  “What was it like when the soul-bond broke?” Teela asked him with eyes wide and curious. “No, ignore that. Start from the beginning. What happened? What was the Sun God like? What did Mantis offer him to get you back?”

  “Teela, leave him alone,” Leroh scolded.

  “It’s strange.” The words came from Leroh’s right side, and he turned with surprise to Fala. “I can barely hear, or see or smell, anything. I feel soft…and small. But it’s good, too. Like I’m finally alone. My head is more clear.”

  “More peaceful, yes,” Tem agreed. “There was a noise before. Like a buzz in my mind. It was him, I think.”

  Teela was looking from one former Sun servant to the other with scrutinizing attention. Her eyes were round and full of questions, and her mouth taut with the effort of keeping a surge of words from pouring out. Leroh butted in again to avoid that. “Is it better now?”

  “Yes,” Tem said decisively.

  “I think so,” Fala replied. “It is strange, but good. I was his for many years, I think I forgot what it was like to be mine alone.”

  Outside, buildings of smaller and smaller size passed from left to right at an increasing rate, faster than was safe for the horses to be carrying such a heavy load of passengers at, and by the instant decreasing their odds of remaining forgettable. The ride inside the carriage was bumpy, making their behinds fly up and slam down on the hardwood seats at times, and shaking violently from side to side at others. Leroh wanted not to be alarmed, and a part of his brain had become almost deadened to anxiety, but he couldn’t help digging the tips of his fingers into the palms of his hands in a tight clench of his fists that drew a little blood from his pre-existing wounds there.

  He’d gotten his friend, one of his brothers, back, and, having feared for so long to have lost everything, this felt like an undeserved stroke of good fortune that Leroh needed to appreciate with every breath. He could barely believe that his sister, whom he’d scorned for fifteen years and given no reason to ever love him, would have fought on his behalf to rescue one of his loved ones in a feat none of them had been likely to survive, least of all that it had worked as planned. He could only be thankful for this gift, and wonder at the enigmatic twists and turns of fate.

  The last thing he wanted to consider now was losing all that which he’d so recently recovered—or been given. He pushed the thought away with obstinate infantility and brought his focus back to the conversation at hand.

  “How did Mantis convince the Sun to release you?” Teela asked Tem again.

  “She threatened him,” once more Fala replied instead of the person addressed, and Leroh was aghast. She’d barely spoken before; now she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “I didn’t understand everything they said,” she continued, “but she spoke to him like…he was nothing. Like an equal. And he allowed it. Who even is she? How could she do that?”

  “What did she threaten him with?” Teela acted as though she’d not heard any of the other things Fala had said.

  “I’m not sure. Something about unclaimed women, and that all they need is a word from her. Something like that.”

  “Ombira,” Teela whispered, entranced in her contemplations. “That’s the word. She told him she’d make the name of her Goddess known, and the Sun doesn’t want that.”

  “Will you ever be quiet, just once!” Leroh had to say to his sister, whom he’d endeavored to start treating with more kindness even though she was unsurprisingly already testing his ability to do so. He felt badly about it nearly as soon as the words left his mouth, however, and tried to rectify his outburst with, “Listen, I don’t want to yell at you. Just…think before speaking, alright? Mantis made us promise—”

  “They’re chasing after us,” Yilenn interrupted him. She was craning her neck, trying to see behind them through the cloudy window. Her red eyebrows were narrowed and her lips pinched together and trembling.

  On the opposite side, Fala looked out and confirmed the siren’s words to everyone else with her eyes alone, which filled with panicked terror for an instant, and then settled into an even more dreadful look of saddened acceptance. The rest of her face, as it seemed was often the case, remained expressionless.

  Leroh unintentionally mirrored the multitude of emotions exposed in her blueish gaze, for he couldn’t himself see what was coming after them. His shoulders sagged with disappointment and his chest caved in on itself.

  All of it had been in vain.

  No. It was worse than that. Leroh had single-handedly condemned everyone around him to suffer a poorer fate than they would have had without his interference. He was to blame for whatever terrible thing was to occur now—he and he alone.