Page 29 of A Fate of Wings

The guards had shackled two sirens. They kneeled on the cobblestone flooring with two sets of guards on either side of them.

“What is the meaning of this?” I asked as the door closed behind me.

The imprisoned sirens remained silent. I sighed under my breath. As well as beautiful and lethal, sirens were stubborn. I perched on the high-backed chair opposite them and waited. They’d crack under the influence of my voice in the end. I began humming. Their eyes widened, but their lips remained shut. I didn’t relish torturing my people, but if that was the way this needed to go, then so be it. I amped up my humming to singing. The guards popped earmuffs over their ears to negate the effects of my royal voice. Only the siren queen’s voice could affect other sirens.

In time, blood trickled from the shackled sirens’ ears.

“Stop!” they cried in unison.

I ceased singing. The guards plucked off their earmuffs.

“She sang her song to lure the tiger shifter I’d lured to me to her,” the siren with flaming red hair fired off.

“It’s not my fault your singing is pitiful,” the siren with pale blonde spat back.

“Why you?” The red-haired siren lunged at the pale blonde siren except their chains kept them out of reach of each other.

I strode around the room so agitated with this petty grievance I wanted to clip both their winds, maybe their voice boxes too. Now, there was a thought.

“I shall remove your tongues as punishment.” I settled back in my chair.

“What did I do?” the pale blonde squeaked.

“You,” I said, withdrawing a knife from the hidden pocket of my gown. “Dared to lure a creature to you that was obviously stronger than you, otherwise another siren’s song wouldn’t have worked on him.”

She hung her head and mumbled, “But he’s so pretty.”

“Be that as it may,” I said, nodding at a guard. “We can’t have creatures living in the Autumn Court who we don’t control.”

The guard stepped forward and yanked her head back. As much as I longed to slice their tongues off myself, that was what I kept guards for. A queen must delegate tasks. Mother taught me that.

“Now, either stick out your tongue and they’ll cut it clean off, and you’ll heal in a couple of days. Or…”

“Or what?” She gulped.

I nodded at the other siren. A guard stepped forward, wrenched her jaw down until the bone snapped, reached inside, and twisted her tongue out of her mouth.

“That is for showing a siren’s weakness.”

She flung her tongue against the wall. The flesh landed with a wet splat and slithered down the stone walls to land on the floor at my feet. Incoherent sobs came from the red-haired siren’s broken face. I turned to the other siren. Her eyes were wide with fear, but she lifted her chin and stuck out her tongue. Etched across her features was the acceptance of her gruesome fate. Her tongue would grow back, and it’d hurt, but the pain of not being able to sing would hurt her more.

Perhaps one day this siren would become more.

But today she’d pay the price for showing our weaknesses.

After the gruesome time in the turret, I returned to my bedchambers. My handmaiden drew me a bath without a word and washed the splattered blood from my face. She changed the pink water, added flower petals and oils, then massaged my neck and shoulders.

“What would I do without you, Raelin?”

“I suspect your Beast would be more than delighted to take my place.”

“My Beast?” I raised my head.

She shifted beside me and kneeled at the side of the large clawfoot bathtub.

“He is yours. The Beast watches you like a demon possessed with ownership.”

“He may think he owns me, but it’s the other way around.”

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