Free A Siren's Song (Ride of the Darkyrie 2) by Saranna DeWylde Page A

mocked.
                  The worst part of what he said was that it was true. I was lost without him—his guidance, his knowledge, his protection. For the first time since I’d lost Thora, I felt weak. Vulnerable. Afraid. These feelings were unacceptable and my father would have known how to root them out like the cancerous blights they’d become.
                  Where was the warrior woman who led the armies of the damned? I was nothing but a lost little girl barely treading water in the deepest end of the ocean.
                  So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I pushed. “Why do you always want to talk about my father, Cross? You think it pushes my buttons?” I stepped closer to him, using my nakedness like a weapon rather than letting him use it to make me feel more vulnerable. “My father chose his death. He wasn’t taken from me. No one has ever taken anything from me I didn’t give them. Whereas you…” I laughed and took another step, and he moved back. He didn’t want me to touch him. I was close enough that I could. I could press my breasts into his broad chest, claw my nails into his back, I could even brush my lips across his. Vaulting up on my tiptoes, I leaned in close enough to do just that. I wanted him to taste my words on my breath and drown in the bitter bile inside of himself. “You had everything ripped from you and this beast you are now? That wasn’t wrought with your own hands. You were forged by powers greater than you. By me .” I waited for my words to sink in, for the barbs to find their marks.
                  “A good show, to be sure. There’s even truth in what you say.” He made it a point to rake his eyes over my body again, to look his fill. I knew he wanted to show me that he was unaffected or that his mind was the one calling the shots. Not his cock. “But you forget that you are not Helreggin. Not yet. This by your own admission.”
                  He stepped back from me again, but it wasn’t because he was trying to get away from me. The Cross wanted me to have the best view for the show. His twisted mouth opened and a pure, beautiful sound like crystal wind chimes echoed through my loft. But those few notes had more force behind them than his fist ever could.
                  My letter disintegrated into ash, the last of my father’s words, his thoughts, the last of everything that he was drifted out of this animal’s palm to scatter on the floor like they meant nothing. It was as if his voice had shattered a mountain, everything that held me up crumbled to dust with those ashes.
                  I’d been mummified in barbed wire, or so that’s how it felt. Wrapped in blades that sliced deeper and deeper into already raw wounds.
                  And that bastard, that wretched fuck assassin just stood there with a smile on his grotesquely beautiful face. His voice still like whiskey and sin as he spoke. “Looks like someone took something from you after all, little Darkyrie.”
                  Yet, my flesh still responded as if he hadn’t just broken me. Hadn’t taken away the only thing left in my life that I allowed myself to care about. I collapsed at his feet, clawing blindly at the dust on the floor, as if my will could meld it all back together. I wasn’t crying, I don’t cry, but there was some sound torn from my throat. Some wounded, dying primal despair.
                  He laughed again and I hated how beautiful his voice was.
                  “Ah, Brynn. I quite like this incarnation. Your pain is exquisite. You still feel. Something Helreggin could never do. Maybe you don’t understand why I’m punishing you, but this almost enough. I’m going to play with you awhile.”
                  The Cross stepped over me, but I grabbed the leg of his fatigues, my strength ineffectual against his, but he