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

humored me and bent down to my face.
                  “You better kill me now,” I growled.
                  “Or what?” He was genuinely amused.
                  I wanted to tell him I’d kill him, but it would be so much more than that. My mouth started moving and the words coming out were not mine. They had not been formed in my brain, but came from somewhere else. Something else.  “I’ll burn you again and I’ll make you beg for death.”
                  He laughed again as he stood, the sound like a jagged edge of glass. “I already have and no one listened.”
                  The Cross left me there on the floor, crumpled in the ash of memory with the bitter taste of vengeance on my tongue, and I lay there shaking and broken.
                  Everything had come unraveled and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop feeling and it ached, hurt like those scissors in my gut should have. I knew I deserved it for my failure. I’d been given one simple task and I failed. My one purpose had been to protect and…
                  I’d never be Helreggin. I couldn’t even handle mortal problems. The Capri killer was still at large, Anderson was dead, my father was well and truly gone, I had no idea where to find a stupid bridle for a mythical horse, and the Cross—another sound was torn from me as the sharp nail of hopelessness was hammered home.
                  It sounded like grief. 
                  Grief I was never supposed to have to feel again. Yet here it was, gnawing on my rancid insides—maggots on rotten meat. That’s what I was, rotten. Things that fail don’t grow and thrive, they just rot and decay because they have no further use.
                  My brain reached for all of my father’s patiently and carefully taught lessons, but it was all static in my head. I couldn’t tune in. I wasn’t treading water anymore. I was drowning and all I could do was go under.
                  After what seemed like a century, I heard a voice. “Brynn?”
                  My voice was hoarse and cracked from my wails and I couldn’t manage above a whisper. “Grimes?”
                  The door swung open and I dragged my gaze up to meet his. The look on his face smeared from concern into a rage I’d never seen from him. That fey golden image that hovered in a nimbus behind him became real, solid. Gold gauntlets seemed to erupt from his skin like dragon scales—part of him. As was the golden chain mail that suddenly covered his broad chest. A long blue cloak hung down his back and he looked every inch an angry god.
                  “Who did this to you?” His voice reverberated in cracks of thunder.
                  Me. I’d done it to myself. Jason had been right when he said I wasn’t Helreggin. I never would be.
                  “It was the Cross, wasn’t it? I’m going to fucking kill him.” The gold light around him was now as bright as the sun and it burned with his rage, seared into my retinas and skin.
                  Before I could stop myself, I reached my hand out to him. The words that came out of my mouth turned my stomach. They were so fucking weak. “Don’t leave me.”
                  The bright light and the god were gone, leaving only Jason. My partner. The man by which I measured the worth of humanity. Yet he wasn’t human, I knew that. I still had him dressed up in those ideals in my head. Maybe because his rage faded as quickly as it had erupted, leaving only his concern for me. I could see it plainly on his face that he hurt because I hurt. How had I never noticed that before? I’d seen it on others, crime scenes and the aftermath. But never for me.
                  He sank to his knees beside me in the scattered ash and pulled me into his arms. He