AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How did she die?” the woman asks.
I pull my shoulders back, feeling so small compared to the woman before me. We look the same age, but I’m so short and slender, and she is a woman with curves and height and eyes filled with experience.
Still, I am the star of a Las Vegas show. I have a flock of men who have been sent to protect me. I am a woman who can fly.
She doesn’t scare me.
How?” she repeats, her hard edges have gone all soft, and it confuses me, the longing in her voice. “How did she die?”
I lift an eyebrow, tilt my head to the side. “I killed her.”
27
Lark
“What do you mean?” she asks, her hand on her mouth as if horrified.
I’m exhausted. Suddenly I realize my hawks were right. I couldn’t have slept with them tonight. I need a hot shower and a warm bed. I need to cry my heart out.
I can’t deal with this. With her. This stranger and the men with her. I just want to drink my tea in peace.
“I need to understand, Lark,” she says. “I’m your sister, Remedy. And I’m not dead. But it’s not just you and me. There are four of us. At least there were.”
That stops me cold. Whatever fatigue I felt a moment ago, seems to slip away as her words hit me. “Four of us?”
She nods. “Harlow and me, and you and... Well, what was her name?”
I shake my head. “Tennyson. Her name was Tennyson. But I don’t know anything else. I just...”
I cover my face with my hands, the sobs escaping, and I don’t try to contain them. Vaughn’s arms wrap around me and Sawyer speaks on my behalf.
“Her mom died today. Was struck by lightning. We think by that fucking eagle out in the desert. It’s a lot to take in already, and then with you guys coming here... I mean, how did you even know?”
“Gaia told us,” Remedy says.
That gets our attention. “Gaia?” I ask.
She nods. “Yeah, I mean, we were nearby because of other fires in the area, but then Gaia showed up in the form of wind, and she told me to come, to find you. That you were close.”
I sit down on the couch, my fingertips on my temples. “Do you know how insane that sounds?”
“Has anything in the last few months been normal for you?” she asks, moving toward me. She kneels at my feet, looking into my eyes. They search deep inside me.
“How do you know that things have been... different?”
She gives me the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “A few months ago, I was lost in the woods and met a pack of shifting wolves and they claimed me as their own.”
She runs a hand through her long, thick hair, shrugging as if she is telling me the most basic story ever. My heart pounds in my chest as I think about my hawks. Only today, I am the one who has claimed them. The one who has decided I am not letting them go.
Remedy keeps talking. “And then I met a bear who was actu- ally Mother Earth, and then fought a Greek god and found out I’m actually the decedent of Ares. So, I mean, it’s been kinda intense ever since I put on the fucking ring.”
“Ring?”
She takes my hand in hers, clasping our hands together. She is wearing an ancient ring too, one with a wolf paw whereas mine has the embossing of a feather on the top. “It’s our rings that started it all. Same for Harlow. The ring is what tells your father where you are.”
I pull my hand away, noticing that all my hawks have sat down, and so have her wolves. Everyone is watching, listening.
“My father?”
She nods. “The eagle. You must have put on the ring and it sent him to you. Let him know where you were.”
I raise my eyebrows, wanting to scoff, rebuff. Throw her out.
But another, deeper, more true part of me–the part below the surface knows there is truth in her words.
Brecken speaks up. “If the ring brings him to her, then why isn’t he here now?”
Arrow clears his throat. “I think it’s the house. Your mom must have put protective spells around this place the same way she did with you.”
“Have you lived with her your entire life?” Remedy asks.
I bite my bottom lip. “Not exactly. Tennyson and I were brought to our mothers–they were sisters too–when we were infants.”
Remedy nods. “I’m an orphan too. I was raised in foster homes, and so was Harlow. An orphan, I mean. She was adopted by a couple in Oahu.”
“Who is Harlow?”
“Our half-sister. She’s a shifting siren. And she has three sailors at her side. She’s the daughter of Poseidon.”
I fall back on the couch, overwhelmed with information. Closing my eyes, I try to process it all. Sisters? Greek gods and shifters and magic rings? It’s too much.
