Page 54 of Siren's Treasure

Raggon recognized the finality of her tone. After she’d transported a certain prince and his kindred dragon to their homeland, Maddox would lose his usefulness; Scylla would too! There’d be no stopping her then.

“Secure that dragon for transport!” Circe commanded. Her blood-red eyes fixed on the western sky where the sun edged closer to the horizon. “Handle the muzzle with care. We don’t need dragon fire reducing our vessel to cinders.”

Her tentacles released his leg as suddenly as she’d snatched him. “Bring him.” Circe ordered a hulking guard whose amphibian face stretched in a grotesque imitation of a smile. Massive, webbed claws, dripping with brackish slime, dragged him to his feet.

Just as he’d suspected—the witch wasn’t taking him back to the ship yet. This was never about accepting her hand in creepy matrimony. Bah! This was about the blade, the blood, the power—the ancient dance of deception that had been spinning since before he drew his first breath.

The beast shoved him toward a clearing where other guards honed curved blades against whetstone, the rasp of metal filling the humid air. They were preparing for battle—but who was left to conquer but Scylla?

Raggon was right. He steeled himself, his mind a storm as he tried to work out an escape before the chaos erupted. Undine’s descendants had powers! All of which were useless under these bonds. Even if he could free himself, he’d never escape Circe’s Siren voice.

Tobias whined out behind his muzzle. Under Maddox’s orders, the scaly guards wrestled the heavy iron-woven nets tight over the massive onyx wings with cruel efficiency. They yanked on the rope of his muzzle, wrenching his serpentine head to the ground. The dragon’s claws scrabbled at the earth, his massive snout sniffing desperately at something lying past his talons—the gleaming copper contraption that Raggon recognized instantly.

The wind whistler was within his brother’s grasp.

The intricate copper device with its tubes, bells, and spinning metal pieces lay partially buried in the jungle soil. It translated wave patterns into music, mimicked whale songs…

What would it do with a siren’s voice?

Raggon’s shoulders stiffened. Was Tobias trying to tell him something? The urgency behind the dragon’s movements made the wind whistler seem less like a toy and more like a… weapon.

Impossible! And yet—his attention drew to Tobias’s eyes—they’d returned to that gentle brown again! The beastly guards rounded the moaning Tobias onto a cart, away from his wind whistler, and began the laborious process of dragging him away.

His brother’s whine at leaving his invention was heartbreaking.

Sterling swooped down from the canopy, circling frantically. “Man the ship! Witch at the helm!” The bird’s shimmering wings flashed in the golden light as it landed beside the wind whistler, hooking its sharp beak into one of the copper tubes and dragging with determined effort… towards Raggon.

Circe stood at the jungle’s edge, a spyglass of bone and pearl pressed to her eye as she gazed toward the sea. Her tentacleswrithed with anticipation. It wasn’t too difficult to figure out who she watched. Every second that passed brought Thessa closer to Scylla’s reach and then the battle would erupt.

Sterling struggled with the heavy instrument, the bird’s little body straining as it pushed and rolled the wind whistler across the ground. The copper device bumped and clanged over roots and stones, inching toward Raggon’s bare feet.

So far, no hint of suspicion cracked the face of his grotesque guards. With one final heave, the parrot sent the wind whistler rolling the last distance.

Raggon snatched the invention up, fingers finding the intricate wind-up mechanism. With his eyes on Circe’s turned back, he cranked his birthday gift furiously, the copper warming beneath his touch as the internal gears began to whir.

Circe turned with a shriek of rage, her siren song freezing him mid-motion, but not before the wind whistler burst into discordant life.

The device vibrated in his hands, its copper bells and tubes producing a cacophony that mimicked and distorted the siren’s call. The sounds collided in the jungle clearing, skipping over the turquoise waters of the lagoon—the pure, hypnotic notes of Circe’s stolen voice and the wind whistler’s mechanical mockery creating a dissonance that shattered the spell’s hold.

Circe’s blood-red eyes widened in shock as her song faltered. She opened her mouth wider, forcing more power into her command, but the wind whistler matched and twisted each note, the copper tubes spinning faster, the bells ringing louder.

The eerie paralyses over Raggon’s body broke. He crashed to the ground, uncurling his fingers, testing their nimbleness, before rolling to his feet. The nearest guard held the chain imprisoning him taut, trying to control him like a leashed dog—a fatal error in judgment. Raggon jerked forward, then suddenly reversed direction, yanking his beastly captor off balance. In onefluid motion, he grabbed the curved cutlass from the mutant’s scabbard and drove it between his ribs. As the guard collapsed, Raggon ripped the weapon free, the end of his chain clanking against the ground as he twisted to meet Maddox’s punishing blade.

Steel met steel with a deafening clang that vibrated up Raggon’s arm. Maddox’s sword was as mean and bullish as he was—heavy as a ship’s beam and bearing down on him with crushing force. Spittle flew from Maddox’s lips. “Ah, a sad sight you’ve become! No more of your disappearing tricks? Good. You’ll stay and take your beating, little prince.”

Raggon gritted his teeth, feet sliding in the soft jungle soil. He was used to being lighter than air, and now he was forced to rely on raw strength against the pirate king’s brutal hacking. Maddox’s muscles bulged beneath his filthy coat as he pushed forward.

A flash of movement caught Raggon’s eye—Circe, her face twisted with fury, tentacles whipping toward him. He ducked low, spinning away from Maddox’s blade. The first tentacle bounced off a tree, ripping the trunk in two. Another lobbed over his head. At the last second, Raggon dove to the side, using Maddox as his shield. The tentacle caught Maddox’s thick neck in a clumsy move that seemed oddly imprecise for her usually deadly accuracy. The pirate’s eyes bulged in surprise, then fury, as he was yanked off his feet and thrown against the wall of limestone with bone-crushing force. He slumped motionless, the cruel gleam draining from his features as death claimed him.

Circe’s clumsy rage had forced her to get rid of her minion a little too soon!

Chaos erupted around him as the shrieking guards ran for cover from her wildly flailing tentacles. There was a downside to creating an army of stupid beasts. Raggon darted between them, slashing at any that came too close, then dashing through thebroken trees that created an opening for escape by Circe herself. The torn remnants of his shirt fluttered around him as he rushed through the jungle after Tobias. The beasts hadn’t taken his brother far before abandoning him at the first sound of battle. Raggon scrambled onto the cart, his chain dragging against the wood as he hacked at the rope-and-iron netting that imprisoned his wings.

“Hold still!” he shouted, sawing through the reinforced cords. The blade made slow progress, but midway through, Tobias seemed to understand. The dragon tensed, then with a mighty heave, unfurled his massive wings, tearing through the weakened netting in an explosion of snapped ropes and twisted metal.

The sudden movement knocked Raggon backward, but before he could fall, Tobias’s ridged tail whipped around, catching him mid-air and tossing him onto his back. Raggon landed hard against the obsidian scales, the air forced from his lungs.

A shriek broke through the trees. Circe had discovered them.

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