Page 93 of Hunted in the Shadows
Although I was eager to follow, I darted to Jon first as Cliff helped him to stand.
“Are you alright?” I touched Jon’s cheek gently. His eyes were focused now, but I couldn’t shake the image of how unreachablehe had been, carelessly brushing away my desperation for his attention.
He nodded, catching his breath. “Thanks,” he said, looking almost embarrassed.
“I like saving your ass sometimes,” I assured him. “It’s kind of a turn-on.” His instant smile melted the worry gripping my heart.
I pivoted, finding that the siren’s movements in the water were quickly vanishing in the distance.
“Hurry,” I urged the hunters. “Before she gets too far!”
Although I could hear them following, Cliff scoffed. “Or what—you’ll freeze our hearts?”
Wincing, I glanced back, wrestling a playful smile onto my face to diffuse the tension. “If you believed that for a second, I must be getting better at lying, right? How about, ‘Thank you, Sylvia. You’re as talented as you are ravishing.’?”
Though Cliff gave me a flat look, Jon gave a small snort of laughter, his eyes warming as he shot me a fond glance.
We cleared past the dock, following along the shore to catch up with the ripples of Aureline’s figure. The boys had to take care with the sodden ground along the way, but I didn’t need to slow until the trees began to cluster close to the water.
“How do you know you can trust her?” Jon questioned.
I weaved around a pair of branches and kept my eyes forward. “She… I don’t know, she speaks to me with such respect. As though fairies have some sort of authority over her.” I wondered how often such creatures formed alliances—there were certainly no mentions of it in Cliff’s entry on sirens.
“You’re sure that’s not just her magic working on you?” Jon pressed.
“Unless I’m secretly into skeletal, rotting corpses, I have to sayno.”
“Hey, you never know,” Cliff said. Then he made a noise of disgust. “So you can see what she really looks like? Usually, it takes a blow with a bronze weapon to shake the illusion.”
I perched briefly on a jutting bush to let them catch up, suddenly curious now that I recalled how siren illusions were tailor-made for each human. “What did she look like to you?” I asked.
“Hot blonde,” Cliff said without hesitation.
“Jon?” I prompted.
He cleared his throat, his gaze pointedly set ahead. “Hard to remember.”
“Liar.” I took wing and dropped lower, determined to meet his gaze.
Sighing, he finally looked at me. “Reddish hair. Green eyes.”
“A traitor mark on her face?” I tacked on. “Stunning blue wings?”
“Her hair waslong,” he said, matter-of-fact.
“I’ve been thinking of growing it out,” I said with equally playful nonchalance. Although he’d called me beautiful plenty of times, pleasant heat flushed through me, knowing that his preference for my features would manifest even in a desirous illusion.
“Can you guys save the horny shit for later?” Cliff groaned. “I’m this close to letting the siren drown me. Hell, I’ll do it myself.”
Minutes later, something shifted in the air. The light fell differently through the branches and leaves. The humidity wasn’t quite so vicious. The vegetation felt lush rather than overbearing.
I pulled to a stop when a stone structure jutting out of the water came into view. Thick layers of moss and lichen covered it so well that I might have thought it was a hill. Vegetation crowded so close to the shore that it practically swallowed the structure, making it blend seamlessly in the rest of the swampland.
Our frantic quest to keep up came to a sudden halt as we took in our surroundings.
Flowers were in passionate bloom in every direction, climbing the trees. From the corner of my eye, I noticed something shifting further away from the water among the trees. Both Jon and Cliff raised their weapons, but they faltered at once.
“Stars,” I whispered.
