A Song in the Night (TEMPTED KINGDOM: The Series Book 1)

by Jessa Lucas

  Copyright © 2018 by Jessa Lucas

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Contents

  I. The Siren Princess

  1. The Girl Without A Name

  2. A Siren Without Her Crown

  3. Introducing Prince Charming

  II. The Lonely Dreamer

  4. Dust and Sunlight

  5. The Princess and the Oath-Breaker

  6. The Devil’s Whore

  7. Girl Who Burned, Girl Who Ran

  8. The Dream and the Dreamer

  III. The Breathless Bowman

  9. A Victim and Her Prey

  10. The Big (Very) Bad Wolf

  11. Curiouser and Couriouser

  12. The Princess and the Glass…blower

  13. Live to Tempt Another Day

  14. Dramabomb

  15. Crazy Eyes and the Asshole

  16. The Beauty of Such Stars

  17. Weapons of Choice

  18. The Siren and the Snake

  19. A Stolen Legacy

  20. The Cruel Princess

  21. The Siren and the Storm

  About the Author

  Part I

  The Siren Princess

  Chapter 1

  The Girl Without A Name

  “Last call!”

  The bartender made his rounds and I eyed him from across the dingy pub. His dark eyes found my gaze in the murky light, a moth drawn to dangerous light. The look was provocative and more than appealing, but something in me didn’t see that ending so well.

  I offered a coy smile before slugging the last of my beer and standing to leave. The Hound awaited and if I missed the bus I’d have nowhere to sleep tonight.

  Kind of a downside to being homeless, the whole not-having-a-home thing.

  I sighed as I trudged out, slinging my roughed around backpack over my shoulder. If my father could see me now, he’d laugh himself all the way back from hell. He’d been right; Daddy’s little princess, tormented long after the waking nightmares had passed, with nothing for her in the world after all. Not even a real name.

  I chuckled darkly to myself as I ambled down the sidewalk, my pack growing heavier by the second. All that was left of Erin Greyson had been reduced to the contents of this tattered backpack— not that there’d been much worth saving. A few shirts, some deodorant, a dog-eared photo or two of a childhood I’d all but forgotten. More practicalities than sentimentalities. Being a perpetual nomad took emotional sacrifice, and I’d sold most anything that had been valuable before I’d set the house on fire and ran.

  But I wasn’t Erin Greyson anymore. I’d taken my middle name by the time anyone bothered to ask for one, and buried the Greyson name so far into the dark that most days I forgot it myself.

  Daddy’s little princess? As far as I was concerned, she was as dead as he was.

  I paused a few yards away from the pick up spot and leaned against a streetlight pole. I didn’t like the scraggy looks of the guy lurking underneath the bus stop awning, shrouded in darkness with that wicked sparkle in his eye when he caught my gaze.

  My eyes narrowed.

  Princess though I had never been, I was certain that dark things lurked in the corners of the world— certain because, well, let’s just say if fairytales were real, they were the Grimm Brothers version and I was the wicked witch.

  “Where you taking the bus to, songbird?” the man leered. I definitely didn’t like the way he said it, like he wanted to know so he could follow me.

  Assholes I could handle. Predators… well, I could handle them, too, but it was usually less enjoyable what with the hurl of sexist slurs they were so prone to shouting. Oh well. The more the merrier when it came to the mass grave they went in after digging room for themselves.

  I let my gaze stray from the man to the light that veered onto the road, hoping it was the bus. Maybe the guy was just another disturbed street urchin, uncomfortable but relatively harmless. I’d met my fair share— though, out of that fair share the bad ones had been bad enough to merit my suspicion of them all.

  I looked away, frowning out at the inky black of night, thoughts fading into the din of exiting bar hoppers. It was Friday night. It’d been a long time since I’d “gone out” on a Friday night.

  Two wasted girls in slinky dresses and torture devices for shoes tripped their way to the map beside the bench. “What stop is this?” one of them slurred with an amused smile. I watched with only vague interest, wondering which of them I’d witness puking first.

  “I think it’s the 1087, going to…” the second girl’s finger trailed across the map of grid lines, her mouth wide as she lost the answer on her tongue.

  “Los Angeles,” I said, disinterested in hearing more of their drunken conversation than was necessary.

  “Oh, we’re not trying to go there,” the first girl giggled.

  A hoarse, gunk-filled cough issued from the dark corner where the craggy man’s shape was hidden. The girls jumped, showing him favor with their surprised looks. Just what he wanted, probably. I straightened, ready to leap into action if the situation called for it.

  “Please girls, I need to get on this bus. I need to… need it… need... I don’t belong….” His words trailed off as his hungry eyes found mine. “Truths and lies, truths and lies... you don’t belong to this place.”

  My insides churned at his unwanted attention.

  “I don’t think I have any change—”

  The screeching sound of a large engine interrupted the girl. The Hound.

  “Please—” the man rasped suddenly, his fingers lunging for the second girl’s wrist. “I need to get on the bus—“

  So not smart, dude.

  I pushed off the pole with a foot, crossing one arm over the other as I approached. “You wanted to know where I’m going?” I asked. “I’ve got a one-way ticket somewhere you’ll never follow. In fact, you’re going to stay right here, and you’re never going to look at another woman the way you just looked at me again,” I said, voice smooth. “You’re never going to follow a woman, or shout obscene things at a woman. You know what, let’s just take it home here— you’re never to even touch a woman ever again.”

  The man visibly shriveled, shrinking back into the darkness just as the bus came barreling down the street, the headlights blazing unnecessarily bright against the black of night.

  “Songbird…” he said again, sadly, and for some reason I bristled even more as I looked into the glint of those hooded eyes, which seemed so innocent for how filthy he’d been behaving.

  So, definitely mentally disturbed.

  The click-clack of the girls’ heels rang out as they ran from me, or us, or both, throwing frightened glances over their shoulder as the headlights glinted off my form. Their shapes tumbled away into the night and I closed my eyes, trying to gain my composure before getting on a bus full of humans and terrible fluorescent lighting.

  I’d been told enough times to get the gist of what I looked like
whenever my body went dead with ferocious calm like that: golden eyes, a slippery silver tongue, a widened mouth, a crooked smile. Sounded like a bad trip to me, but men are into all kinds of weird shit that women don’t understand. Something about the way I was when I got angry made me goddamn irresistible to them— irresistible enough that they couldn’t help but obey. Don’t speak, don’t look, don’t touch… don’t live. Boom. It was as good as done.

  My hands finally unclenched and I took a deep breath as the brakes screamed and the bus ground to a stop before me. The doors unfolded, I handed over my ticket, and I quickly took a seat by the window with my head expertly ducked down underneath my hood.

  I leaned my forehead against the cool glass, wishing I could’ve been of that ilk who claimed they’d never had anything even remotely paranormal happen to them. But wanted or not, I had powers. Dark ones. Ones that had torn apart families and torn apart lives… mine included.

  Since I turned sixteen, I’d been able to lure men into doing my bidding with a single word. It’s an uncomfortable thing, to bend someone. To break them. You can feel the nausea of it set in all up and down your consciousness. It feels overindulgent, like treating yourself to candy that makes you sick and then being incapable of washing the sticky evidence from your fingers.

  The bus pulled away and I didn’t look back. If I’d been in a better mood— and the urchin hadn’t tested me by reaching for that drunk girl— I might’ve said welcome to the party. The party of damaged goods, misfit toys, and probably too much booze.

  He’d spoken of truths and lies with such conviction. I wondered if he would’ve been able to pick out my truth in a line up.

  Lie: Every single time I’d broken a man’s will, it’d been an accomplishment of my own… a path to power, a way to heal.

  Truth: I don’t know how many men it took me to break before I realized I was the one who was irreparably broken.

  With the monotonous sound of wheels rolling over tar for miles on end and two beers taking their toll on my blood alcohol level, drowsiness overcame me. I gave into it, and dreamt of glass and castles, of warriors and fancy gowns and rooms of light and darkness. I dreamt of all the bodies at the bottom of that lake.

  At least, I thought that’s what I dreamt. The bus kept lurching around, rousing me suddenly and slowly from the sludge of a strange sleep, and every time I opened my eyes, all I could see was a glinting window in front of me, with stone and stars beyond. I had to blink it away a few times.

  The bus jerked forward again and I held in my stomach, unsure if I was feeling sicker from a headache or the jolt in my gut that came with every haphazard application of the brakes. I had it in my mind to march up to the driver the next time he slammed his foot on them and work my magic, but as soon as I stood to stretch my legs, I staggered forward again.

  Everything around me shook. I couldn’t tell if it was the bus, or me, or the entire world, but everything started to fracture… little cracks splitting into every material thing around me.

  The brakes slammed again. Oh god, I was going to barf—

  Before I knew it, my face was colliding with the disgusting rubber floor mat, my teeth ramming into my tongue and my knee searing with the force of the impact. I would have screamed out if something worse— something worse and far more strange— wasn’t happening simultaneously.

  One second, I was eating it on the bus floor… but the next, I was peering out of that window. In one, I put my hand down to brace myself to stand, in the other I was reaching not out but up, pressing my hand into the barrier above— into the glass that wasn’t a window—

  So this was what it was like to die.

  The aggression of the bus driver must’ve gotten us killed and I was probably now lying in a pile of fire and ash, inexplicable visions flitting through my mind, the last imaginings of a dying brain.

  Then I tumbled. It wasn’t a physical drop but it felt like falling to my body, like a realized fear of heights crashing into my lungs. Just when I thought I was going to be sick again, darkness settled over me and a black cloak of unconsciousness slid over my eyes.

  Chapter 2

  A Siren Without Her Crown

  When I came to what felt like eons later, there was no stink of public bus infiltrating my nose. No unvarying sound of road, or concerned murmurs… not even a hint of ambulance sirens wailing through the night to save us from gas and flame.

  There was nothing but the thick void of silence.

  Maybe I was dead. Maybe this was it, and I’d made it to hell.

  I opened my eyes. It was the same sight I’d borne confusing witness to in my last moments of consciousness on the bus: a glass surface just above my nose, and beyond it a circular brick wall shooting far up, cut off only by a ceiling clad with a mural of the night sky. Painted stars winked down at me.

  I peeled my fingers away from their resting place on my stomach, and pushed against the glass surface above me. It didn’t budge.

  What the actual fuck.

  I craned my neck so I could look down at my body. It was laid out before me, dressed in a faded black gown, hands clasped around a single dried-out rose at my midsection. The prism of glass enveloped me completely and I realized with a slow onset of shock that I was trapped in a coffin. A glass coffin.

  I slammed my hand above me again and again, but the glass didn’t even shudder with the force of it. The rose petals quickly disintegrated to dust as I struggled to adjust my body in the small wiggle room granted me. There had to be a way out.

  I was starting to feel lightheaded as everything began to close in around me. I was going to suffocate.

  “Help!” I shouted. “Please!”

  My voice was rough as it made a path through my parched throat. The thud of my hand against the glass rang out in the room, an uneven cadence resounding like a death march. Where the hell was I?

  Did it matter? I was going to die in here. That’s what coffins were for.

  “Let me out! Somebody, please! Help!”

  Footfalls sounded from behind the door I could just make out above the arch of my toes. Someone hefted it open and it made a horrendous croaking sound, dust sputtering down from the ornate gold moulding as though it hadn’t been opened in a millennia.

  “In here, quickly!” It was a man, the smooth sound of his voice dulled by the barrier of glass.

  “Please, help me,” I whimpered. I put a hand on the glass and the man approached, his chiseled jaw stern as he considered me with hard eyes. He placed his hand on the other side of the glass, matching mine.

  I wondered why he looked at me that way. It occurred to me suddenly that he could’ve been the one to trap me in here.

  “Get me out,” I said, the calm silk of my powers coming over me. All I had was my seduction to twist into obedience. If I had learned anything at all in my mere twenty-two years, it was that when it wasn’t obvious who was friend or foe, best to assume all were foe.

  The man tore his hand away seconds before more circled in behind him. They looked like guards from some fantasy tale; clad in leathers and armed with knives, they were certainly nice to look at, but I would’ve much preferred to do so from the comfort of a couch with them on the other side of a television screen.

  “Saylora… she’s awake,” one in the back breathed, his brown eyes and tawny hair making him an obvious sort of attractive.

  “Well come on then!” A dark headed man to the left moved to the lip of the casket and began urgently trying to heave it up. I continued beating against the glass, forcing myself into an understanding of how ineffective such an action was. God, I hated feeling this useless.

  Couldn’t say I particularly liked being trapped, either. Pretty much nothing about this situation was ideal.

  I locked eyes with the first man who’d entered and frowned at him, wondering why he hadn’t made a move to free me after my command and curious about what it was we’d shared in that first look. His eyes were harsh as he gazed down on me like I was the trigg
er for something he was busy trying to remember.

  “A little help here?” the dark headed one grunted.

  “You admitting you’re too weak to get it open, Dash? That’s a first.” The quip came from one in the back who I couldn’t see, not that I was particularly concerned about who these men were at this exact moment. Let me get the fuck out of here and then I could hang around deciding exactly how I felt about them and their good looks.

  I launched my foot up, the point of the superfluously gaudy shoe snapping against the glass. A lot of good that did. I might have company now, but that didn’t make me any more relieved that I was suffocating in here.

  “Easy there, Princess.”

  Princess? Oh, hell no.

  “Please,” I said, my voice slippery sweet, “help him. Help get me out of here.”

  The one in the back— the one who’d taunted Dash and just called me princess— emerged from the horde with a cocky smile. “Now, now. First thing you should know is that that will not work on us.”

  My nostrils flared and I stilled, not sure I wanted to know what he meant by that.

  “That’s right, those sneaky powers of yours that got you into this mess? Don’t even try them on us, Princess.”

  My voice snapped out of that sweetness pretty quickly with my retort. “Stop calling me that!”

  “Why? It’s what you are,” Dash breathed heavily as he went red in face. Three of the others joined, their large corded muscles bulging under their skin as they huffed and heaved, but the glass lid of my coffin wouldn’t budge.