Shattered Soul, page 1
Shattered Soul
Darkness Summons
Ciara Graves
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Afterword
Copyright © 2021 by Ciara Graves
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Chapter 1
“She’s gone.”
Holliday Manor was over two hours away from London by train. It was a shorter journey if I transformed into a siren and swam up the English coast, but current circumstances required me to steer clear of the sea for now.
For starters, a foot-long gash on my leg was still lazily oozing blood.
Not to mention the murderous dark ones.
Still, going straight to Holliday Manor was the only choice. As strained as the relationship between Laurel and her mother was, I couldn’t keep the latter in the dark about this.
“Gone,” Sabrina Holliday repeated. It wasn’t a question. Her tone was quiet. Reserved. Steady. It wasn’t the reaction I was expecting upon delivering the news that her only daughter had been kidnapped by the cruelest creatures known to our kind.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Sh–she tried to help me. She went into the river, but they… I’m so sorry, Mrs. Holliday. They took her. By the time I realized, it was too late.”
I wanted to kick myself. Every way I reasoned through it, the same conclusion was reached. This was my fault.
Sabrina inhaled slowly, shifting in the large, velvet chair that sat by the crackling fire. She was dressed in a suit the color of wine… or blood. Patrick Holliday, Laurel’s father, stood beside her makeshift throne, clutching the back of it with white knuckles. He did not look as cool or collected as his wife, but he was a mere human. Although he was married to a siren, this was not his version of normalcy.
“Very well,” Sabrina said with a sigh. “Thank you for informing us, Cassandra.”
I blinked in confusion. I was perched on a satin chaise in the formal sitting room of the austere mansion, stomach squirming from the day’s events. At least I didn’t have an open wound in my chest anymore.
“I—you don’t seem upset,” I breathed.
Sabrina pursed her lips. “My daughter was raised knowing that her duty would be to locate the serenity stone, no matter the cost. We always knew that this would be one of the risks.”
“So that’s it?” I asked, my voice growing louder. “You’re not compelled to help her at all? With all due respect, she’s your daughter.”
“You say that as if your own mother did not abandon you,” she replied coolly. Her face was impassive, impossible to read.
I felt a stab of hot anger in my gut. The last time I saw Sabrina and Laurel speaking to each other, Sabrina struck her hard across the face and threatened to disown her if Laurel didn’t return with the serenity stone by the end of the year. Stupidly, despite what I witnessed, I didn’t think Sabrina was this cold toward her daughter.
“But she…” I trailed off, glancing at Patrick. He looked like he was about to be sick to his stomach. Without a doubt, he was trying not to betray how upset he was about the news regarding his daughter. From what I observed during my first visit to Holliday Manor, he wasn’t the warmest or most loving of fathers, but he clearly did not have such nonchalant feelings toward this situation.
“Cassandra, may I ask why you’ve brought a solas with you on this unannounced visit to my home?” Sabrina exhaled heavily and unenthusiastically.
I narrowed my eyes at her. The anger was growing inside me, roiling like foaming waves.
Kai insisted on coming with me all the way to Laurel’s hometown. He refused to get off the train when it stopped in Mettleshire, and I was in no position to force him to do anything. Stubbornly sticking by my side the entire way, Kai paused only when we reached the iron gates of Holliday Manor. A siren’s home was no place for a hunter, so he waited outside.
Sabrina wasn’t fooled, though. She could sense him the same way that I could, with a creeping tingle of unease at the base of our spines.
“Kai Sinclair accompanied us to London. He—”
She scoffed. “Accompanied? Like a babysitter? You should not allow those monsters to have any semblance of power over you, foolish girl.”
“Well, actually, if it weren’t for Kai, I am sure that both Laurel and I would be dead,” I deadpanned. “He saved my life. He also tried to stop her from jumping into the Thames in the first place.”
I decided not to mention the fact that Kai also nearly killed Laurel while under the influence of the dark sirens’ song, nor did I think it would be wise to tell Sabrina that Kai was dangerously close to ripping my heart out with solas claws.
For good reason, of course. But still… tensions between the old, traditional families of our warring species were already too high.
“You are an idiot to trust a Sinclair,” snapped Sabrina, raising her voice an octave. Her eyes flashed with vehemence. “If you knew the kinds of things they did to their children…”
“A bold remark for a woman who is completely unbothered by the kidnapping of her only child,” I bit back.
Sabrina pressed her lips together. Her body tensed imperceptibly as if she wanted to hit me the same way she hit Laurel, but she held herself back.
“I am not unbothered,” she said, her voice stoic, though there was an undercurrent of a warning underneath the surface. “I am very sad to hear that Laurel has been lost.”
“Then why aren’t you doing anything?” I shouted. “You should be gathering up all the sirens you know and going after the dark ones. You should be doing much more than sitting there uselessly.”
To my surprise, Sabrina let out a tiny snort of laughter.
Patrick remained still and silent.
“I have no interest in starting a war with the dark ones,” Sabrina remarked. “I know that you are new to this, but we prefer to avoid our dark sisters. They have chosen a life that is twisted and disturbing but fighting with them would only darken our path. It would further weaken us sirens against the solas.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Sabrina held up a hand to stop me.
“That being said,” she continued. “Should the dark ones gain possession of the serenity stone, I will not hesitate to rip every single one of them limb from limb. The world will not survive a tragedy like a dark one with the stone. Laurel knew how important it was to recover it before they could.”
Sabrina fixed me with a keen glare. It was as if she was trying to look right through me. I fought the urge to flinch under her gaze.
“Important enough to encourage Laurel to kill me for the stone, if necessary,” I remarked, recalling the conversation I overheard between mother and daughter a mere two weeks ago.
“I will give you one more chance,” she’d hissed. “If you don’t pry that stone from Cassandra Underwood’s cold, dead hands—whatever it takes, Laurel—don’t even bother showing your face in this house again.”
Suddenly, I began to wonder if entering Holliday Manor by myself was a good idea. Sure, Kai was just outside the walls, but what was he going to do against the leader of the siren community? If he hurt her, he would doom the solas to another century of war and violence; history would repeat itself.
Sabrina shrugged, unperturbed by the fact that I knew she didn’t care if I lived or died, as long as it got her closer to the stone.
Laurel told me that the only reason the sirens were so desperate to get the serenity stone was to protect it from falling into the hands of the dark ones, but I couldn’t help wondering if there was another motivation entirely. Though she was beautiful and poised—nothing like the gaunt, pale, black-eyed beasts that stalked my nightmares—Sabrina wasn’t any more pleasant than them. It didn’t seem like the most unreasonable thing to question if she, too, had bad intentions for the serenity stone.
“It is interesting,” Sabrina mused, tapping her long fingernails on her thigh. “Up until eighteen years ago, the ocean sounded different. There was a ring to it that echoed constantly. It was louder. More melodic. Even sirens were entranced by the song of the sea, as if under the spell of a siren song.”
I grew still, puzzled by the turn in the conversation.
“It was the serenity stone,” Sabrina clarified. “Out there, somewhere… waiting to be discovered. It eluded sirens for centuries, going through periods of quiet over the years but never going silent until one day when my cousin disappeared. On that day, it was as if someone injured the ocean. She fell quiet. She felt less… wild. That is the ocean that you have known your whole life, so I do not expect you to understand what I am describing, Cassandra, but you should take my word for it.”
“So that’s how everyone came to assume that my mother had the stone?” I asked. “It seems more like a coincidence rather than causation.”
“Maybe so, but there is no denying that there is something odd about you.”
I tensed, feeling deeply uncomfortable under her gaze. I wanted to believe that Sabrina wouldn’t attack me, that she wouldn’t hurt the person who was supposed to be the true leader of the sirens—not that I wanted that. However, I had no evidence to suggest that I was actually safe around Sabrina Holliday. She made it crystal clear that she hated my mother. The way she spoke about the Underwood family, in general, was laced with disdain.
“Yes, well, growing up in an orphanage has made me a little odd,” I responded.
Sabrina shook her head. “When you are this near, it is strange… but it is almost like I can hear that same beautiful call of the ocean that I’ve missed for almost two decades.”
Goosebumps erupted on my arms.
“I don’t have it,” I told her. “I don’t know how many times I have to insist that I don’t have the serenity stone. I’ve never seen it before in my life.”
Sabrina pursed her lips. She looked like she didn’t believe me, but there was also no denying that, unless I was hiding it in my underwear, I wasn’t currently carrying around a massive magical sapphire.
I cleared my throat and stood up. Coming here was a mistake. I thought I was doing the right thing by delivering the news myself, but it was clear that Sabrina wasn’t going to help me save her.
“Laurel wouldn’t have done it,” I said. “Even if I did have it, she wouldn’t have killed me for it.”
“You are right,” Sabrina nodded. “My daughter was weak.”
My stomach flipped. “You talk about her as if she’s…”
Dead. That was the word I meant to say, but it got caught in my throat. Saying it out loud felt like a curse, one that would make it real.
Sabrina understood exactly how my sentence was supposed to end.
“As far as I am concerned, my daughter is dead now,” Sabrina replied, her tone as smooth as ever. “If she has not already been turned into a dark one, she will be soon enough. As such, she is lost to me. She is no longer my daughter but a monster that cannot be saved. Darkness cannot be reversed.”
Patrick’s lips parted ever so slightly. He was barely concealing the devastation he felt.
Darkness cannot be reversed.
Her words carried profound weight, but I wasn’t sure that they were true. Darkness was strong and forceful—enough to make my mother kill my father, enough to murder hundreds of innocent people, enough to do whatever it took to get the serenity stone…
But, in the same vein, darkness was not as all-consuming as Sabrina Holliday believed it was. I knew because I had tasted darkness before. I had killed before.
Yet, here I was, trying to rescue Laurel. Trying to do the right thing.
The same went for Kai. His solas nature brought out the darkness in him whenever I was near him. Despite that, he saved my life earlier that day. He wasn’t a slave to it.
And my mother… she was darkness incarnate. She warped herself willingly. But she was still a mother. She was not dark enough to kill an infant, to kill her own daughter.
“You’re a monster,” I hissed to Sabrina. My hands were trembling, and my voice shook with fury.
Sabrina blinked slowly. She sat in her high-backed chair with flawless posture, watching me with a steely expression. The last time I was here, she told me that I reminded her of my mother. It wasn’t a compliment.
That’s when the realization hit me.
“You knew,” I said, taking a step toward her. “You knew my mother went dark.”
“Of course I did,” Sabrina replied. “She was destined to become an abomination. She is better off dead.”
The double-meaning of her statement wasn’t lost on me. The ancestral line of Underwood sirens wasn’t known for mental stability. It all traced back to an insane queen who murdered a solas king for the serenity stone. At least, that’s what Kai told me. I could’ve been wrong, but I didn’t think he had a reason to lie to me about that.
Sabrina was implying that she thought I was also destined to become a dark one, that I would end up just like my mother. She believed that I was better off dead, too.
“So that’s it, then?” I asked. My eyes flashed to Patrick, then to a display of antique daggers on the wall behind him, glimmering behind glass. “You’ve accepted Laurel as dead, and you won’t be offering me any assistance to help save her?”
“There is no saving her,” Sabrina shrugged. “It is rather annoying, considering that I will now have to take the lead on hunting down the stone again… unless you would like to stop this ruse and cough it up?”
Violent anger shook me to my core. I was weak from the attack and walked with a limp, but if I learned anything during my altercation with the dark ones in London, it was that I was much stronger than I ever thought possible.
And Sabrina was just like Laurel… a regular siren. When she was in her human form, she was almost completely ordinary. But she wasn’t my target.
Patrick’s mind was soft. It wasn’t like the dark ones, whose consciousness felt like an impenetrable mass of writhing blackness. The thought disturbed me, but it reminded me of the fisherman I killed. The man who tumbled to his death on the jagged coast of Maine because he couldn’t resist my song.
It was easy to latch on to.
I pressed my lips together and hummed, staring Patrick in the eyes. His expression went blank, his jaw slack.
Before Sabrina could make sense of what was happening, I parted my lips and let out a simple note, clear and strong. Patrick turned toward the wall, smashed his fist through the glass of the dagger display, blood blossoming on his hand as shards cut through his skin, and grabbed one of the knives.
Sabrina gasped at the sudden movement, sitting up straight, and looking over her shoulder at her husband.
However, she was too slow. Patrick ripped a dagger out of its jeweled hilt at my command and lifted the tip of it to his throat.
“Stop,” Sabrina shrieked, standing up and freezing with either of her hands outstretched between her husband and me. Patrick had a blissfully emotionless look on his face, the dagger hovering millimeters away from his neck. One little push and the blade would plunge into a major artery.
Sabrina glared at me as my song lowered to a hum. Patrick was caught in the song. You’d think that a man who decided to marry a siren would have a bit more willpower, but maybe Sabrina chose her human partner because of his weakness.
“You are not supposed to be able to do this,” Sabrina hissed, reminding me that sirens weren’t supposed to be able to sing when in their human form. I didn’t stop. She didn’t dare move, sensing that I wouldn’t hesitate to make her husband kill himself right there on the priceless, hand-woven carpet.
I’d made one step into the darkness. How bad could one more be? Maybe it would even give me a boost of power that could help me find Laurel and fight off the dark ones better.
Plus, killing Patrick would leave Sabrina utterly alone. No daughter, no husband. She would get a taste of what it was like to be me. Totally adrift. No real family, except for the single cousin who showed me kindness and was now suffering for it.
If Sabrina thought that I was just like my mother, I might as well prove her right.
A loud bang echoed behind me. Before I knew it, strong arms wrapped around my waist and threw me to the ground. My face was shoved into the carpet, a knee digging into my lower back to keep me down. The siren song was cut off, and the clatter of Patrick dropping the dagger to the floor filled the room.
“Pardon the intrusion, Mrs. Holliday,” said Kai from above me. “Duty calls, as you can see.”
“Get off me,” I hissed.
“Are you done behaving like a sociopath?” Kai barked back. “If I’m not allowed to start a war, neither are you, princess.”
“Kai Sinclair, if you don’t get off me right now, I will shove one of those daggers so far up your ass that it will come out your nose,” I growled.
“Charming,” he said with a sniff.
Despite my threat, Kai shifted and removed his knee from my back. He even offered me a hand to help me up off the carpet, my calf screaming in pain as I stood up and faced Sabrina.
She looked livid. Patrick was hunched over the ottoman, one hand pressed to his chest as he choked back an evident panic attack.
