Chapter Four – The Song Beneath the Pines

A thin silver dawn slid across the keep’s ramparts, yet sleep still would not touch me. Every time I pulled the blanket over my shoulders, a hushed voice threaded through the shutters—soft, lilting, insistent. It carried my name the way a brook carries light.

Ilia… Ilia…

At first I told myself it was only the wind. But the sound returned, circling like a hand at the back of my neck until it became a command. I wrapped my threadbare cloak tight, slipped from the servants’ quarters, and followed the call through corridors gone quiet after the night’s combat drills.

Beyond the gatehouse, the forest waited—towering pines, their trunks dark with dew. No guard challenged me; dawn patrols were still trading yawns for spears. I crossed the outer ditch, boots sinking into damp loam, and let the hush of branches swallow the keep behind me.

The voice deepened the farther I walked. It seemed to rise from the soil itself, humming beneath each footfall. Soon I reached a clearing I had never seen—crowned by six yews so ancient their roots braided above ground like the ribcage of a sleeping giant. In the center stood a natural stairwell where earth opened into darkness.

One heartbeat of hesitation, then I stepped down.

The tunnel was smooth as riverstone and smelled faintly of salt. Bioluminescent moss traced blue veins along the walls, guiding me into a chamber that felt older than language. A small pool, black as obsidian, lay at its heart. And beside it waited a woman as gnarled as the roots above.

Her posture was crooked, but her eyes blazed emerald fire. Knucklebone bracelets clinked on twig-thin wrists as she lifted a staff carved from driftwood.

“You kept the forest waiting, child.”

Her voice fluttered like parchment over flame but resonated in my sternum. “Come closer. Let me see your throat.”

I froze. She chuckled—dry leaves over gravel. “Not to harm you. I must be sure the song still lives.”

Confused, I obeyed. The crone tilted my chin, pressing two icy fingers to the hollow of my neck. Some pulse beneath her touch answered with a thrumming I had never noticed before.

“It is there,” she murmured. “Dormant, but bright.”

“My—my throat?” I managed.

“Your voice. Your birthright.” She released me, gaze softening with something that might have been grief. “Ilia, do you know what you are?”

“A servant,” I said, because that was all I had ever been allowed to claim.

A brittle smile curved her mouth. “Servant, perhaps. But also siren.”

The word rang like glass tapped by a nail. I shook my head. “Sailors’ fables.”

“Truth drapes itself in fable when mortals fear it.” The crone tapped her staff against the pool. Ripples rolled outward, and images bloomed upon the surface.

First a moonlit shore: women with shimmering skin stood barefoot on wet sand, weaving music into the tide. Their song pulled silver fish into arcs, guided gulls into perfect spirals. At their center, crowned with coral, sang a queen—dark-haired, eyes aglow like green quartz.

Recognition speared my chest. Those were my eyes.

“Sirentha,” the crone said. “Queen of the Tideborne Choir. Your mother.”

The scene shifted. A lone warrior stalked the beach—tall, broad, scent of pine and iron in every line of him. The queen’s song faltered when she saw him; the tide itself stilled, as if awaiting permission. They met at the waterline—fire and storm colliding—and neither stepped back.

“Your father,” the crone continued. “A wolf from these mountains, banished for defying his Alpha. He loved fiercely, as wolves do, yet never understood how deeply song could wound.”

More images: clandestine kisses beneath starlight, laughter muffled by nearby patrols, a belly swelling beneath coral silk. Then torches, betrayal. Siren warriors seized the wolf, intent on drowning him for the crime of touching their sovereign. Sirentha sang a single note so sharp the breakers froze mid-crash, but her people forced a choice—her throne or her forbidden love.

“She chose the child,” whispered the crone, tears glinting in bark-dark wrinkles. “She fled with you into forest shadow while soldiers roamed the cliffs. At the keep gates, she laid you down, sealed you against cold with the last lullaby the sea ever heard from her lips. Hunters caught her before daybreak.” A breath rattled in the crone’s chest. “Their blades could not silence a queen, so the sea itself answered—pulling her home in a single black wave.”

My knees buckled. I caught myself on the pool’s rim, nausea and wonder tangling in my throat.

“I should have drowned with her,” I whispered.

“No.” The crone knelt, joints cracking. “She died that you might decide whether siren song will be cage or crown. That choice nears, child. The Marking Ceremony looms. Wolves will brand their claim upon you to bind your gifts—gifts even they do not yet understand.”

A shiver raced my spine. “But Caelan doesn’t even know I exist.”

“That will change the moment fate sets you in his path.” The crone traced a spiral on the stone floor. “Wolves chart life by scent and instinct. Sirens chart by cadence. When those senses collide, kingdoms fracture.” She handed me a small conch pearl-pale and warm as living skin. Runes swirled across its surface like tidal foam. “A shard of Sirentha’s crown. Place it in water and call for me if danger becomes flood.”

I closed trembling fingers around the gift. “If the council drags me to that altar—if they brand me—what then?”

“Sing, Ilia.” She lifted a frail hand, palm glowing the color of stormlight. “Your voice can bend a heart, break a sword, calm a beast. But only if you believe it first.”

“I don’t even know the notes.”

“Then listen.”

Her other hand brushed the pool. Sound blossomed—not melody, exactly, but a harmony of whale-song, gull-cry, and rainfall. It plunged into my bones, stirred a vibration I hadn’t known existed. Swells of water twined upward in thin columns, surrounding us in shimmering ribbons. Words sprang unbidden to my lips—syllables older than the empire—to match the rhythm. When I spoke them aloud, the columns brightened to silver before sinking back into stillness.

Silence returned, yet everything felt changed. The forest no longer loomed; it inhaled with me. My heart beat, and somewhere a tide answered.

The crone sagged, satisfied. “Your first note. The throat remembers what the mind forgets. Nurture it.”

Footsteps above sent loose dirt trickling from the tunnel mouth—patrols reorganizing after dawn changeover. Panic fluttered through me.

“Go,” she urged. “Return before they notice. The keep is cruel to those who wander.”

I hesitated. “Your name—how should I call you?”

“Seer of the Drowned Tongue will serve.” She winked, sudden mischief flashing in ancient eyes. “Or ‘Grandmother,’ if that is easier to shout in a storm.”

I managed a shaky laugh, pressed the pearl to my chest, and scrambled up the stairwell. Outside, the trees stood quiet, but every needle seemed to hum with echoes of the song. Sunrise stained the horizon crimson—a warning, or perhaps an omen.

As the keep’s silhouette grew nearer, the hush of the forest gave way to distant clatter: training blades, cook-pots, stable doors. Life resuming its endless toil. Yet the world felt newly fragile, as though one wrong touch might fracture it.

Halfway to the servant gate I paused, sensing a different pull—deep, magnetic, steady as a heartbeat. My palm rose to my throat, where song still resonated, and for an instant I thought I tasted pine-smoke and warm earth: the Alpha’s essence lingering at the edge of memory.

He didn’t know me—yet. The council hadn’t chosen its Luna—yet. The Marking altar still waited, cold and unquestioned.

But somewhere beyond those walls, a wolf’s destiny paced, restless, searching. And somewhere inside my ribs, the sea prepared its own reply.

I slipped through the postern door just as the first bell tolled, cloak damp with forest dew, pearl warm in my fist. And for the first time since I could remember, I did not feel small.

I felt unsolved.