Siren Song

The Meeting In The Market

I walked causally through the outdoor market, feeling the warm night breeze dance against what little of my skin could be seen under my hooded robes. The moon was just beginning to rise, and the vendors had put up floating lanterns outside their booth to ensure their customers could see their goods. I heard my sister's voice just a couple miles from where I stood. It's not like she was being super loud, she was just bartering with what sounded like an older woman. Celina wanted the woman's sapphire ring, and was willing to trade an Enrelian bracelet for it, but the woman didn't believe it was genuine. There was still a massive bustling crowd for me to shuffle through before I reached them, but I could at least hear them.

I've always had the ability to hear people. Not just in the normal sense, but I could hear my parents talking about me from 3 stories away through multiple brick and cobblestone walls. I guess it comes as no surprise that Christmas presents were never much of a surprise for me. Having a gift like this really isn't that rare amongst royalty like myself, even though mine in particular is somewhat rare. People used to say that royalty were direct descendants of the Gods, and by keeping royal blood pure, they have preserved a diluted version of their God-like powers. It remains true in my family, my mother and both my sisters all have incredible power with controlling their field of magic.

As I approached the voices of the vendor and my sister, I instead saw the older woman working the jewelry booth and a woman in her mid-40's who was short and stout and stature with long curly blonde hair. I knew it was my sister because of her voice, but her appearance was altered. It made sense for her to be using her ability now, I mean if anyone knew that two of the princesses were here in the market it would be a big scene, which is not what we needed. When I was close enough to my disguised sister for her to hear me, I whispered our code phrase "Check the rubies because they may be a cheaper gem in disguise", and she glanced towards me. Once she saw it was me she wrapped up her conversation with the vendor, saying she would just take her business elsewhere, and walked towards me.

"Do you know where we're supposed to meet them?" she asked, never one for small talk.

"Yeah, just follow me. And hide me would you, these robes are starting to catch some odd looks." We walked past the crowd and stepped into a small dark alcove. She waved her hand over me and I saw a mist of bluish white fog wrap entirely around me. I have no idea how Celina manages to deal with this all the time. I guess it's something you just grow accustomed to, but being constantly surrounded by a cloud of bluish fog while disguised is not fun. I already couldn't wait for her to take it off of me, but I knew it was better than the alternative of being caught here.

" Well, let's go!" I said now that I was disguised, "we have business to attend to. Just follow me and keep an eye out for anyone else that might be following us." I led Celina through the winding streets to the industrial area just North of the market. Once there I navigated us towards a run down old house that had clearly been abandoned for a few years. The windows had been smashed in and boarded up, and the door had crumbled to shards of wood in the doorframe. I heard men talking in the basement and focused in on what they were saying.

"You don't think she'll be too upset do you?" One man asked in a worried tone

"I hope not, I mean we can't be the first dud they've found." He responded coolly. Oh great, I thought, they just seemed so confident... Not. I was going to have to go in guns blazing. This wasn't the first of these meetings to go like this. At least this time I had some warning.

"Celina, take our disguises off." I said "The veil is messing with my vision and I need to be able to see, this is going to be a critical meeting." Celina did as I asked, and I watched as the short and stout curly blonde haired girl transformed before my eyes. Her curly hair shrunk into waves of long reddish brown locks, and she grew to be a tall, thin, model-like young woman with fair skin, plump lips, and sunken eyes.

I never saw my transformation, I don't even know what I looked like under the veil, but I know what I look like now. Tall, olive skin, green eyes, long straight black hair, and nothing else especially notable.

"Do you think we're going to be in any danger there?" Celina asked, a hint of worry in her voice.

"I don't think we'll be in a lot of danger, but some, yes. We should probably call Sabrina just in case." Sabrina was the youngest of us three girls, and still very innocent and naive. But she was by far the most powerful of any of us. She could take down a group of foes alone much more easily than Celina and I could together.

"Okay I'll call her, she can just stay up here and we can call her if we need her." Celina said, before shooting up a beacon of bright blue light into the air.

"Yeah I think that would be be-" I stopped, wanting to make sure I heard it right. Maybe I was just paranoid. It couldn't be, it had to just be my nerves. I heard a voice. The last voice that I wanted to hear at that moment. From below the abandoned house I heard:

"Oh please, you'll be able to take them easily. The only one of them that poses a threat is the little one. And if she shows up I can take care of her."

Alxandra Roman... The definition of a diva, that is, a diva who also happens to be a trained assassin that despises my family. This is exactly what we didn't need right now.

Celina looked at me, worried because of my sudden expression of worry. "You okay, sis?" She asked.

"No, call it off. It's an ambush, there's a Roman down there."

"Fuck, which one?!"

"The worst of them, Alxandra. She's down there waiting for us."

"What do we do?! Do we go down there and fight her or run"

"It's not worth it. Let's just go back home." We started walking back home when we heard a voice behind us.

"Figured it out, huh?" Alxandra was leaning against the door frame, nonchalantly twirling an orb of dark energy around her hand. I looked at her and screamed.

Not out of fear, out of self-protection. I screamed with so much power that it knocked her ove. She grunted and tried leaning up to shoot her dark energy at us, but Celina had already covered us with a veil rendering is invisible as we escaped back home.