Read Online Sirensong by Jenna Black - Free Book Online

grounded for the rest of my life. Maybe even longer.
    Not that I felt bad about keeping secrets from him, mind you. He was still keeping what he thought was a whopping secret from me. He was bound by his ties to the Seelie Court not to tell me what would happen if I gave the Erlking my virginity. Thanks to the agreement the Erlking had made with Titania, there was a geis—a magical restriction—that prevented my dad from even talking about the Erlking’s secret.
    But when my aunt Grace had tried to kill me, she’d been so determined to hurt me before I died that she’d severed her ties with the Seelie Court just so she could tell me the horrifying truth of what I’d agreed to. That was when I realized that as much as my dad loved me—and he did love me, I knew that—he was a Seelie Fae, too deeply devoted to his Court to consider leaving it, even to protect me.
    He had to know what I’d promised the Erlking in order to free Ethan. And yet he hadn’t been willing to renounce the Seelie Court so he could warn me. If he was going to keep a secret like that from me, then I didn’t feel bad about hiding the Erlking’s mark.
    “Shall I go talk to your father right now?” Keane prompted. “Or are you going to explain why you have something that looks suspiciously like the Erlking’s mark on your shoulder?”
    I considered calling his bluff. He wasn’t generally what I’d think of as a tattletale kind of guy. But like just about everyone else in my life, he’d do any crappy thing you could name if he thought it was for my own good.
    “You’re blackmailing me?” I asked, stalling as I tried to make up a half-truth that would get him off my back.
    Keane shrugged, but the gesture was tight and tense. “Call it what you want. But if you’re the Erlking’s creature, then I think I have a right to know it before I travel into Faerie with you.”
    “I am not the Erlking’s creature!”
    “No? Then why do you have his mark, like a brand, on your skin?”
    “You mind if I go change before we have this conversation? I don’t like standing around in a torn shirt.” I plucked at the shredded shoulder for emphasis.
    Keane took a step closer to me, his jaw set. “Yes, I mind if you take a little extra time to work out the details of whatever lie you’re about to tell me.” There was a hint of a growl in his voice, and I wondered if he was mad enough to hit me in anger. I didn’t think so, despite the clenched fists and the smoke coming out of his ears, but I couldn’t help my primal instinct to take a step back.
    Keane blinked, like he was surprised. Then he seemed to realize just how aggressive his body language was, and he visibly relaxed. His fists uncurled, and his shoulders lowered, but I could still see the metaphorical smoke. He wasn’t any less pissed. And he wasn’t going to give me time to think things through before I spoke.
    “Start talking!” he commanded.
    I wished I could squirm my way out of talking, but I couldn’t, so I tried to keep my explanation as simple as possible. “The Erlking put a spell on me when I was trying to get him to free Ethan.” I left out just how he’d put the spell on me, because there was no way I was telling anyone about the Erkling’s brooch. I’d used it three times to make myself invisible, and the third use had activated the mark. I hadn’t used the brooch since—despite the Erlking’s promise that it contained no other secondary spells—but I didn’t want to risk having it taken away.
    I resisted the urge to reach up and touch the mark. It didn’t hurt or anything, but somehow I was always very conscious of it on my skin, knowing exactly where it was even when I couldn’t see it.
    “It’s like a tracking device. He claims it’s for my own good,” I said, “because he wants me alive so I can take him into the mortal world.”
    I hadn’t thought it was possible for Keane to look any more horrified, but I was wrong. Most of the people around me