Sing Me to Sleep (The Lost Shards Book 3) Read online

“The rat man found us. One of his rats jumped on Melody and killed her fast. Mom screamed and ran toward her to save her, but she was too late.” Hedy wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and hugged herself. “I hid under a dumpster. I didn’t try to help. All I could do was watch.”

  What else was she supposed to do? Mom had told them all not to fight, but to run. That was their only job. Run so they could survive.

  “The rat attacked Mom next. She fought. It tore at her face and arms, bit her. She was so torn up she was unrecognizable.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Then she got away enough to turn, but it pounced on her back and bit into her spine. She went down like a rag doll.” Tears fell down Hedy’s cheeks. “I remember being so terrified. Feeling so weak and small.”

  Echo’s voice broke, but she pulled it back together before dark shards could take over her sweet sister.

  “Then he came. He must have heard the fight or something, but he just appeared out of the darkness, like some kind of avenging spirit.

  “He shot the rat. It turned and ran. Mom couldn’t move. I kept waiting for the man to kill her, but he didn’t. He was trying to help her.”

  Stygian. He had been that man.

  Hedy must have been too young to realize what he’d really been doing—that he’d killed their mother.

  “Mom was frantic, crying. She begged him to kill her. She begged him to save her daughters.” Hedy sniffed. “But Melody was already dead. Mom was talking about you and me now. She told him that she couldn’t fight anymore. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t protect us. The only way to save us was to give you her shards so you could fight. So you could run and take me with you. Save me.”

  Echo balled her hands into fists and covered her ears. She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to picture it in her mind and see her dying mother.

  “She begged him to kill her, Echo. It took a lot of time to convince him. I remember that now—how she begged and begged…

  “Finally, he did what she asked.”

  Echo let her hands fall. There was no keeping out her sister’s words. They were part of her now. Part of her makeup, her history.

  “She died thanking him, Echo. She was so grateful to him. He made it fast. She never saw it coming, never had time to be afraid. It was as good a death as any of us can hope to have.”

  That last part was more than Echo could take. She let her song fail and ran down the hall.

  “I’m sorry, Hedy,” she said as she ran.

  Behind her, her sister began to scream, “You fucking bitch! I’ll kill you!”

  Echo couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t stand to see Hedy suffer. She couldn’t stand to face Stygian and his friends. There was too much pain here, too much risk, too many demons for her to face. She had to leave. Get out of this place. Now, before it was too late.

  Running was all Echo knew, so she ran.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Echo broke into Stygian’s room a few days later.

  She’d left without saying goodbye. Worse, she’d stolen his car. Even worse, Marvel had called her every few hours, not to scold her, but to ask her to come back home.

  Home.

  Echo still couldn’t get used to the idea.

  Not only did she have one, but she had two. Marvel said that some lawyer had posted a notice about Echo inheriting her mother’s house, that there was an estate with a modest inheritance that had paid taxes and insurance on the old farmhouse for years.

  It was all Echo’s now, but there was something important missing. She had no one to share it with.

  Stygian was reading when she let herself into his room through the window. Before she’d vaulted the low sill, he was on his feet, watching her silently.

  Echo stood near the opening and simply drank in the sight of him.

  He was still recovering from his wounds. His arm was in a sling, his stitches were bandaged. He had smaller cuts and bruises dotting his face and hands, along with countless scratches from rat claws.

  She’d never seen a more handsome, more welcome sight in her life.

  “Marvel said you weren’t coming back,” he said.

  “I wasn’t. Until I was.”

  In her hand was a single piece of paper inside a zip top bag. She handed it to him.

  “What’s this? More prophecy?”

  “An apology. Or a thank you note. Kind of both.”

  His dark brows drew together as he looked at it. “For what?”

  “For saving me all those years ago. For listening to the pleading of a desperate mother. For doing the impossible thing and not running away when that would have been so much easier.” She stepped closer, hoping it wasn’t too late. “Hedy told me about that night. About how you didn’t want to kill Mom, how you tried to convince her to stay alive for her girls.”

  He turned his head, his jaw clenching and releasing with emotion.

  Echo took another step. “Mom is with me.” She pressed her hand over her heart. “In here. I can feel her there, always looking out for me, no matter what. That’s what she did that night. That’s what you helped her do. How could I ever hold that against you?”

  He shook his head slightly, still not looking at her. “It doesn’t matter. You were right not to trust me. Even though Hazel is gone, it’s too dangerous. Not only do I no longer have any powers without the witch, it’s only a matter of time before bad shit goes down again and I gather up more dark shards.”

  “I don’t care about your powers or lack thereof. All I care about is you, the man I love.”

  His entire body clenched at the word, as if she’d punched him.

  Echo moved close enough to touch him now. She was careful of his wounds, but let her hands press gently against his chest.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “Don’t what? Touch you or love you?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “Sorry. It’s too late. I’m already doing both.”

  He still wasn’t looking at her, so she used her finger to guide his chin back to center.

  Stygian’s gaze met hers then, and she could feel it light her up all the way down to her toes.

  This was the man she was meant to be with. This was the gift she got in return for a hard life lived on the run. Stygian, his home, his family…it was all hers now, and she wasn’t going to let anyone take it away from her. Not even him.

  “Echo. I can’t….”

  “Can’t what? Can’t trust me? Can’t accept my apology?” She paused, because asking the next question could destroy her. “Can’t love me?”

  “I already do,” he said. “Love you.”

  Joy unlike anything she’d ever felt consumed her. He loved her! She wasn’t alone, hanging inside this crazy, rioting party of emotions.

  She wasn’t alone, period.

  Echo had to clear her throat before she could speak. “Then give me a chance to make up for my poor choices. Let me earn your forgiveness. Let me show you the kind of love that’s worth risking everything for.”

  His good arm wrapped around her waist. She could feel his warm strength against her, but he wasn’t letting go yet. He wasn’t giving in the way she wanted.

  She laid her head over his heart. “Let me show you that I’m worth a second chance.”

  His grip tightened. His mouth brushed her hair. “You’re worth all the second chances, Echo. Every last one of them.”

  She lifted her head. His mouth covered hers, and she knew in that moment that no matter where she lived or how far she was forced to run, that Stygian would always be her home.

  He kissed her breathless. She wanted more, but he moved away before she could get her fill.

  She wanted him. Craved him. Her body was liquid with need and aching.

  All of that came out in her voice when she asked, “Are you too injured for me to take advantage of you?”

  “Oh, hell, no. But there’s something I want to show you first.”

  “What?”

  He took her ha
nd in his, grinning. “Come with me.”

  Echo followed him to Marvel’s office. He tapped on the glass to get her attention.

  Marvel turned around, saw them and beamed. She tapped a button on her desk. “You’re back! I knew you’d come to your senses. You just needed a little bit of time to realize how desperately you missed us.”

  Echo squeezed Stygian’s hand. “Some of you more than others.”

  Marvel blew out a loud breath. “Geez. Get a room. After the show.”

  “What show?” Echo asked.

  Stygian was all smiles. “You’ll see.”

  Marvel pulled up an image on one of her computer screens. It was a full color camera feed of Hedy’s cell.

  Echo’s heart, so full only second ago, emptied on a hard, painful surge.

  “Don’t despair,” Stygian whispered. “It’s good news.”

  Marvel pressed another series of keys and the still image began to move. “It was Stygian’s idea to use your voice as a weapon.”

  “A weapon?”

  “Against the bad shards,” he said. “I saw the way Hedy reacted to your singing, so I asked Marvel if she could record it.”

  “As it so happens, all conversations with inmates are recorded, including your little solo the other day. I scrubbed out the rough spots, imbedded it in a bit of white noise so that poor Hedy doesn’t have to hear the ditty over and over again so she goes even crazier than she already has, and this is what we got.”

  Echo watched as Hedy went from clawing at the glass and pulling on her hair, screaming, to docile and calm in the matter of two seconds.

  “That,” Stygian said, “is the power of your voice.”

  “Check out the live feed,” Marvel said. She typed a few keystrokes, then the image on the screen changed. It was still Hedy in her cell, but the date was now today’s.

  Hedy was on her bunk, reading a book. There was no rage, no screaming, no tantrums. No promising to kill anyone. Just calm, peaceful Hedy.

  “She’s been like that since I started piping in the song on a loop. A few of the other more violent prisoners have also benefitted.”

  “It’s just like what Mom used to do,” Echo said in disbelief.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  Echo reached out as if she could touch her sister. “Sing her to sleep.”

  “We can’t let her out or anything,” Marvel said, “but I have a couple of ideas that might make her life better. At least now you can visit her. At least now she understands why she’s in there. She accepts it.”

  Echo didn’t like that her sister was caged, but what she saw on that screen was far better than the life Hedy must have been living up until now. She’d always suffered at the hands of her shards. Now she was relatively free of them, even if she wasn’t free to leave.

  “Thank you,” she told Marvel, her voice thick with tears of gratitude.

  “Don’t thank me. Thank Stygian. If not for his brainstorm, this never could have happened.”

  Echo turned to him. “Thank you.”

  He gave a half-shrug of his good shoulder. “Seems the least I could do for the woman I love.”

  And just like that, her heart was full again, so full of love and hope, she didn’t know how she was going to keep it all inside.

  “I love you too,” she said.

  “Geez,” Marvel grumbled. “There are empty rooms all over the place. Pick one.”

  They did what Marvel suggested, and were so busy loving each other, they didn’t come out for days.

  About the Author

  Anna Argent, who also writes as bestselling author Shannon K. Butcher, has written more than thirty-five titles since launching her career in 2007. Her fresh approach to paranormal romance includes The Taken, The Stone Men and The Lost Shards Series—definitely not your mama’s paranormals. She also writes a contemporary romance series set in a small town nestled in the Ozark Mountains, inspired by her time living there. Her alter ego Shannon K. Butcher has three award-winning series, including the paranormal romance series The Sentinel Wars, the action-romance series The Edge, and the romantic suspense Delta Force Trilogy. As a former engineer and current nerd, she frequently uses charts, graphs and tables to aid her in the mechanics of story design, world building and to keep track of all those colorful characters, magical powers and alternate worlds. An avid beader and glass artist, she spends her free time turning small sparkly bits into larger sparkly bits. She’s rarely on social media, so the best place to find out news about upcoming releases is via her newsletter. You can sign up at AnnaArgent.com.