A blue reserved for royalty.
The natives of Págos are like no other race in the hundred kingdoms, but the royal family is a breed unto themselves. Carved from great blocks of ice, their skin is that much paler, their hair that much whiter, and their lips are the same blue as their seal.
“Have you known for a while?” Sakura asks.
“It’s the reason I’ve let you get away with so much,” I tell her. “I didn’t want to reveal your secret until I found a way to put it to good use.” I raise my glass in a toast. “Long live Princess Yukiko of Págos.”
Sakura’s face doesn’t change at the mention of her real name. Instead she looks at me blankly, as though it’s been so long that she doesn’t even recognize her own name.
“Who else knows?” she asks.
“I haven’t told anybody yet.” I emphasize the yet more crudely than necessary. “Though I don’t understand why you’d even care. Your brother took the crown over a decade ago. It’s not like you have a claim to the throne. You can go where you like and do as you please. Nobody wants to assassinate a royal who can’t rule.”
Sakura looks at me candidly. “I’m aware of that.”
“Then why the secrecy?” I ask. “I haven’t heard anything about a missing princess, so I can only assume that your family knows where you are.”
“I’m no runaway,” says Sakura.
“Then what are you?”
“Something you will never be,” she sneers. “Free.”
I set my glass down harder than I intend. “How lucky for you, then.”
It’s easy for Sakura to be free. She has four older brothers with claims to the throne before her and so none of the responsibilities my father likes to remind me are still heavy on my shoulders.
“I left once Kazue took the crown,” Sakura says. “With three brothers to counsel him, I knew I’d have no wisdom to offer that they couldn’t. I was twenty-five and had no taste for the life of a royal who would never rule. I told my brothers this. I told them I wanted to see more than snow and ice. I wanted color.” She looks at me. “I wanted to see gold.”
I snort. “And now?”
“Now I hate the vile shade.”
I laugh. “Sometimes I feel the same. But it’s still the most beautiful city in all of the hundred kingdoms.”
“You’d know better than me,” Sakura says.
“Yet you stay.”
“Homes are hard to find.”
I think about the truth of that. I understand it better than anyone, because nowhere I’ve traveled ever really feels like home. Even Midas, which is so beautiful and filled with so many people I love. I feel safe here, but not like I belong. The only place I could ever call home and mean it is the Saad. And that’s constantly moving and changing. Rarely in the same place twice. Maybe I love it because it belongs nowhere, not even in Midas, where it was built. And yet it also belongs everywhere.
I swirl the final remnants of my whiskey and look to Sakura. “So then it would be a shame if people discovered who you were. Being a Págese immigrant is one thing, but being a royal without a country is another. How would they treat you?”
“Little prince.” Sakura licks her lips. “Are you trying to blackmail your favor?”
“Of course not,” I say, though my voice says something else. “I’m simply saying that it would be inconvenient if people found out. Especially considering your patrons.”
“For them,” says Sakura. “They would try to use me and I would have to kill them. I would probably have to kill half of my customers.”
“I think that’s bad for business.”
“But being a killer has worked out so well for you.”
I don’t react to this, but my lack of emotion seems to be the exact reaction Sakura wants. She smiles, so beautiful, even though it’s so clearly mocking. I think about what a shame it is that she’s twice my age, because she’s striking when she’s wicked, and wild underneath the pretense.
“Come to Págos with me,” I say.
“No.” Sakura turns away from me.
“No, you won’t come?”
“No, that isn’t what you want to ask.”
I stand. “Help me find the Crystal of Keto.”
Sakura turns back to me. “There it is.” There is no sign of a smile on her face now. “You want a Págese to help you climb the Cloud Mountain and find your fairy tale.”
“It’s not like I can just stroll in and scale your most deadly mountain with no idea of what I’ll be dealing with. Will your brother even give me entry? With you by my side, you can advise me on the best course of action. Tell me the route I should take. Help convince the king to give me safe passage.”
“I am an expert at climbing mountains.” Sakura’s voice is wholly sarcastic.
“You were required to do it on your sixteenth birthday.” I try to hide my impatience. “Every Págese royal is. You could help me.”
“I am so warm of heart.”
“I’m asking for—”
“You’re begging,” she says. “And for something impossible. Nobody but my family can survive the climb. It’s in our blood.”
I slam my fist on the table. “The storybooks may peddle that, but I know better. There must be another route. A hidden way. A secret kept in your family. If you won’t come with me, then tell me what it is.”
“It wouldn’t matter either way.”
“What does that mean?”
She runs a tongue across her blue lips. “If this crystal does exist in the mountain, then it’s surely hidden in the locked dome of the ice palace.”
“A locked dome,” I say blankly. “Are you making this up as you go along?”
“We’re perfectly aware of the legends written in all of those children’s books,” she says. “My family has been trying to find a way into that room for generations, but there’s no other entry than the one that can be plainly seen and no way of forcing our way in. It’s magically sealed, perhaps by the original families themselves. What’s needed is a key. A necklace lost to our family. Without that, it doesn’t matter how many mountains you bargain your way up. You’ll never be able to find what you’re looking for.”
“Let me worry about that,” I say. “Finding lost treasure is a specialty of mine.”
“And the ritual needed to release the crystal from its prison?” Sakura asks. “I’m assuming you found out about that, too?”
“Not any specifics.”
“That’s because nobody knows them. How do you plan to conduct an ancient rite if you don’t even know what it is?”
In truth, I thought Sakura might be able to fill in the blanks there.
“The secret is probably on your necklace,” I tell her, hoping it’s true. “It could be a simple inscription we need to read. And if it’s not, then I’ll figure something else out.”
Sakura laughs. “Say you’re right,” she says. “Say legends are easy to come by. Say even lost necklaces and ancient rituals are too. Say maps and routes are the most elusive thing. Who’s to say I’d ever share such a thing with you?”
“I could leak your identity to everyone.” The words taste petty and childish on my lips.
“How beneath you,” Sakura says. “Try again.”
I pause. Sakura isn’t refusing to help. She’s simply giving me the opportunity to make it worth her while. Everyone has a price, even the forgotten Págese princess. I just have to find out what hers is. Money seems irrelevant, and the thought of offering her any makes me grimace. She could take it as an insult (she is royalty, after all), or see me more as a child than a captain, which I so clearly am in her presence. I have to give her something nobody else can. An opportunity she’ll never get again and so won’t dream of passing up.
I think about how similar Sakura and I are. Two royals trying to escape their countries. Only, Sakura hadn’t wanted to leave Págos because she disliked being a princess, but because the job had become useless once her brother took the crown.
> No taste for the life of a royal who would never rule.
I feel a sinking sensation in my stomach. At heart, Sakura is a queen. The only problem is that she doesn’t have a country. I understand then what my quest will cost me if I want it enough.
“I can make you a queen.”
Sakura arches a white brow. “I hope that you’re not threatening to kill my brothers,” she says. “Because the Págese don’t turn against one another for the sake of a crown.”
“Not at all.” I compose myself as best I can. “I’m offering you another country entirely.”
A slow look of realization works its way onto Sakura’s face. Coyly, she asks, “And what country would that be, Your Highness?”
It will mean the end of the life I love. The end of the Saad and the ocean and the world I have seen twice over and would see again a thousand times. I would live the life of a king, as my father has always wanted, with a snow-born wife to rule by my side. An alliance between ice and gold. It’d be more than my father imagined, and wouldn’t it be worth it in the end? Why will I have to search the sea once all of its monsters have been destroyed? I’ll be satisfied, maybe, ruling Midas, once I know the world is out of danger.
But even as I list the reasons it’s a good plan, I know they’re all lies. I’m a prince by name and nothing else. Even if I manage to conquer the sirens and bring peace to the ocean, I’ve always planned to stay on the Saad with my crew – if they’d still follow me – no longer searching, but always moving. Anything else will make me miserable. Staying still, in one place and one moment, will make me miserable. In my heart, I’m as wild as the ocean that raised me.
I take a breath. I’ll be miserable, then, if that’s what it takes.
“This country. If there’s a map that shows a secret route up the mountain so my crew and I can avoid freezing to death during the climb, then it’ll be a fair trade.”
I hold out my hand to Sakura. To the princess of Págos.
“If you give me that map, I’ll make you my queen.”
13
Lira
I’VE MADE A MISTAKE. It started with a prince, as most stories do. Once I felt the thrum of his heart beneath my fingers, I couldn’t forget it. And so I watched from the water, waiting for him to reappear. But it was days before he did and once he had, he never neared the ocean without a legion by his side.
Singing to him by the docks was risk enough, with the promise of royal guards and passersby coming to the young hunter’s rescue. But with his crew there, it was something else. I could sense the difference in those men and women and the way they followed the prince, moved when he moved, stayed still in rapt attention whenever he spoke to them. A kind of loyalty that can’t be bought. They would jump into the ocean after him and sacrifice their lives for his, as though I would take such a trade.
So rather than attack, I watched and listened as they spoke in stories, of stones with the power to destroy worlds. The Second Eye of Keto. A legend my mother has been hunting for her entire reign. The humans spoke of heading to the ice kingdom in search of it, and I knew it would be my best opportunity. If I followed them to the snow sea, then the waters would be too cold for any human to survive, and the prince’s crew could do nothing but watch him die.
I had a plan. But my mistake was to think that my mother didn’t.
As I watched the prince, the Sea Queen watched me. And when I ventured from the Midasan docks in search of food, my mother made herself known.
The smell of desecration is ripe. A line of bodies – sharks and octopi – scatter through the water as a trail for me to follow. I swim through the corpses of animals I would have feasted on any other day.
“I’m surprised you came,” says the Sea Queen.
My mother looks majestic, hovering in a circle of carcasses. Remains drip from the symbols on her skin and her tentacles sway lethally beside her.
My jaw tightens. “I can explain.”
“I imagine you have many explanations in that sweet little head of yours,” says the queen. “Of course, I’m not interested in them.”
“Mother.” My hands curl to fists. “I left the kingdom for a reason.”
An image of the golden prince weighs in my mind. If I hadn’t hesitated on the beach and been so concerned with savoring the sweet smell of his skin, then I wouldn’t need explanations. I would only need to present his heart, and the Sea Queen would show me mercy.
“You saved a human.” Her voice is as dead as night.
I shake my head. “That’s not true.”
The queen’s tentacles crash into the ocean bed, and a mighty wave of sand washes over me, knocking me to the floor. I bite back a cough as the shingle catches in my throat.
“You insult me with your lies,” she seethes. “You saved a human, and not just any human, but the one who kills us. Is it because you live to disobey me?” she asks. And then, with a disgusted snarl: “Or perhaps you’ve grown weak. Silly little girl, bewitched by a prince. Tell me, was it his smile that did it? Did it bring your heart to life and make you love him like some common mermaid?”
My mind spins. I can barely be outraged through the confusion. Love is a word we scarcely hear in the ocean. It exists only in my song and on the lips of the princes I’ve killed. And I have never heard it from my mother’s mouth. I’m not even sure what it really means. To me, it has always been just a word that humans treasure for reasons I can’t comprehend. There isn’t even a way to say it in Psáriin. Yet my mother is accusing me of feeling it. Is it the same fealty I have for Kahlia? That force that drives me to protect her without even thinking? If that’s true, then it makes the accusation even more baffling, because all I want is to kill the prince, and though I may not know what love is, I’m sure it isn’t that.
“You’re mistaken,” I tell my mother.
A corner of the queen’s lips coils in revulsion. “You murdered a mermaid for him.”
“She was trying to eat his heart!”
Her eyes narrow. “And why,” she asks, “would that be a bad thing? Let the creature take his filthy heart and swallow it whole.”
“He was mine,” I argue. “A gift for you! A tribute for my eighteenth.”
The queen stops to comprehend this. “You hunted a prince for your birthday,” she says.
“Yes. But, Mother—”
The Sea Queen’s gaze darkens and in an instant one of her tentacles reaches out and snatches me from the ocean floor. “You insolent thing!”
Her tentacles tighten around my throat, squeezing until the ocean blurs. I feel the shiver of danger. I’m deadly, but the Sea Queen is something more. Something less.
“Mother,” I plead.
But the queen only squeezes tighter at the sound of my voice. If she wanted, she could snap my neck in two. Take my head like I took the mermaid’s. Perhaps even my heart, too.
The queen throws me onto the ocean bed and I grab at my throat, touching the tender spot, only to snatch my hand away as the bones crack and throb with the contact. Above me the queen rises, towering like a dark shadow. Around us the water dulls in color, becoming gray and then seeping to black, as though the ocean is stained with her fury.
“You are not worthy to be my heir,” the Sea Queen hisses.
When I part my lips to speak, all I taste is acid. The ocean salt is replaced by burning magic that sizzles down my throat. I can barely breathe through the pain.
“You are not worthy of the life you have been given.”
“Don’t,” I beg.
Barely a whisper, barely a word. A crack in the air masquerading as a voice, just like my aunt Crestell’s had before she was killed.
“You think you’re the Princes’ Bane.” The Sea Queen roars with laughter. “But you are the prince’s savior.”
She raises her trident, carved from the bones of the goddess Keto. Bones like night. Bones of magic. In the center, the trident ruby awaits its orders.
“Let us see,” sneers the queen, “if the
re is any hope for redemption left in you.”
She taps the base of the trident onto the floor, and I feel pain like nothing I could have imagined. My bones snap and realign themselves. Blood pours from my mouth and ears, melting through my skin. My gills. My fin splits, tearing me straight down the middle. Breaking me in two. The scales that once shimmered like stars are severed in moments, and beneath my breast comes a beating I have never known. It feels like a thousand fists pounding from the inside.
I clutch at my chest, nails digging in, trying to claw whatever it is out of me. Set it free. The thing trapped inside and so desperately pounding to be released.
Then, through it all, my mother’s voice calls, “If you are the mighty Princes’ Bane, then you should be able to steal this prince’s heart even without your voice. Without your song.”
I try to cling to consciousness, but the ocean is choking me. Salt and blood scrape down my throat until I can only gasp and thrash. But I hold on. I don’t know what will happen if I close my eyes. I don’t know if I’ll ever open them again.
“If you want to return,” growls the Sea Queen, “then bring me his heart before the solstice.”
I try to focus, but my mother’s words turn to echoes. Sounds I can’t make out. Can’t understand or bear to focus on. I’ve been torn apart and it’s not enough for her.
My eyes begin to shut. The black of the sea blurring in the backs of my eyes. The seawater swirls in my ears until nothing but numbness remains. With a last glance at the blurry shadow of my queen, I close my eyes and give in to the darkness.
14
Elian
THE PYRAMID DISAPPEARS BEHIND the horizon. The sun is climbing higher, gold against gold. We sail onward, leaving the shining city behind, until the ocean turns blue once more and my eyes adjust to the vast expanse of color. It always takes a while. At first, the blues are muted. The whites of the clouds dotted with bronze as leftover shimmers from Midas float across my eyes. But soon the world comes bursting back, vivid and unyielding. The coral of the fish and the bluebell sky.
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