Lira kicks me under the table, hard. Rycroft shoots her a devil’s smile and turns to one of his approaching shadows. The man is older than I am, his skin brandished by the sun, and I can’t help but think he looks familiar. A cleaver is sheathed to his belt, and large earrings stretch chasms into his lobes. When he leans down to whisper into Rycroft’s ear, he sweeps a long velvet coat out of the way.
I straighten, knowing where I’ve seen him before. The man from the Golden Goose. The one who started this quest by pointing me in the direction of the Sea Queens’s weakness.
He’s one of the Xaprár.
It was Rycroft who sent me after the crystal.
“I have a new bargain for you,” Rycroft says, all teeth. “Now that my men have sights on your crew, how about we both be a little more honest? Your guys are good at hiding, but they’re not Xaprár. What they are, is screwed. And they’ll be dead if you don’t tell me exactly how you plan to get the Crystal of Keto.”
I don’t blink. “Never heard of it.”
“Whose life should I bring you to get your memory going?” Rycroft slides his finger across the rim of his goblet. “The tattooed bitch with the gun? Or maybe I’ll slice the giant a new smile? Pick a person and I’ll pick the body part.”
I arch an eyebrow. “That’s very dramatic.”
“I like dramatic,” he says. “How about Kye’s head on a platter?”
“How about me killing you before your crew can even blink?”
Rycroft smiles. “But then where would your friends be?” He gestures to one of the Xaprár, who pours him another measure of rum.
“So you kill me as a trade for their lives?” I ask.
Rycroft throws his head back. “Now who’s dramatic? I wouldn’t risk starting a war with your daddy.” He waves a hand. “Just tell me what I want to know.”
“How about you tell me why you’re suddenly so interested in the crystal?”
Rycroft leans back in his chair, letting his gold teeth track to a lazy smile. “I’ve had my sights on it for a while. Every pirate likes hunting for lost treasure, and the more elusive it is the better. You know that, don’t you, Your Highness?” Rycroft pulls aside his collar. The necklace is not quite like it was in the stories. The stone is not a stone, but a droplet of blue that teeters from the chain like it’s ready to fall. Each fragment of it dances as though it’s made of water, with small ornate fangs latching around the diamond.
The lost Págese necklace. I was right. Rycroft does have it.
“I got my hands on this straight after hearing it was the key,” Rycroft says, folding his collar back over to hide the necklace.
“How did you even find out about that?”
No way had Rycroft gotten the information easily when I had to sell my country – and my damn soul – for it.
“I’m a man for hire,” Rycroft says. “And the Págese are always looking for someone to do their dirty work. I had a few words with one of their princes a few years back after completing a job. You’d be surprised how loose his lips got after a few whiskeys and some sweet nothings.”
I bristle. Rycroft had played the seducer, using a charm conjured from hell knows where, while I had put my country on the line. He had nothing to lose, so he’d traded nothing. Whereas I had an entire kingdom to lose and I’d offered it at a bargain price. Too caught up in my own crusade to even stop to think. Pathetic. I was starting to feel really damn pathetic.
“Why do you want to kill the Sea Queen?” I ask. “Hero isn’t exactly your color.”
Rycroft rolls his shoulders back. “I don’t give a damn about your little war with the octobitch,” he says. “I care less about her life span than I do yours.”
“Then what?”
Rycroft’s eyes are hungry. “All the power of the ocean,” he says. “If I get that crystal, then I control the oldest magic there ever was.” He takes a swig of rum and then slams the goblet back onto the table, hard. “And if the Sea Queen gives me any trouble, I’ll put her and her little bitches back in their place.”
Lira’s lips curl. “Is that so?”
“It’s a fact,” he tells her. “Let them try to come for me.”
The fabric of Lira’s dress is bunched between her fists, and when she makes like she’s going to stand, I place a hand on her knee. We’re far too outnumbered to start throwing punches.
“Why the charade of having your man come to Midas and feed me information?” I ask. “Why get me involved at all?”
“I’m not an idiot,” Rycroft says, though I beg to differ. “Nobody can make the climb up the mountain and live to tell the tale. The ice prince may have been willing to tell me about some ancient necklace nobody had seen in a few lifetimes, but he wasn’t going to give up the most carefully guarded secret of their bloodline.”
“And you knew that it was information I could get.”
“You’re the prince of Midas,” he says. “Royalty sticks together, doesn’t it? I knew you’d all be in on one another’s dirty secrets. Or if you weren’t, you could be.”
And he was right. I managed to weasel my way into the secrets of Sakura’s family just like Rycroft knew I would, learning things I had no right to, for a mission he had planned. All of my talk about being a captain, telling Kye I wasn’t some naïve prince to be advised and influenced, and all the while I was playing into the hands of Tallis Rycroft and his merry band of miscreants.
“So you planned to use me to find out the way up the mountain.”
“Not just that,” Rycroft says. “I need entry, too. I’m not about to start a war with the Págese by trespassing on their mountain. They’d know I was there the second I started the climb, and they’d be on me and my guys before I got anywhere near the ice palace. A pirate isn’t gonna get close to that crystal.”
Lira slinks back into her chair, realization dawning on her face the moment it does mine. “But a prince might,” she says.
Rycroft claps his hands together. “Smart girl,” he says, then turns to me, his arms wide and welcoming. “Your diplomatic connections are gonna come in handy, golden boy. If my bets are right, you’ve already talked your way into some kind of deal with them. Offered them something in exchange for entry. If I’m with you, I can stroll right on up there with nobody on my back and then loot the whole damn place. By the time they realize what me and my lot are doing, I’ll already have the power of the ocean in my hands.”
“Great plan,” I say. “Only problem being that I’m not telling you a thing and my schedule is a little packed to take you on a guided tour of a mountain.”
“Not like I thought you’d be easy,” Rycroft says. “But you don’t have to take me anyway; we’re taking you.”
The Xaprár inch closer, creating a circle around us.
“As for the information, I can torture that out of you and your little lady on the way. It’ll be a time-saver.”
I smirk and look over at Lira. She blinks, not in shock, but as though she is considering what he’s saying like a proposition rather than a threat. If she’s scared, she does a good job of hiding it.
She lifts her rum from the table with a slow and steady hand. “Just so we understand each other,” she says, swirling the goblet indifferently, “I’m not his lady.”
Before I can register the look on Rycroft’s face, Lira lurches forward and throws the golden liquid straight into his eye. Rycroft lets out an ungodly howl, and I jump to my feet, knife drawn as the pirate clutches his face where the gold dust slices with every blink.
“You bitch,” he snarls, blindly drawing his sword.
Lira pulls out the small dagger she slipped into her boot earlier, and I press my back to hers. Rycroft’s shadows surround us, and from the corner of my eye, I see snipers gather on the quarterdeck. I can take a dozen men, maybe, but even I’m not bulletproof. And Lira, for all the fire that runs through her veins, is not invincible.
“You think that was clever?” Rycroft wipes his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
“
Maybe not,” Lira says. “But it was funny.”
“Funny?” He takes a step closer, and I see the anger rolling from him like smoke. “I’ll show you funny.”
I arch my body, turning our positions so Lira squares off with the Xaprár and I come face-to-face with Rycroft. “No point crying over spilled rum,” I tell him.
For a moment Rycroft stares at me, deathly still. His lips curl upward and he blinks back a dribble of blood from his left eye. “To think,” he says, “when I tortured you, I was going to let you keep your most precious appendage.”
When he lunges, I push Lira to the side and dart back. The Xaprár clear a path for us and then circle like vultures, ready to peck at the leftover carcass of the kill. Rycroft brings his heavy sword down, and when my knife meets it, the sparks are blinding.
I kick at his knee and Rycroft stumbles back with a hiss, but it’s only seconds before he’s on me again, slashing and swiping with his sword. Lethal blows primed to kill. I jump back and his blade slices across my chest.
I don’t take my focus off him to register the pain. He’s mad to try this. To attack not just a prince, but a captain. Spilling royal blood is punishable by death, but spilling mine . . . well, my crew would think death was too kind.
I thrust my arm forward, aiming my dagger for his stomach. Rycroft twists out of the way, barely, and I feel my ankle slip. Saving what little grace I have, I plunge the blade into his thigh. I feel the jar of bone as it settles inside his leg. When I pull, my hand comes away empty.
Rycroft clasps a hand around the knife. He looks inhuman, like even pain is too scared to touch him now. Without ceremony, he yanks on the handle, hard, and the blade oozes from him. It comes away clean and for a moment I worry that Rycroft will see the otherworldly shine of the steel, but the pirate barely glances at it before tossing it across the ship.
“What now?” he asks. “No more tricks.”
“You’d kill an unarmed man?” I raise a taunting finger.
“I think we both know that you’re never unarmed. And that when I kill you, it’ll be a damn sight slower than this.”
He lurches his head in a gesture to someone behind me. I’m able to spare one last look to Lira, taking in the blinding light of her eyes, flared in warning, before a shadow pitches toward me. I whip my head back a second too late, and a blinding pain explodes against my skull.
27
Lira
I BRING MY TONGUE to the cut on my lip. My hands are secured to a large beam, and on the other side of the room, tied to an identical shaft, Elian sags on the floor.
He looks every bit the handsome prince, even with his head slumped against the splintered wood, his injury matting his hair. His jaw ticks as he sleeps, and when his eyes flutter as though they’re about to open, something snags in my chest.
He doesn’t wake.
His breathing is hitched, but I’m surprised he’s even breathing at all. I heard the crunch as the bat connected with the back of his head. A coward’s blow. Elian was winning, and in just a few more minutes – even without that knife he loves so damn much – he would have killed Tallis Rycroft. With his bare hands if he had to. And I would have helped.
If I had my song, I wouldn’t have even wasted it on a man like Tallis. Let him drown knowing the horror of death, without the comfort of beauty or love. Elian has an army and we should have used that to attack Rycroft, but the prince prefers trickery to war.
Get away clean, he said. Before anyone can notice what we’ve taken.
I look to my hands, smeared with Elian’s blood. This is not getting away clean.
In the sea, mermaids sing songs about humans. There’s one they hum like a child’s lullaby, which weaves the story of Keto’s slaughter. In it, the mermaids speak of human bravery and how they claimed victory against all odds, but until I was dragged onto Elian’s ship, I’d never seen courage from a human. Even the strongest men fell under my spell, and those I didn’t lure were too scared to challenge me. Elian is different. He has courage, or recklessness masked as something like it. And he also has mercy. Mercy even for creatures like Maeve, whose life he took as a last option. He didn’t want to savor it; he just wanted it over with. Like I had with the Kalokaírin prince. With Crestell.
I wonder if I’d be that sort of a killer if I had been raised human. Merciful and hesitant to shed blood. Or, perhaps, if I wouldn’t have been a killer at all. If I would have just been a girl, like any other who walked the world. Keto created our race in war and savagery, but it was the sea queens who took her hate and made it our legacy. Queens like my mother, who taught their children to be empty warriors.
Elian’s family taught him to be something else. The kind of man willing to throw a strange girl out of harm’s way and battle a tyrannical pirate in her place. The chivalry I used to scoff at has saved my life twice now. Is that what it means to be human? Pushing someone else out of danger and throwing yourself in? Every time I protected Kahlia, the Sea Queen chided me for my weakness and punished us both as though she could beat the bond out of us. I spent my life rethinking every look and action to be sure there wasn’t any visible affection in either. She told me it made me inferior. That human emotions were a curse. But Elian’s human emotions are what led him to save me. To help me. To trust that I’ll do the same when the time comes.
Elian stirs and lets out a low groan. His head lolls and his eyes flicker open. He blinks in his surroundings, and it only takes a few moments before he notices the restraints binding his hands. He tugs, a halfhearted attempt at escape, and then cranes his head toward me. From across the room, I see his elegant jaw sharpen.
“Lira?” His voice is as coarse as sand. He must see blood somewhere – it seems to be everywhere – because the next thing he asks is, “Where are you hurt?”
Again, I lick the crack in my lip where Tallis struck me.
The blood is warm and bitter.
“I’m not.” I angle my face away so he doesn’t see otherwise. “You bled all over me.”
Elian’s laugh is more of a scoff. “Charming as ever,” he says.
He takes in a long breath and closes his eyes for a moment. The pain in his head must be getting the best of him, but he tries to swallow it and appear the brave warrior. As though it would be an offense for me to see him as anything else.
“I’ll kill him for this,” Elian says.
“You should make sure he doesn’t kill us first.”
Elian tugs at the rope again, twisting his arm in the most bizarre angles in an attempt to slip the restraints. He moves like an eel, slippery and too quick for me to see what he’s doing from where I’m sitting.
“Enough,” I say, when I see the rope begin to redden his skin. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m trying,” Elian tells me. “Feel free to yank your own thumb out of its socket anytime now. Or better yet, how about you use that Psáriin to call some sirens here and let them kill us before Rycroft has a chance?”
I flick my chin up. “We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t insisted on such a ridiculous plan.”
“I think getting my head smashed in may have affected my hearing.” Elian’s voice loses its usual musicality. “What did you just say?”
“You didn’t even realize he was tricking you,” I say. “And you walked right into his hands.”
Elian’s shoulders twitch. “He has the necklace, so whether I knew about his ambush or not, I still would have come. I’ve sacrificed too much to fall at the last hurdle.”
“As though you’ve ever had to sacrifice anything,” I shoot back, thinking of the kingdom I have hanging on the line. “You’re the prince of a kingdom that’s full of brightness and warmth.”
“And that kingdom is exactly what I’ve sacrificed!”
“What does that mean?”
Elian sighs. “It means that my deal with the princess was about more than just a map and a necklace.” His voice is rueful. “I promised she could rule alongside me if she gave me her hel
p.”
My lips part as the weight of his words sink through the air. While I’m trying everything I can to steal my throne from my mother, Elian is busy bargaining his away for treasure.
Just like a pirate.
“Are you stupid?” The disbelief shoots like a bullet from my mouth.
“Finding the crystal could save lives,” Elian says. “And marrying a Págese princess wouldn’t exactly be bad for my country. If anything, it’ll be more than my father ever dreamed of me achieving. I’ll be a better king than he could have hoped for.”
Though the words should be overcome with pride, they are rough and bitter. Tinged in as much sadness as they are resentment.
I think about how much time I spent trying to make my mother proud. Enough that I forgot what it was like to feel content or anything I wasn’t ordered to feel. I let her gift me to a merman like I was nothing but flesh he could devour, all the while reasoning that it was something I had to do for my kingdom. And Elian has thrust that own perdition onto himself. To fulfill the burden of the world and the duty of his title, he’s willing to lose the parts of himself he treasures the most. The freedom and the adventure and the joy. Parts I barely remember having.
I look away, discomforted by how much of myself I see in his eyes.
Either way, you have to take his heart, I think to myself. What other choice is there?
“If the necklace is that precious,” I say,“we should have just killed Tallis to get it.”
“You can’t just kill everyone you don’t like.”
“I know that. Otherwise you’d be dead already.”
But it’s not true. It almost surprises me how untrue it is. Because I could have killed him – or at least tried – and fulfilled my mother’s orders a dozen times over.
The ceiling rattles before Elian can retort. There’s a low rumble in the wind, and for a moment I think it might be the sea waves crashing against Tallis Rycroft’s pathetic excuse for a ship, but then the rumble grows louder and a bang shakes the cabin. Dust rains from the ceiling, and beneath us the floorboards splinter.
There’s a chorus of yells and then nothing but the sound of cannons and gunfire. Of screaming and dying. Of the world descending into chaos.
To Kill a Kingdom Page 20