To Kill a Kingdom

by Alexandra Christo

  A broken path of ice leads to the palace, but it is too fragmented and unstable to ensure safe passage for an army of one hundred. Instead, we find a batch of large rowboats secured on the outskirts of the moat, where it is at its calmest, farthest from the three sides of the falling water surrounding us. We split ourselves between the vessels and row toward the mouth of the palace, our boat pushed half by Torik’s strength and half by the great gusts of wind that propel us forward in a crooked line.

  When we dismount, the palace is leagues above us, and I have to arch my back just to get a good enough look. But there’s no time to take it in, or wonder how it’s possible that a palace built from snowstorms can seem somehow warmer. A degree or two above the rest of the Cloud Mountain. Yukiko powers ahead with purpose and we follow her into the depths of the iceberg, using her torchlight to guide us when she walks too fast for us to keep pace.

  The walls gleam like halls of mirrors, so that suddenly our numbers are doubled. Tripled. All I see are faces and tufts of breath that mingle among us like fog. We can’t help but linger a little behind, walking slower as we try to decipher what is a reflection and what is actually Yukiko. When we fall too far behind and she rounds a corner much too far ahead, we’re forced into a fleeting darkness. Elian’s hand finds mine. He squeezes, just once, and everything in me quickens. Heats. My body curves toward him and I press my free hand to the glacier walls. When we find the curve to the corner, Yukiko’s light illuminates our faces once more.

  I don’t drop Elian’s hand.

  Yukiko pauses at a large ice wall that shines against the heat of her flame, echoing our faces back to us. She hooks the torch onto a small brace and takes a step back.

  “We’re here,” she says.

  Elian gives me a quick glance and then unhooks the key from his neck and hands it to Yukiko. His eyes are impatient as Yukiko holds it up against a concave in the wall. The dip mirrors the patterns on the necklace perfectly, from every ornate swirl to its fanged encasing. It’s the perfect lock for our key, and when Yukiko presses the necklace to the wall, it clicks securely into place.

  Snow drops from the ceiling and runs from the walls like water. There’s a heavy groan, and then the thick pane of ice heaves itself backward and reveals a cavern too large to be housed inside this moderate palace.

  Elian enters like the thirsty explorer. I follow quickly behind him, paying no mind to the princess I brush past. Everywhere is blue. Thick trunks of frost press against the ceiling and then drop back down in leafy tufts. They stem from the walls like branches, veins of ice paving the floor in roots. It’s a forest of snow and ice.

  The crew swaggers slowly in and gazes around in wide-eyed wonder. Unlike the rest of this iceberg, the cavern is truly a place of beauty. A place touched by Keto. But Elian doesn’t marvel at his surroundings. He stares resolutely ahead, at the center of the dome.

  A steeple of ocean water floats in a perfect mixture of emerald and sapphire, and I recognize it instantly as water from the Diávolos Sea. From my home.

  In the heart of it is the Second Eye of Keto.

  It’s like nothing I have ever seen. Even the eye of the Sea Queen’s trident doesn’t quite compare, with its form so roughly slashed into shape and its color dimmed from the decades underwater. This stone is unaffected by any of that. Crafted into a perfectly geometric circle, it is tinged with the florid eyes of my mother and the gallons of blood spilled in its name.

  The steeple that houses it is a solid ice sculpture, but when Elian reaches out to touch it, he doesn’t recoil. It’s not frozen, but suspended. In time, in place.

  “We can’t melt it, then,” Elian says.

  “We can’t break it,” Yukiko urges. “It might shatter the crystal.”

  He turns to her. “I doubt we could break it anyway. It even feels impenetrable.”

  Yukiko shakes her head furiously. “We have to open it,” she says. “The ritual. What is it?”

  All eyes turn to me, and I take in a breath, readying myself. This is the moment I’ve been working toward. The very thing I maneuvered myself back onto Elian’s ship to do. I look at him and how his hair curls by his ears, sticking up in a way that shows every moment he slept in a damp tent. The frown that pulses down to his jaw. The ridiculous smell of licorice whenever he sighs.

  I am too close.

  I clear my throat. “Siren blood,” I say.

  Elian turns to me. “What?”

  “Do you think just anyone can wield the Crystal of Keto?” I ask. “It has to be a warrior worthy of its magic.”

  “A warrior,” he says.

  “A siren killer.”

  Lies and lies, all mingling with half-truths on my tongue.

  Kye throws his hands up in the air and stalks forward. “Where are we supposed to get siren blood?” he asks. “Why would you wait until now to tell us that?”

  “It wouldn’t make a difference when she told us,” Madrid says, staring at me with an unreadable expression. “Sirens don’t have blood; they have acid. We can’t capture that if they turn to sea foam, and even if we did, it would eat through anything we put it in.”

  “Your knife.” I point to Elian’s belt. “The only thing on this earth that can carry the blood of a siren.”

  “It doesn’t carry it,” Elian says. “It drinks it.”

  “Absorbs it,” I correct. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that with every siren you kill it feels a little stronger? A little heavier?”

  Elian stays silent.

  “How would you know?” Yukiko tilts her face to the side. “There’s something about you I can’t quite settle on.”

  I ignore her and keep my focus on Elian. His eyebrows crease, and I know in that moment he doubts me. That even if I’m ignoring Yukiko, he isn’t. He’s suspicious – perhaps he always was – and though he has every right to be and part of me is proud of him for it, it hurts all the same. I cannot be trusted and it kills me that he might know that.

  All the same, I can’t let him be the one to free the eye.

  I give him a carefree smile. “I told you that I would be useful to keep around.”

  Elian pulls the knife from his belt and holds it up to the cavern light. He twists the blade in his hand and takes a step toward me. I consider backing away, but stay rooted in place. Retreating now will only make me look guilty.

  “Well?” I ask.

  “Well, nothing,” he says. “I believe in you.”

  He pauses a beat, as though waiting for me to contradict this and tell him that it’s a mistake. Even more ridiculous is that I want to. I have the urge to tell him that he should never do something as stupid as believing in me. But I say nothing, and so Elian turns to the frozen waters of Diávolos and plunges his knife into the center.

  I WAS SUPPOSED TO be happy when it failed.

  The blood inside the knife is long gone. Drunk and swapped into magic that kept it invincible and allowed it to absorb the life of a siren. I knew this, but I gave Elian hope, because that’s what liars do when they don’t want to get caught. And I had to let them think I believed the knife would work, because why else would I have waited until now to tell them blood was the key?

  I had to let Elian fail so I can succeed. I just wasn’t supposed to feel so bad about it.

  Hours have passed, and I’m sure it must be night. Either way, the crew is sleeping in various small chambers outside the dome. Sentries and trespassers. They’re determined not to leave until they find a way of freeing the eye. If Elian’s resolve wasn’t enough, Yukiko’s fury would have kept them all there anyway.

  Try, she said. Try leaving without the glory you promised my brother.

  I grip the lightweight sword and stare down at the Second Eye of Keto, suspended in the water of my home. Against my skin, the seashell necklace calls out. It yearns to be reunited with the powerful sea that created it. I can feel it too, the steady pull of Diávolos stretching out its arms to jerk me into its wake.

  I grip my
sword and slice it clean across my palm.

  I’m indifferent as blood dribbles down my arm and drops onto the eye. There’s no scorching pain or endless acid cold. It’s warm and red and so very human. And yet.

  When the blood touches the water, it dissolves. The top of the steeple folds down on itself, melting into an opening large enough for me to reach inside. I pick up the stone and sigh. It looks so tiny now, but I can feel the power coursing through me. The potential for savagery. It almost burns in my hand.

  “All along, I sensed something in you.”

  I whirl around, clutching the eye tightly in my fist.

  “I knew something was not quite right,” Princess Yukiko says. She sniffs the air as though she can smell the monster in me. “You’re not quite human.”

  I sheathe the sword and keep my voice low. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Probably not, but let’s say it anyway. You’re one of them, aren’t you? A siren.”

  I don’t reply and she seems to take this as an answer. She grins, her thin lips slanting to create apples in her cheeks.

  “How did you achieve this disguise?” she asks. “How is it possible?”

  I grind my teeth, hating the way she looks at me, like a fish on a hook. As though I’m something to be examined and studied, rather than feared. She walks toward me, circling until she is on the other side of the frozen steeple.

  I cast her a withering look. “The Sea Queen seemed to think it was more of a punishment than a disguise,” I say.

  “And stealing the crystal is your redemption?” she asks. Still so curious, still so unafraid. “I wonder what crime you committed to inflict such a thing.”

  “Being born was the start,” I tell her. “The Sea Queen has never been one for competition.”

  Just like that, the smirk leaves Yukiko’s lips, and something new paints itself in place. Awe, replaced by shock. Wonder, by uncertainty. Curiosity, by fear.

  “You’re her,” Yukiko says. “The Princes’ Bane.”

  Her expression stays faltered for a moment longer and then, just as quickly, the hesitation leaves her face. She smiles, cunning and shrewd.

  “You of all people didn’t know?” she asks.

  It takes me a moment too long to realize that she’s not talking to me anymore.

  I whip my head around to the entrance of the dome, where Elian stands. His face is slack and expressionless, eyes lingering on the eye in my hand. I blanch and my heart goes still in my chest. Suddenly nothing feels solid except for the air that lodges itself in my throat.

  I believe in you.

  For a moment I entertain the pitiful notion that maybe he didn’t hear. But when his eyes hit mine, I know he knows. I know he has pieced together the puzzle I tried so hard to shatter. And when he reaches for his sword, I know this night will end in blood.

  36

  Elian

  THE PRINCES’ BANE.

  There’s nothing past those three words. The world stills and I search my memories for something – a clue, a sign, a trace. Instead of coming away empty, I come away with the idea that I’m a fool.

  We rescued Lira from the middle of the ocean, with no other ship in sight. When she first gained consciousness, there was something inexplicably enthralling about her, broken only in the moment when she tried to attack me. She spoke Psáriin on the deck of my ship. And – gods – that siren. What had she said? Parakaló. She begged for her life and I hadn’t thought to question it, even though no siren had ever done such a thing. Of course she would beg. Not to me, but to one of her own. To her princess.

  “You of all people didn’t know?” Yukiko asks.

  I don’t reply.

  I knew Lira was hiding something, but I never imagined this.

  My hand flies to my chest, pressing against the scars that lie under the fabric of my shirt. Scars so similar to the ones I saw on Rycroft after Lira was through with him. That day in Midas, the Princes’ Bane found me when I couldn’t find her. She let a mermaid drown my strength and then scraped her claws across my heart as she readied to rip it from my chest. If the royal guards hadn’t come, then she would have killed me.

  Lira would have killed me.

  I draw my sword the moment Lira’s eyes dash to mine. At first I’m not sure what I plan to do past gripping the blade so tightly, it crushes my bones. But when Lira doesn’t move, even as I advance closer and closer, it only ignites the anger inside me. The betrayal. She doesn’t even have the decency to flinch.

  “Elian.”

  She says my name in a breath and I lose all sense.

  “I’m going to kill you,” I say.

  Even as a human, Lira is quick. Faster than most novice fighters I’ve encountered and far more fluid. She’s sloppy, but there’s something primal in it. I cut my blade toward her and she rolls her shoulder back in one swift movement. She looks shocked but recovers enough to launch a punch in my direction. I grab her wrist inches from my face and twist. Teeth bared, she kicks with brutal force. I whirl out of the way, but her foot clips my thigh and pain shoots up my leg.

  I nod at her belt. “Your sword,” I say.

  “You care if I’m unarmed?” she asks.

  “Don’t mistake honor for caring,” I seethe. “If I have to, I’ll run you through defenseless.”

  I swing toward her again and she twists awkwardly out of my path. The second she’s not within reach, I hear the sound of metal being drawn.

  Lira lifts the sword in a perfect arc, just as I taught her, and snarls.

  I see the animal in her then.

  Our swords scream together. Steel on steel.

  I block as Lira hacks a blow through the air, and I seize her wrist once more. When I bend it harshly to the left, her sword falls from her hand. I spin her into me, pinning her arms against her. My heart pounds furiously on her back as she writhes against my grip. She feels cold – she always does – but sweat licks between us.

  “Finish her!” Yukiko screams.

  I swallow and consider the sword locked between us. My hands can’t move from Lira to get the right angle, and the thought of being this close – of being able to hear her gasp and feel the life leave her – is too much.

  I’m sick with it.

  I think of the taste of her kiss, with the stories of stars roofing us. An entire galaxy watched while her body curved into mine. As she asked me to kiss her and it was all I could do to keep myself steady.

  Lira angles her cheek toward me now and lets out a low breath.

  Then she brings her elbow up and cracks it across my jaw.

  I drop my hold on her and she pitches forward to retrieve her sword. With a mirthless laugh, I press a hand to my mouth.

  “You certainly live up to your legend,” I say.

  “Enough, Elian.” She points her sword between us like a barrier.

  I spit blood on the floor. “It’ll be enough when you’re dead.”

  When I charge again, I ignore everything but the betrayal that roars through me. I land blow after blow, striking my blade on hers. Again and again. Each attack shrieks through the air, and time seems to move all at once and yet stop dead just the same. Endless seconds and minutes, until she falls to her knees and the crystal rolls onto the floor with her.

  Lira doesn’t reach for it and so neither do I. I can’t do anything but wonder how much longer she will keep the sword roofed above her head. Sheltering her from my onslaught.

  She takes each blow with a dead look in her eyes. Then her elbows start to shake and her ankle finally collapses. The blade clatters to the cold floor. Lira sprawls on the ground, waiting, her expression indifferent. Giving me the opening I thought I wanted.

  She squeezes her seashell necklace and I flinch. It’s like she’s teasing me with every clue I was blind to. I raise my weapon again, feeling heavy steel in my hands. I can have Cristian’s revenge. The revenge of every prince who died in the ocean and every one who may die yet. I can kill her and be done with it.<
br />
  I drop my sword.

  Lira heaves a breath. Sweat paints across her brow and the unsettled look in her eyes slits straight through me. I wish I had killed her. I wish she had killed me. Instead we stare at each other, and then Lira shakes her head and kicks my legs out from under me.

  When I slam to the floor beside her, she lets out a frustrated sigh. “Next time you want to kill someone,” she says, “don’t hesitate.”

  “Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?”

  “What are you doing?” Yukiko asks. I sit up as the Págese princess scowls down at me. “She’s the Princes’ Bane.”

  She says it like she thinks I might have forgotten. As though it’s a possibility that I let Lira live because I really am that stupid and not because I really am that human.

  I stand and brush myself off. “I’m aware,” I say, and snatch both swords from the floor.

  “She came for the crystal,” Yukiko says. “Just as we did.”

  “And now she’s going to leave without it.”

  Lira eyes the Crystal of Keto a few inches from where she sits hunched over on the floor. But she doesn’t even try to reach for the very thing she came here for.

  “Get up,” I say.

  Yukiko lurches forward. “You can’t do this,” she says, outraged. “If your crew wasn’t sleeping like corpses on the other side of this palace, they would tell you that you can’t just let her go.”

  I incline my head slowly toward Yukiko. “You’re not a queen yet. Don’t think for a second that you can tell me what to do any more than they can.”

  I wipe the dried blood from my mouth. I always seem to have it on me, but tonight is one of the few times it has been mine. Last time it was below the deck of Rycroft’s ship. Last time it was Lira’s.