Above that, her skin begins to brighten.
It starts along the curve of her ribs and then curls out like a tide. It’s not that she becomes paler – I don’t think that’s possible – but her skin starts to glisten. Liquid light dancing down her arms and across her chest. Rolling over the newly delicate arc of her collarbone. Her hair streams over her shoulders like pomegranate beads, and when she throws herself back, arms spread wide, the snow flurries into an angel around her.
Lira arches, relishing the cold on her body, opening the gills that run across her ribs with every shift. She curls onto her side, half-facing the water and half-facing me. There’s a moment where she lies like that – eyes still closed, nestled in snow that mirrors her skin, never looking less human – where I feel strangely at peace.
Then Lira opens her eyes, and I see that only one is the blue I remember. And the other is pure hellfire.
40
Lira
I HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN my strength – my speed – but when I dart into the water, it surges back through me. I roar a hunter’s howl beneath the surface, and the cold gurgles down my throat and slashes through my gills. It may not be the ocean, but it’s enough. Water as wild as I am.
Elian is watching when I emerge. There’s so much written on his face and so much rushing through me that I can’t seem to decipher one emotion from the next or decide which belong to him and which to me. Seeing him now is like seeing him with new eyes.
He’s brighter, more vivid. Eyes reflecting every glint of the sun and skin no less than the burnished gold of his land. Every inch of him is a contrast, light and dark mixing and rolling into one until I can barely think of looking away.
I lay my arms against the snow and watch him like a hunter.
“Bring me his heart,” the Sea Queen says.
Her order hisses through the wind, and when I tear my gaze from Elian, I see her fingers tighten over the trident, where her share of Keto’s eyes waits to be reunited with its sister. I can hear it now. The call of the two halves as they hover so close to each other. It’s too steady to be a song and too wild to be a drumbeat. A heartbeat, then. Thumping mercilessly in my ears, as the stains of my blood coat one and the stains of my mother’s magic coat the other.
“Take it from him,” the Sea Queen hisses in our murderous tongue.
There is a note of desperation in her voice, birthed from the fact that she thinks Elian freed the eye from its hiding place. She fears what will happen if he tries to use the eye against her and if its magic will overpower that of the trident she has used to enslave our kind into slaughter.
Elian may not know it, but right now the Sea Queen thinks he is her match.
I crane my neck to the side and hold out a hand to beckon Elian forward. His eyes twitch, but he doesn’t come, and I would smile if I didn’t think the gesture would crack my newly stone-etched face. Instead I lean my head back and breathe in the wind, letting my hair drift onto the water.
Behind me, the sirens begin to chorus.
Their melodies reach out and take ahold of the humans. Delicate refrains that cause the crew to sway where they stand, losing all sense of danger. Threats become dreams and fears a fading memory, until their hearts begin to thrum in time to the deadly aria.
“It’s beautiful,” Madrid says, her body slack.
Elian watches his enchanted crew linger on the melody of the Sea Queen’s army, bewildered at their sudden change. When he turns back to face me, his jaw pulses, and just that look nearly turns this impossibly unfrozen body of water into a glacier.
I smile, part my lips, and let the music follow.
At the sound of my voice, Elian walks forward, and when I turn my humming to singing, he drops to his knees in front of me. He still has a plan for every letter that follows in the alphabet and though he plays the part well enough, I can sense his heart racing through each beat. His movements are slightly too rigid. Too prepared. And I can see the wildfire blazing in his eyes.
He is unaffected by the song.
Elian clutches the Crystal of Keto as though it’s his lifeline. As far as he’s concerned, this newfound immunity is down to the tiny piece of my goddess that nooks in his palm. I smile at that, because Elian of all people should know better. He should know to have more faith in myth and fairy tale.
When Maeve dissolved to sea foam on the deck of the Saad, the small part of me that believed in stories was glad the prince didn’t have a chance to take her heart and glean immunity from the siren’s song. But when I told Elian about the legend of our deaths, I knew it wasn’t a story anymore. I felt the truth of it. And now that truth is kneeling before me with savage eyes cut from land and ocean. Leaves and seaweed flooding together.
Any human who takes a siren’s heart will be immune to the power of their song.
Only Elian didn’t need to take my heart; I gave it to him.
I reach out a hand to touch his face, and his eyes flit briefly closed. He inhales as though the very act of breathing is marking the memory in his mind. My fingers graze his arched cheekbones. He’s still warm, and unlike before, when the sun made my siren body crack and throb, Elian’s warmth makes me ache in an entirely new way.
I slide my hand around his neck and tug his head toward me, using his weight to inch my waist from the water. The longing is more than I can bear.
“Do you know what I want from you?” I whisper.
Elian swallows. “I’m not going to give you the crystal.”
When I reply, my voice is throaty. “I’m not talking about that.”
“Then what?”
I grin, feeling more wicked than I have in so long. “Your heart,” I say, and I kiss him.
It’s nothing like the soft and tentative tryst we shared under the stars. It’s wild and burning, something newly territorial in it. His lips crash fiercely onto mine, hot and soft, and when I feel his tongue slip against mine, every animal part of me comes alive. It’s inside of him, too. The predatory impulse. We claim each other, right here on the edge of war.
Elian drags his hands through my hair and I clutch him, pushing and pulling him closer against me. Even no distance feels like too much. His hand tightens on my jaw and we’re a tangle of fingers and teeth and the world obliterates around us. It’s all stardust.
I bite his lip and he moans into me. We devour each other, gasping desperate breaths until we exhaust the air.
Elian breaks away, as savage and brutal as the kiss itself. He doesn’t pull back, so much as he severs himself from me. Tearing his lips from mine. When he looks at me, his eyes are a feral mirror of my own. Dazed and furious and so, so hungry.
I run my tongue across my bottom lip, where his angler taste still lingers.
My mother watches us to the side, gleaming. She doesn’t realize that Elian isn’t enthralled, any more than she realizes that his army is about to gain another soldier.
“Elian,” I whisper, low enough that the Sea Queen can’t hear. I keep my fingers pressed to the base of his neck, inclining him toward me. “You have to trust in it.”
“In what?” he asks, hoarse and disbelieving. “In you?”
“In your dream,” I say. “That killers can stop being killers.”
Elian’s eyes search mine. “How can I believe anything you say?”
“Because you’re immune to our song.”
He frowns and it takes a moment, his gaze narrowing, before my words dawn on him. I can practically see the memory run through his mind and the new kind of uncertainty it brings. It kills me, but there’s nothing I can do but have faith that he’ll remember more than just the story and less than just my betrayal. I need him to linger on the taste of me and think about how we saved each other. How we could do that so easily again now, and take the world along with us.
“Elian,” I say, and he wets his lips.
“I heard you.” His face gives nothing away.
“And?”
“And nothing.” Slowly, Elian pulls my han
d from his neck, eyes fixed like a target on my own. He shakes his head like he can’t quite comprehend what he’s about to do. And then: “I believe in you,” he says, and slips the eye into my palm.
The moment it touches my skin, I am infinite.
What I felt inside the ice palace is a mere fraction of it, and now I am a forest fire, burning, burning. A tidal wave rising and crushing and sweeping across the world. I don’t just have power; I am power. It flows through me, replacing the acid blood with thick, dark magic.
The Second Eye of Keto speaks to me in a hundred different languages, whispering all the ways I can use it to kill the humans. A picture paints itself so vividly in my mind, of the eye merging with my mother’s trident and creating a Sea Queen with all the might of Keto. A goddess in her own right, molding a world where sirens walk and hunt with grass and gravel between their toes. Impenetrable skin and enchanted voices and so much death that will follow.
And beside that, a dream.
The ocean glitters as though crystallized, and a human ship stops halfway through its journey, no land in sight for miles. The tired and bedraggled crew leaps off the edge of their vessel, feeling the soft wind butterfly on their skin before they hit the water. Sirens hover nearby but don’t attack. They aren’t hunting or assessing, but watching in a haphazard kind of harmony.
Peace.
“Give me the eye,” the Sea Queen demands, breaking me from my trance.
I close my hand around it. “I’d rather kill you instead.”
Elian lets out a breath, amusement and surprise and something far too close to pride. I shoot him a look and then turn back to the Sea Queen, as resolute as this new strength allows.
“You don’t have that kind of power,” she says.
“Oh, but you’re wrong.” I give her a smile to start wars. Or maybe to end them. “You see, it wasn’t the prince who freed the eye from its chamber, Mother. It was me.”
When she screams, the mountain shakes.
I’m her worst nightmare come true. The daughter she was always so reluctant to let take her crown, primed to usurp her. It hits me now that she has no power over me. For the first time, we’re on even footing. Each with the eye of a goddess, and each with the somewhat wavering loyalty of our kin. There’s an army in these waters, but their allegiance could pass between us so easily. They could choose my side as readily as hers.
The Sea Queen snarls a glance to her left and lets out a vicious roar of Psáriin. Her throat strains and throbs, and in moments a slice of gray swipes across my vision.
It takes me a moment to realize that Elian is gone.
I whip my head to face the vast body of water behind me, scanning with my hunter’s eyes. There’s a blinding flash of movements, so swift and barbaric that even I have to pause to narrow in on the sight.
Elian is in the center of the moat, surrounded by sirens who foam at the mouth when his scent salts the water. They drift toward him, but when they get too close, he’s jerked violently to the side. Pulled farther into the distance by the scruff of his shirt.
My breath shudders through me as I stare at his attacker.
The Flesh-Eater.
His shark tail is thick, gray, ribbed and spotted like a virus slowly devouring him. Every bit the demon I remember, with the face of a true killer. His features lie flat, eyes like gaping holes in his head and lips a mere slice across his face. They are marked by crusted orange, from whoever he has eaten in battle.
The Flesh-Eater grins, saliva clinging between the lines of his shark teeth, cutlass tail primed by my prince’s heart.
41
Lira
I’M PINNED IN PLACE by half a dozen arms. The sirens flank me, nails braced on my skin. The Flesh-Eater is deadly enough in the wilderness of the ocean with the mermen who live in brutal solitude, but he’s most dangerous here. Under the Sea Queen’s command.
I pant, fighting the sirens, but it’s no use against so many, and with Elian’s crew meandering hypnotically to the side, he’ll be torn apart by the Flesh-Eater in minutes.
The eye sparks in my palm. The dark magic calls, begging for me to surrender to it. Obliterate every enemy in my way. It sings with the same vengeful lust that my mother has. But to give into it would mean following my mother’s path, and I can’t allow that. It’d only prove to the others that I’m just like her and every queen who came before. If they’re going to swear their allegiance to me, then it has to be because of something other than fear.
“Let me save him,” I say.
I half-turn to see the Sea Queen slither closer to me, tentacles weaving through her soldiers. “You really think I would allow you to rescue him?”
“I’m not talking to you,” I hiss.
Her deadly face tightens. “The sirens don’t follow you,” she says. “I am their queen.”
“Not by choice,” I tell her. I look back at the sirens who trap me. “Is this how you want to continue on? Fighting and dying whenever she tells you to, knowing your lives mean nothing if they don’t help her in some way?”
“Shut your mouth!”
The Sea Queen thrashes a tentacle out toward me. My neck cracks to the side as she strikes, drawing a thin red line on my cheekbone. I feel the sirens loosen their grip, shocked by her outburst.
“This is your chance,” I continue on, more fearless than I have the right to be. “If you follow me, I’ll put an end to this once and for all. You can be free.”
The Sea Queen raises another tentacle. “You little bitch,” she says.
And then—
“Free?”
One of the sirens drops my wrist and combs a heap of deep blue hair from her face. “How would we be free?”
“Be quiet!” the Sea Queen barks.
“What would change?” another asks, her hold on me faltering.
“The world,” I answer honestly. “There could be peace.”
“Peace?” the Sea Queen arches an eyebrow. “With those filthy humans?”
The eye burns in my hand with every word she speaks. Just one movement and I could send a wave strong enough to knock her back half a mile. I could make her bleed right here, in front of them all.
“What does the Princes’ Bane care about peace?” a siren asks.
“Because I’ve seen the truth of the queen’s lies.” I look directly into my mother’s eyes. “I’ve spent enough time with the humans to know they don’t want war. They just want to live. The sooner this is over, the sooner we can all stop dying in the name of a feud none of us were alive to see created.”
There is a sudden discord among them. Murmurs spilling into clear, angry shouts. The sirens hiss their disapproval alongside their temptation, and I blink, trying to figure out which direction the scales are likely to tip and if I can still save Elian either way.
As time passes, I grow more and more impatient. Every second longer they take to decide is another second Elian is in the Flesh-Eater’s hold, his teeth ready to puncture Elian’s neck.
“I’m with you.”
A voice erupts from the chaos, and I turn to see my cousin. Kahlia is surrounded by a group of young sirens, unsullied youth fresh in their saltwater smiles. Children ripe for rebellion.
“Lira has always been the strongest,” Kahlia says. “And now she has the Second Eye of Keto under her command. Are there any of you here who really doubt she’ll be a worthy ruler?” The authority in her voice takes me aback. It’s clear-cut and assured, as though the very idea of not siding with me is ludicrous.
“You mutinous eel,” the Sea Queen seethes.
“It’s not mutiny if we’re following our queen,” she says. “It’s loyalty. For my sovereign and for my family.”
I know she’s thinking of Crestell in that moment, because I am too.
“Lira was ready to take your place in just a few hearts,” Kahlia says, her voice growing louder, bolder, with every word. “This only means that when she does, her first act as queen will be to end a war that has killed s
o many of us. And when she takes the trident” – Kahlia’s yellow eye twitches under her defiance – “she’ll have twice the power you ever did.”
“I could be using the eye right now to force you all to bow before me,” I say. “I could strike each of you who holds me with all the power of Keto.” The sirens stir, lengthening their distance. “And yet I’m reasoning with you instead. Asking for your allegiance when I have every right to just take it.”
I lift my head and survey them each in turn, fire flickering in my right eye. At first the silence gives me pause, and I begin to wonder if my mother’s hold is just too tight. Then, slowly, I see a new kind of understanding descend on each of their faces.
One by one, they incline their heads in a bow, and the sirens who surrounded me move back, their hands dropping from my body and rising to their chests in a show of fealty. Then, as though my eyes cut right through them, the army begins to part and a line draws neatly down the moat.
A clear path to the Flesh-Eater.
The monstrous soldier takes one look at the treasonous sirens before him and drags Elian below the surface.
I follow with maddening speed, like an arrow shooting toward him, arms out and coated more in rage than water. It’s seconds before I reach them and too many for me to be grateful. The Flesh-Eater pins Elian to the shingle, hand braced on his throat and ready to snap in either direction.
He sees me when I’m only inches from them both, and lifts Elian up with oil-slick talons as though he’s a prize to be beheld. I grind my teeth together, a snarl gurgling in my throat. The Flesh-Eater is a monster and a warrior and a ravenous killer. And he doesn’t stand a chance.
I don’t need the eye for this. I’m going to tear him apart.
I lunge, and the Flesh-Eater throws Elian away like garbage. I pause just long enough to see the prince swim back to the surface for breath before I rush forward.
The Flesh-Eater’s fist explodes against my face. There’s a pop and the odd feeling of everything bursting and shattering before the pain hits. Pure fury and power resonate from his knuckles, and when he hits me again, the world goes dark for a moment.
To Kill a Kingdom Page 29