The Siren Princess

by Lichelle Slater

  I fell into a fitful sleep.

  twenty

  The Naiad snuck into port as silently as a shark ready to strike. Only the moon pierced the darkness, and we had the added advantage—and danger—of cloud cover. Any other crew would have been nervous pulling into Castle Bay under such conditions, but we had no choice.

  I ran my tongue impatiently over my teeth, unclenching my hands only long enough to stretch my numb fingers. My fingertips traced the crescent divots left behind by my nails now imprinted in my palms.

  Captain Avery put his hand on my shoulder. “You know where to go. Get him and bring him back. Then we will head directly to Delphi and stop your mother before she does something we will all regret. I need not remind you of what could happen if we fail.”

  I nodded.

  “Odette.” He turned me to face him. “We will stop her. And you will save him.”

  “I know. Stop talking.” I pulled away and marched to the railing of the ship.

  Finally, we were close enough to the dock I could make my move. At the front of the ship, I jumped up on the bowsprit and sprinted its length. I launched myself into a dive and landed in the warm waters with barely a splash. I swam through the inky black of the sea to the shoreline.

  As soon as I reached it, I scrambled through the impeding sand toward the boathouse built to the side of an old fishing dock. My green eyes scanned the darkness for any signs of men or women who might be on the sea witch’s side.

  I skidded to a halt as I reached the decaying dock and dilapidated wooden structure once known as a boathouse. Half the roof was gone, and the dock itself had splintered wood and was soft from years near the water. Luckily for me, that also meant my footsteps on the soft wood were muted.

  My heart wanted me to run and burst in, but my brain won, and I moved with caution. I didn’t know what kind of situation he was in, what traps—if any—had been left behind.

  James had been in danger for a few days. I didn’t know what to expect.

  Creeping forward, I unsheathed my sword and kept my attention focused on the surface of the water—just in case. I heard nothing but water licking at the barnacles suctioned to the legs of the dock. I smelled nothing but the sea. I saw nothing but the gloom of night.

  My heart hammered against my ribs, and I had to take steadying breaths.

  When I reached the door, I licked my lips and cautiously tested the handle. I was only mildly surprised to find it unlocked and I gave it a sudden shove so I could catch anyone inside off-guard.

  The door protested with a shriek of rusty hinges that shattered the silence of the night, and I flinched. I pointed my sword and swung left and right, but no shadows moved, and there was no light in the building, save the moonlight.

  “James?” My voice sounded too loud, even at a whisper.

  “Odette?” a gruff voice answered back.

  I kept my sword poised, ready—just in case. The advantage to the roof being half blown off was the moonlight illuminating the inside of the abandoned building. But it revealed nothing but a damaged net hanging from one of the beams and old broken crates scattered about.

  With a breath to calm my sickening nerves, I finally turned to look toward the rear of the boathouse.

  James stood at the back of the space with one arm up, somehow bound to the beam overhead. He must have managed to get his right arm free but didn’t have the strength to get his other arm free.

  “You’re crazy,” he said weakly. “You’ve got to get out of here!”

  “No, I’ve got to save you, stupid.” I pushed my sword back into its sheath and marched over to him.

  “Odette, no. You’ve got to run now. Stop . . . stop her.” He held a hand out toward me as if that action alone would stop me.

  “You managed to get one hand down, I’ll help you get . . . the . . .” My words faded, the sentence dying like a whisper on the wind when I caught sight of the truth.

  James’s wrist wasn’t bound to the beam by a rope. A thin whaling hook protruded from his palm, keeping him in place.

  My stomach recoiled in disgust. I’d mistaken the darkness on his arm for a shadow. It wasn’t that at all. It was blood. I didn’t need the light of the afternoon sun to see James’s hand was completely ruined.

  I looked back down at his face. There was a gash on his eyebrow. Glancing lower, blood on his white shirt indicated a wound somewhere by his hip.

  “Odette, I told you to go,” he said softer. “You didn’t need to see me like this.”

  “I can’t leave you.” I took a quick, deep breath through my nose, swallowed my disgust, and stepped forward. “No one else is going to save you.”

  I didn’t have time to stop and think about what he must have gone through the past three days it took me to get to him. I had to get him down and back to the ship in time for Captain Avery and the crew to get us out of here. James needed medicine and rest.

  I reached up on the very tips of my toes even though I knew how foolish it appeared. James stood several inches taller than me, and I barely reached his wrist. There was no way to reach the rope holding the hook in place.

  “Please,” James begged softly. With his right hand, he touched my side.

  “I’m not giving up now.” I dropped to my heels and turned to find a crate to stand on. It took some effort to find one still intact but picked it up and carried it over. “You should know better than that. Besides, Captain Avery is waiting to take you home. I can’t show up without you. What would be the point? I’m not failing him too.”

  “You didn’t fail me.” His voice sounded so weak, so tired.

  “It’s my fault you were captured in the first place.”

  Even his scoff sounded more like a sigh of exhaustion. “You didn’t cause her to take me, Odette.”

  I climbed on top of the crate and could finally reach the top of the hook. I pulled the dagger from my boot and tried sawing at it.

  “Will you please listen to me?” James said, a hint of anger in his voice. “You’re the only one who can stop her. You shouldn’t be here. This is exactly what she wants! You distracted! No one else is willing to stand up to her.”

  “Look what she did to you!” I finally snapped back, stopping so I could look down into his handsome brown eyes. “She could have killed you! She definitely tried. She did this, and I only said no.”

  “She would have killed me if she didn’t need me alive to draw you here. You’ve got to stop her.” He tried to reach toward me and muffled a cry by biting his bottom lip. The movement must have twisted the hook in his hand.

  I swallowed, but my throat was dry. “James, I’m getting you out of here.” I started sawing again at the rope.

  “Leave me the dagger. I’ll do it myself. You go.”

  I paused. “But can you even reach?” I glanced between him and the hook.

  “Of course I can. Look at my feet. I’m planted on the ground. If I raise up to my toes, I can reach. See?” To prove it, he got up on his toes and raised his right hand up to his left. His fingertips touched the hook, which caused him to gasp and quickly rest back on the wood. “S-see?”

  “That was hardly impressive,” I muttered.

  “In a few short days, Delphi will be in the sea or worse. You’re condemning hundreds of people to who knows what fate? Because you had to rescue me? I would never be able to live with myself.”

  I hated it when he was the rational one. Who was I kidding? He was always the rational one.

  “I’ll never forgive you if you allow those people to die because you had to save me.”

  I froze, then after a moment looked down at him.

  His eyes were narrowed at me, and his split lips were pulled in a frown.

  Slowly, I lowered myself to my heels. “Seriously?”

  “I mean it. You have the potential to stop this from happen
ing, and you’re going to let it? Because I’m a little hurt? I’m not dying, Odette! Give me the dagger and get out of here!” His sudden anger hurt. I was only trying to help.

  I stepped off the crate, my jaw tight, and I held my dagger out to him.

  He wrapped his hand around mine and held me fast. “Get out of here. Now,” he said firmly, his dark eyes burning.

  I’d never felt more torn in my entire life.

  Leaving behind the man I loved, injured and with the potential to get an infection and die, to save hundreds of strangers I’d never even met wasn’t my idea of a heroic action. Still, the sea witch had to be stopped one way or another. And he was right.

  I was the only one who could stop her.

  The only one brave enough to stand up to her.

  I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him down to meet my lips. The kiss was out of desperation, not passion as we’d once shared, and need. “You better get out of here alive, or so help me I’ll find a way to bring you back from the dead so I can slap your stupid face.”

  James gave me a lopsided grin. “Are you going to say it?” He grinned bigger, this time his smile hopeful. “It’s just three words. Two if you cut out the I.”

  “No. Because this isn’t the last time I’m seeing you.”

  He chuckled, only to hiss and squeeze his eyes shut. “Well, I love you.”

  “I know.” I blew him a kiss, wheeled around, and ran from the boathouse. Each step tore at my heart. I shouldn’t have left him behind to fend for himself. She could have had a man waiting to stab him through the heart if I left.

  And yet, I left.

  I ran back into the darkness of night.

  The citizens of Castle Bay had launched an attack as predicted. Many of my crew stood on the docks. I didn’t know how long it would take to get everyone back on the ship or out to sea, and I knew in my gut that I didn’t have much time. The only option I saw was swimming to Delphi, though that was an extreme length to try and swim. I needed the gods on my side.

  Captain Avery must have sensed me because he looked in my direction. He gave me a short nod as a silent approval for a decision he didn’t know I’d made.

  I ran into the waters. And then I swam, not only for my life but the lives of thousands of strangers. Because it was the right thing to do.

  In mere seconds, I was in my siren form swimming through the warm ocean current with as much speed as possible, using the eastern current and its momentum to carry me to Delphi.

  I didn’t know how it was possible, maybe I really had been blessed by the gods or something, because a green glow fell around me. I swam faster than I ever had in my entire life.

  I did know one thing when I reached Delphi—I was positively exhausted.

  But I couldn’t wait.

  I dragged myself out of the water. The transformation back into a human was always far more painful than returning to my siren form. I also had the tiny problem of being completely naked. Luckily for me, a group of men stood frozen nearby, staring at me with wide eyes.

  It wasn’t common to see a person climb out of the sea, less common to see a siren, and even less to see them transform into a human.

  I pointed to the nearest man. “You there. Get me a shirt and pants.” I gulped for breath.

  The man looked stupidly at his friends.

  “Now!”

  He jumped and they all scrambled to find something. Eventually I was handed a shirt off a young man’s back and large pants one of them pulled from a crate. I wasted no time dressing, ignoring the men watching, and took off toward the biggest building in the middle of the city that had to be the palace.

  I ran down the street, holding my pants up, and when I drew near the palace, two soldiers stepped forward, blocking my path with halberds.

  “I don’t . . . have time for . . . this,” I panted. “I need to see . . . the king.”

  “King Eric has public meeting days three times a week. Come back tomorrow.”

  “There won’t be time!” I stepped forward. “He has a guest right now, a woman. Her name is Athena.”

  They exchanged an annoyed look.

  “Look, miss, it’s common knowledge that he has a guest,” one of them said.

  “He’s in danger.” I gestured. “The entire capital is.”

  “By this woman?”

  “Yes.”

  The soldier on the left leaned to his companion. “She must be one of those nuts.”

  “Maybe we should let her see the king,” he suggested. He cleared his throat, widening his eyes in a not so subtle way that cued me immediately that he had no intention of taking me to see the king. But if they took me to the palace, I could slip away and find my mother before she did something everyone would regret.

  “Sounds great!” I clapped my hands. “Let’s go!”

  They turned and motioned me forward.

  Get through the front doors and slip away. I told myself.

  And that’s just what I did. As soon as I was through the front doors, the soldiers tried to direct me down a hallway on the left, but I slipped past them and ran down another hall.

  I flung doors open as I sprinted through the hallway. “Athena!”

  The doors I opened revealed a closet, an empty bedroom, another bedroom, a study, and finally I flung a door open and my mother stood inside, rubbing her vibrant red lips together. She stared at me in shock.

  The guards ran up behind me, but I swung the door shut. “You will let them know I’m your daughter and then you and I are going to talk!”

  The door burst open, and I stepped over to my mother’s side.

  She held her hands up. “Relax. She’s my daughter. You may leave.”

  I waved my fingers at them. “I told you.”

  The men apologized to my mother, gave me a hesitant look, and then left us.

  The instant the door was closed again, I faced my mother. I drew a big breath. “So. James. You locked him up in a boathouse.”

  “And you were supposed to find him and try to rescue him. I am about to meet with the king for my final meeting, and you’re not about to stop me.”

  “Athena, you’re going to destroy an entire capital. It will ripple and destroy the entire kingdom,” I argued.

  She smirked. “They would deserve it. But I won’t allow the entire country to fall. That’s why you are going to be on the throne.” She lifted a black veil and placed it over her face. “We shall speak when I’m done.”

  “I won’t let you do this.” I stepped in front of her.

  “I’m doing this for you,” she growled. “I’m making your life better! Preparing your future! I would think you would be grateful.”

  “I am grateful. You’ve done so much. But this? Destroying a kingdom? I don’t want that! You shouldn’t want this as your legacy.”

  My mother held up her hand. “It is a shame you aren’t on my side. There is only one way to fix this. You will forgive me with time. Once you understand.” She began to chant the words of an unfamiliar spell.

  I looked frantically around the room for a way to stop her. I couldn’t stab my own mother through the chest, but if I could distract her long enough to break her chanting, the spell wouldn’t complete.

  But long delicate fingers wrapped around my mind.

  I gasped at their touch and turned to see the fingers weren’t physical, but magical. “Mother, stop!”

  She didn’t.

  The fingers pulled away from my mind. Memories from days before peeled away one layer at a time and started to fade. A glowing yellow orb in the clutches of the spirit hand curled together, swirling until it solidified into a beautiful white shell.

  And then there was darkness.

  twenty-one

  The memories slammed into me like an angry wave, leaving me struggling to catch
my breath. I could have sworn I saw my mother sitting at her desk in her bedroom, twiddling with the white shell around her neck, then suddenly looking down at it and letting out a gasp. I was almost positive the white shell shattered into a million pieces, just like my pearl necklace had done under Queen Grimhilde’s power.

  “Odette?” James cupped my face, his brow lined with worry. “You’re back. You went pale and your eyes rolled up into your head.”

  “I remember,” I whispered. I shifted my gaze from the ceiling to his face.

  He studied me. “Remember what?”

  “All of it.” I smiled and let out a little laugh. “I remember you.” I touched his scruffy jaw. “I remember being a siren. I remember being a pirate. I remember . . .” I licked my lips. “I remember my mother is the sea witch and she wanted to sink Delphi because she wanted revenge on the king.”

  “But you remember me?” James reiterated.

  I laughed again. “I already said that.”

  James leaned down and pressed his lips to mine a little tighter than usual.

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me, though?” I asked when he pulled away.

  “We couldn’t.” He rubbed his thumb over my cheek. “After your mother came back, you didn’t remember me. I ran to you, and when you looked at me . . . saw my hand . . .” He swallowed hard. “You pulled away in disgust. I thought I’d done something wrong until your mother told the entire city what she’d done. She told us she took your memories and if we tried at all to help you remember what occurred that week, we would suffer the same fate.”

  I clenched my teeth. “Of course. What did she say to you in the boathouse? What did she do?”

  James licked his lips. “When she had me in the . . .” He drew a deep breath. “In the boathouse, she said she was going to turn the king into the figurehead on her ship. She said he would watch his city sink and be forced to see everything while being completely helpless, just like she had been. But I didn’t know what she supposedly went through.”

  I scooted a little more into his arms. “Did she mention the spell at all? How to break it?”

  He shook his head.