The one to my right looked beyond me, then back as if to ask where his prince was.
I managed to nudge my head to my right before one of the sirens jabbed me with the back of the spear. I continued past the pointless palace guard and into what had once been the glorious throne room lined with massive pillars. The open roof I had seen in Ulrich’s memory was wider now. Cracked and splintered pillars lined all the way back to the moss-covered throne.
Athena stood in front of it, her hands clasped in front of her, and for the first time in my entire life, she wore a dress. The garment was amethyst so dark it was nearly black. A long train flowed behind her, and the right side had a slit up to her hip where a glorious silver and diamond crested octopus brooch was pinned. The gown glittered like the stars overhead.
I stopped several feet away. “Mother.”
“Odette.” Her hair had been washed of the dreadlocks and pulled from her face up into something black that made her elegant red curls dangle over the back of her head. “It didn’t take you long to get here.”
“No.” I put my hands behind my back to prevent myself from picking at the strap of the bag or hint at any threat by rubbing the hilt of my sword. I took a step forward. “I wanted to speak with you. I had time to think about what you told me.”
“And?” Her cold fish eyes studied me.
“It’s a lot to take in.” I gave a short laugh. “The prospect that this is my real home?” I looked around the palace. “This has never been a dream of mine.”
She laughed at my expression and waved her hand dismissively. “With you at my side, we can rule this kingdom.” She approached me, and my heart raced faster. “I’ve put King Eric in a new form as added entertainment for the guests.” She gestured to her right, drawing my attention to a green-yellow glow.
I thought it was residual bioluminescence from Ulrich’s attempt to help his people navigate the buildings in the dark of the ocean. In fact, it was a tall prison of glass, and locked inside was a gray-green-brown octopus pressed into the far corner. I gasped. “You turned him into an octopus?”
The sound of Athena’s laughter echoed off the empty walls. “Wonderful, isn’t it?”
I closed my mouth and thought of Sky and how easily he smiled. I slid a smile onto my face and looked at the woman who had given birth to me. “Positively cruel.” I walked more casually up to her. “I was afraid when I came in. I thought you would be mad at me.”
“For what?” Though she phrased it as a question, I knew it hung like a noose around my neck. One wrong move and she’d kick the bucket out from under my feet.
“Saying I wasn’t like you. I thought about your wanting to be the queen, and why I shouldn’t want to be a princess. A life in a palace?” I raised my hands and turned a circle. “Not being forced to be at sea for weeks or even months on voyages that may or may not result in a bounty. How many times have we gone with empty bellies”—I faced her again—“because we ran out of supplies while stuck waiting for a merchant ship to pass? Or because we were caught in a storm or marooned? Who wouldn’t want to stay on land where life is stable?” As I spoke, I realized I actually meant what I said. Every pirate had that deep desire even if the ocean itself called to them for a period of time.
My mother held her hands out to me. “I would love to rule with you by my side. And I will teach you everything I know.”
I stepped forward and took her hands.
She gripped on to me, her grip crushing my hands to the point I gasped. “Odette. I am the queen of the sirens. You may have been raised the siren princess, but you cannot deceive your own mother.”
“Y-You’re hurting me,” I gasped. I tried to pull away, but somehow her hands tightened. “Ah! Mother, please!”
Michael suddenly darted out from under the flap of my bag and flew as fast as he could for the open roof.
Athena’s gaze locked on figures in the shadows. “Follow him. Bring them back to me.”
twenty-six
“I was careful to make sure you didn’t know a thing about your magical abilities.” She tugged on the skirt of her dress and somehow peeled away a long piece that evolved into seaweed. She wrapped it around my wrists and the seaweed tightened until I was securely bound.
“Athena, I was being truthful!” I tried. “I do want to learn to be the princess!”
“Of course you do.” She smiled. “I’ll teach you how to do all of it. I will fix it, just like before. We’ll be just as happy as we were before you foolishly broke your seashell.” She held up a hand, and in that hand was the shell she’d revealed in Zelig.
“No you don’t!”
My mother seemed to have forgotten I hadn’t been raised a lady. I’d been raised a pirate. And one thing my mother herself had taught me was that pirates don’t fight fair.
With a growl, I turned my hips, hooked my leg, and kicked the back of her knee, both breaking her concentration and dropping her. She had no choice but to let go of me. The ridiculous dress she wore did nothing but restrain her movements—slit or no slit. With that, I had the upper hand.
I slammed my bound wrists down on the back of her head, spun on the still-damp floor, and ran for the open doorway just as James ran in. “Go, go, go!” I yelled.
He skidded to a halt, sword at the ready, and paused a moment in confusion. Gerard was right on his heels.
My mother shouted in a language I didn’t understand, and Gerard’s eyes widened.
“Get out!” I yelled again.
“She’s summoned help,” Gerard said. He grabbed my arm and sliced his short blade through the seaweed, releasing me. “Get your sword and fight!”
“How do you know what she said?”
“Spellcaster, remember? Not to mention she’s speaking the same language as the northern lands!” He wheeled around just then, as though sensing something.
It was a humanoid form of a shark appeared. He had legs and arms of a man, but a gray fin protruded from crude clothing, and his head wasn’t shaped quite right. He carried a scythe in his hands and swung it at Gerard.
Gerard jumped back, bumping into me hard enough to make me fall. I rolled to my knees as a man looking like a killer whale stomped down at me. He carried some kind of war hammer in his massive hands. These were mutated sirens my mother had combined with sea creatures to give them human abilities.
Gerard kicked the shark man in the stomach, then turned and held his hand out toward the center of the floor between me and Athena. He spoke words with the same intonation as my mother had, and a gaping hole appeared in the ground. From that hole began to climb skeletons.
I screamed. I’d somehow forgotten Gerard knew how to summon dead things, or perhaps it hadn’t really hit me until I saw the creatures themselves climbing out of the ground.
He jumped and looked at me in genuine surprise. “You’re scared of skeletons?”
“They’re dead people! They used to be alive!”
He rolled his eyes. “At least I didn’t summon zombies. Look—” He ducked another swing of the scythe. “They won’t attack you and can’t die. Much better option for an army.”
James backed up, fighting a fish creature with two heads and a claw. I heard other battles outside and wondered how my mother had summoned these creatures to her aid so readily. Perhaps she had them ready all along or had been experimenting with spells the last eighteen years so she could get her revenge however she wanted.
“It’s futile, Odette!” she called to me over the sounds of the battle. “You won’t win. You cannot defeat me when I haven’t shown you everything I know.”
“If Athena gets enough time to cast another spell, she will take away my memories!” I shouted.
I grunted when the whale-man kicked me in the hip but used the momentum to roll out from in front of him and jumped up behind. I drove my sword through his back. He released a distorted
scream that tore through my chest and made me cover my ear with my free hand. I wanted to apologize to the creature I’d killed. The whale was completely innocent.
Instead, I turned to face my mother.
She was successfully fending off Gerard’s skeletons with a nearly bored expression. She flung bursts of water from her hands. When she struck a skeleton, it slammed into a pillar and exploded into pieces.
I ducked under the arm of another sea creature I fought and glanced over to see the shell back in my mother’s hand.
“No! Please, Athena!” I started running for her.
I knew Gerard said the skeletons wouldn’t attack me, but I couldn’t help but think that these skeletons had once been inside a living being. I could have been beside a handsome lord, a mother, a merchant, or even a fellow pirate. There was no way to tell, and it terrified me. I sucked in a breath, determined to not give in to my fear over having my memories stolen, and ran past them.
I’d made it past the second row of skeletons when I heard James grunt in such a way I instantly knew he’d been hurt. I glanced over my shoulder. A stingray’s stinger protruded from his right shoulder, the only arm capable of fighting back. If I didn’t turn back to help him, the siren man fighting him could kill him.
The siren yanked the stinger out of James’s shoulder, earning another cry, and James dropped to his knees. But if I stopped running, my mother could wipe my memories, and I couldn’t bear the thought of forgetting James ever again.
I tightened my grip on my sword and ran again.
Ulrich showed up out of nowhere and got to my mother first. He struck her hand, sending the shell to the ground and shattering it.
She let out a sound I’d never heard, a scream mixed with a roar, and turned to face him. “You little toad!” she snapped. “You’ll pay for that!” My mother’s attention turned to my little brother.
Giant tentacles of seaweed broke through the stone floor and wrapped around Ulrich’s legs. He let out a cry of surprise as he was forced to his knees. He tried batting at them with the sword, but even as he cut them, more sprung up and quickly wrapped around his arms.
“Mother, please don’t!” I shouted.
She backhanded Ulrich across the face, then seized his hair. “Where. Is. The. Stone?”
“Gah!” James cried.
I stopped beside a skeleton and wheeled around as the stingray creature roughly bound James’s hands behind his back. Three creatures now fought Gerard, and some of the skeletons at the back of the group ran over to help him.
“How dare you!” Athena shouted. My attention snapped back to her. Blood dripped from her hand. “Foolish, foolish child!” The spittle from her words landed on Ulrich’s face.
He struggled against the seaweed. My mother slapped him again, and I spotted his necklace—with the summer stone trapped inside—fly through the air and into the boot of the skeleton two skeletons away from me.
“Stop this!” I shouted with all the strength of my voice.
She turned her face to me, baring her teeth in a way that made me see the siren she really was. “You bring your friends to fight me? Friends who should be loyal to me!” Her glare landed on James. “They should be fighting by my side!”
I slowly sheathed my weapon, my hands trembling. This woman couldn’t possibly be the mother I knew. I put my hands out. “Mother, I came to you because I wanted to be the princess. I said that when I arrived.”
“You wait until it is convenient. When your life is threatened!” She sounded hysterical, her eyes were wild. “You have no idea what I’ve been through to gain my power!”
“No. No, I don’t. I don’t know what it’s like to have any power at all, Mother.” I slowly released the belt on my waist and set my sword on the ground, presenting myself as completely powerless to her. “But you can teach me. You can show me.”
My mother laughed manically, which slowed until her typically evil smile appeared and some of the insanity left it. “I will teach you all I know.”
“And you don’t even need to make me forget anything. If you do, I won’t remember how far you’ve come. What you’ve done to give me so much.” I stopped so close I could have reached out and touched Ulrich’s shoulder. “Just . . . let him go.”
Athena’s jester-like smile turned to Ulrich. “Not until he tells me where the summer stone is.”
“He doesn’t have it,” I stated.
“Oh?” Her brow raised, but she didn’t move her eyes.
“Neither does James.” I looked over at them to see even Gerard had been overpowered now, as well as most of the other pirates. Whatever I said would put all these men at risk. I swallowed hard.
“I assume you want me to let them go? I already told you, darling. Not. Until. I have. The stone.” She seized Ulrich by the hair again and yanked his head back.
“It’s in the skeleton’s boot!” I blurted, holding my hands out.
Athena rolled her eyes to me. “The skeleton?”
“Yes. I saw it.”
Ulrich’s eyes widened. “Don’t, Odette. She’ll destroy everything!”
“I’ll get it. Please . . . please don’t harm him.” I took a step forward.
“Oh, I have a much better plan for him.” She waved her hand, speaking a quick curse.
“Odette,” Ulrich croaked.
His face compressed and elongated, his skin turned green, his arms curled up and legs curled in. His bones popped, skin shrunk, and all the clothing and hair disappeared from his body until my mother stood with a fat green frog with purple spots in her hands.
I put my hands on my cheeks.
“If you want your brother back, I suggest you obey every single thing I say.” She turned to face me, presenting the frog like one would a crown.
A frog.
My mother had turned Prince Ulrich, my little brother, into a frog.
I lifted my gaze to her. Before, I had clung to a shred of hope that my mother couldn’t possibly be a monster. My mother had raised me, trained me, held me when I cried, nursed me to health whenever I fell ill. She made me the strong woman I was.
Yet, in that instant, I lost all respect for her.
Whatever hope I had that she would relent faded.
My mother wanted one thing in her life and one thing only: power. I decided at that moment Athena was no longer my mother.
Athena lifted her chin. “Men, send Gerard back to Selina.” Her gaze shifted to him. “And Gerard, darling?”
He grunted as he was dragged to his feet, his arms bound behind him now. “What?”
“Your grandmother will hear of this.” She lowered her chin, brows raised, smirk playing.
Gerard narrowed his own glare. “Go on. She’s the one who sent me here.” The creatures dragged him out the front door.
My mother’s lip twitched. “Bind Odette again.”
A half-dolphin man stepped up and pulled my arms behind me. The skeletons were beginning to follow Gerard—the six that were left. One of those six had the summer stone in his boot, and I needed to get it.
Whoever possesses the summer stone possesses the power of the sea.
“As for the pirates . . .” she continued.
I looked around, hoping to catch sight of something to help me. And then I spotted the lost boys, all in their fairy forms, on the edge of the ceiling watching from above. You don’t need to wait for her to teach you magic. It’s innate. You were born the siren princess. You were born to possess the summer stone.
“Bind them. Lock them up, even if it’s a cave in the bottom of the sea. I want them out of here until I have the summer stone in my possession and I am on the throne.”
“Odette,” James objected, a pant of pain lingering at the edge of my name.
I looked over my shoulder at him, my heart racing. “James! Please, Mother. He’s in
jured. He’s bleeding.” My heart welled up in my throat.
“That is a shame.” She stroked her fingers along Ulrich’s head and spine. “I’m afraid he will likely die. If not from bleeding out, then from infection.”
Ulrich’s throat puffed out like a blowfish, and he croaked noisily.
The dolphin bound my wrists together with the seaweed rope.
I looked up, aiming my gaze at the little lost boys. “But I told you where the summer stone is!” If they could get the summer stone out of the boot of the skeleton and get it to me, we might have a chance.
They got the hint, elbowing each other before springing into action and disappearing into the night sky.
My mother stopped in front of me. “I now have you as an ally. The pirates will be reminded of my power. And you . . .” She took my chin. “You will be my daughter again.”
“Y-Yes,” I hesitantly answered. “Just like before.”
Her lip curled in an insane sort of curl. “Yes . . .” She let go and turned her back.
I ran for the front door. Grumpy flew around the edge of the doorway and right to me.
“What are you doing?” my mother demanded.
I jumped over my wrists, bringing them in front of me, and held out my hand for the pendant that belonged on Ulrich’s neck. The green magic glowed brightly and filled me with warmth to my core. Like I felt with the winter stone in Zelig, I could feel the magic, but the feeling was a thousand times more intense.
It tasted like the salt of the sea, smelled like a summer afternoon, and felt like warm arms of a loved one around me. Each of those sensations held precious memories for me.
The first time I’d ever sailed with my mother, she held me up on the railing by the helm, my tiny feet teetering on the edge of falling, but her hands had balanced me. She laughed with me, telling me how someday I would grow up big and strong like her, that I would have friends and family.
The summer afternoons I spent with my mother, in the heat, under the tree in the back of the villa where she made me practice for hours to get my footwork just right. She’d taught me how to hold a sword, strike a blow, dodge, and anticipate. She’d praised me, told me how proud she was, over and over.
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