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 help.”
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.
Elian pulls at the ropes with a new ferocity. He shuts his eyes and I hear a resounding pop. I stare in disbelief as he tries to pull his hand from the restraints, his left thumb now slack. Miraculously, it slips halfway down before the rope lodges against his skin.
“Damn,” he spits. “It’s too tight. I can’t slip out.”
The cabin groans. A large split slivers up the wall and the window frame cracks with the pressure. Above us, footsteps pound the deck and the thunderous clashing of swords is second only to the deafening snarl of cannon fire.
“What is that?” I ask.
“My crew.” Elian jerks at the rope again. “I’d recognize the sound of the Saad cannons anywhere.” He gives me a smile to light up nations. “Listen to my girl roar.”
“They came for us?”
“Of course they came for us,” Elian says. “And if they’ve battered up my ship doing it, then there’s going to be hell to pay.”
As soon as the words leave his lips, a cannonball crashes through the window. It shoots past me and collides with the wooden beam that holds Elian. He ducks his head with siren speed, and wood shavings rain down his back. My breath lodges and a feeling of nausea rises up through my stomach. Then Elian lifts his head and shakes the dust from his hair.
I let loose a long breath and my frenzied human heart returns to its normal rhythm. Elian surveys the massacre of wood around him. And then slowly, almost wickedly, he smiles.
He rises to his feet and slips out from beneath the shattered beam. He jumps, bringing his bound hands under his feet and to his chest in one swift motion. Briefly, he scans the dank room for something to cut the rope, but the cabin is desolate save for its two prisoners.
Elian glances at me and his smile fades as he takes in my restraints. The undamaged beam ready to take me down with the ship. He looks at his tied hands, his thumb still painfully dislodged from the socket. The room that is too bare to make use of. The girl he can’t seem to save.
“Go,” I tell him.
Elian’s eyes harden. Darken. That green disappearing under a whirlpool of anger. “Being a martyr doesn’t suit you,” he says.
“Just go,” I hiss.
“I’m not just going to leave you here.”
The sound of gunfire pierces the air. And a scream – a roar of fury – so loud that I wince. Elian turns to the doorway. Outside, his crew could be dying. The men and women he calls family marking their lives as forfeit to save their captain. And for what? For him to surrender his own life to save the very monster he has been hunting? A girl who has been plotting to steal his heart from under him? A traitor in every sense of the word.
Both of us have put our lives and our kingdoms on the line to find the eye and overthrow my mother. If nothing else, I won’t stand by and watch someone else lose their kingdom just so I won’t be alone when I lose mine.
“Elian.” My voice takes on a murderous calm.
“I—”
“Run!” I scream, and to my surprise, he does.
His teeth grind for a moment before, jaw pulsing under the weight of the decision. And then he turns. Quick as an arrow, the young prince darts from the cabin and leaves me to my doom.