THE WATER IS BLACK with sirens and the world follows.
They soot the mountain with their near-demonic presence, and as the sun struggles to pull itself higher, it bruises the sky. There’s a string of hissing and infernal screams as the sirens claw their way to the top of the water, their smiles impious and seductive. I can’t help but be mesmerized. Such beautiful creatures. Such bewitching, deadly things. Even as they sharpen their fangs on their lips and run taloned hands through their liquid hair, I can’t look away.
Everything about them is awful, but nothing about them is hideous.
The moat stretches to half a mile in each direction, and the sirens seem to fill it all. There must be a couple hundred of them, outnumbering us two to one.
“Gods.” Kye’s voice is dazed. “They’re everywhere.”
“We noticed.” Madrid lines the sight of her crossbow. “What are we going to do, Cap?”
“Be on your best behavior,” I say.
She lowers her crossbow and frowns. “What?”
I nod to the center of the chaos. “We’re in the presence of royalty.”
The Sea Queen is a vision in front of us, with sweeping midnight tentacles and her daughter poised allegiant by her side. A formidable dyad. Regardless of Lira’s new cloak of humanity, when she stands beside her mother, they look like they can char through daylight.
The Sea Queen floats through the water, Lira following the unsteady path by her side. When she reaches me, I notice that her eyes are the same color as her lips.
“Siren killer,” the Sea Queen says, by way of greeting.
When she speaks, even just those few words, and even in my language, it’s like nothing I have ever heard. Foul and hateful, alluring and repulsive. The melody of it leaves me with a fiendish kind of melancholy. It’s like she speaks in funeral songs.
“Your Majesty.” I bow just low enough that my eyes never leave her.
“Lira.” Madrid shakes her head, betrayal soaking her voice. “It can’t be true, right? You’re one of us.”
The Sea Queen’s laughter bubbles like water. “You’ll soon learn that my daughter has no allegiance.” She twists her eyes to Lira’s. “She’s nothing but a traitor.”
“I knew it,” Kye says, though there’s no satisfaction in his voice. “I knew we shouldn’t trust you and I did anyway. You were playing us this whole time?”
It’s a question, like he can’t quite believe it. Like he won’t, despite all of his suspicions, until Lira confirms it for herself. But she doesn’t answer. Whether it’s because she doesn’t care enough to or because there’s just too much to say, I’m not sure. But she doesn’t look at him, at any of us, at me. Her eyes are fixated on her mother. Roaming over her. Whenever the Sea Queen moves, Lira’s shoulders twitch toward us.
“You have something of mine,” the Sea Queen says.
The crystal thrums in my pocket. “Don’t worry. I plan on returning it.”
The Sea Queen inclines her head downward, arms out in a goading gesture. “Then by all means,” she says, “let us begin.”
I surge forward.
The Sea Queen slides out of my line in one sleek movement, and once she’s out of the way, her horde ascends. Sirens spill from the water, leaping onto my crew and screaming as their nails and teeth dig into whatever flesh they can find.
Lira dives to the side, and a tally of my crew rushes after her. I try to keep her in my focus, but there’re too many swords and bodies, and it’s only seconds before I lose sight of her.
I can see the queen, though. She hovers in the center of the moat on a line of frost that breaches the water like a small island. With the Crystal of Keto in my possession, she’ll let her sirens do the dirty work. Watch as they sacrifice themselves for her treasure, never once risking her own neck for it.
If I can just get close enough to her, then I can use the crystal to send her back to the hell she came from.
I dart in and out of leaping sirens, my crew hot on my tail. We slice our swords into them, careful to avoid the sprays of acid blood. Kye yells something, and I turn just in time to see him crash to the floor, a siren skewed on top of him. Madrid kicks her off before the blood has time to do damage, and hauls Kye back to his feet.
“Keep going!” Yukiko yells, gesturing to the queen with her sword. “We’ll hold them off.”
She is the epitome of a Págese princess in that moment, above the holds of jealousy and bids for power. A pure, raw warrior, like each of her brothers and the kings and queens before them. She swoops her sword over her head, circling it through the air with enough force to create a storm. She’s ready to kill.
“Come on!” Kye roars.
He thrusts me onward, Madrid shooting cover fire behind us. The sound of gunfire and screaming rattles the mountain. With every step we take, another member of my crew branches off to wage war on an attacking siren. They are everywhere, springing from the water and slithering along the ground like snakes. I run past so many bodies, my boots slick with ice and death, until a legion of devilish shrieks stops me dead.
A group of six sirens leap from the water, their nails shining like daggers. They land like cats, fins bent in the middle and hands arched to claws.
“Watch out!” Kye yells, and Madrid grunts from beside him.
“I know,” she says, peppering the deadly creatures with arrows. “I’m not blind.”
The sirens pounce out of the way, deceptively agile even on land. Their gills expand against their bare ribs, revealing the raw flesh beneath.
“You sure about that?” Kye asks, and Madrid elbows him in the side before thrusting the crossbow to the ground and unsheathing her sword.
We attack with more brutality than ever.
I go for the throat before any one of them can open their mouths to sing. Around us lullabies crash and echo alongside the cries for mercy, but there’s too much noise for it to have any effect past dizziness. Too much death for their songs to take shape. Still, I won’t risk it. One note and they could send us into a frenzy.
I lash out with my sword, slicing across a jugular. And then another. They come thick and fast and like the heads of the Hydra. Whenever I leave one siren severed on the floor, another leaps out in her place.
One of them stabs Kye, her nails sliding into his knee. Her finger goes so far through, I half-expect the rest of her hand to follow, but he presses a pistol to her temple and when she falls lifelessly to the ground, he pulls his leg out from her grip without so much as a wince.
“Go ahead!” Madrid yells, slinging Kye’s arm over her shoulder. She plunges her sword into the mouth of a siren. “Get the queen!”
I sprint, rolling to the floor in a duck as another siren leaps toward me. I can feel my skin sizzling underneath my shirtsleeve when I stab her. Siren blood, eating its way through. I rip the fabric away and heap snow onto the charred skin before continuing on.
Bullets cascade around me, shooting through the air like fireworks. The water is riddled with them, alongside the floating bodies of sirens. I hear the battle cries and death cries. My crew is dying, the sirens are dying, and I can’t seem to tell which screams belong to who.
I gasp a breath when I finally reach the fork of land in the water. My feet pound across it, but I barely have the chance to get close enough to the Sea Queen before something slams into me, lifting me off the ground. My cheek cracks on the ground.
It’s not a siren. It’s a merman.
The creature flips back into the water and roars with the splintered teeth of a shark. I choke a little, but when it attacks again, I’m ready. I’m a tornado of steel and fury, slicing clean into its rubber flesh, across its branded chest and deep grooved stomach. But the merman doesn’t relent no matter how much it bleeds.
It grabs me by the throat with a webbed hand and roars loud enough to split my ears. I drop my sword. The edges of its spiked fingers puncture my neck and it lifts me off the floor with one muscular arm. I scramble, fumbling blindly as I gag for breath. When my hands latch around the screaming blade, I don’t waste time.
I slam my knife through the base of its chin, driving the blade up until the handle slams against bone. The power surges back through the steel, like no kill before. It is pure animal and instinct and as my knife drinks it up, I do too.
The creature falls to the floor by my feet and the Sea Queen’s nostrils flare.
“Tha pethánete,” she barks.
“Sorry, I rub a hand over my throat. “I don’t speak bitch.”
The water boils in fury around her. “When you die,” she says, “do you think my daughter will weep?”
I lift my knife. “Kill me and find out.”