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 so 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.
I grab his fist and shake the dizziness from my bones. He’s strong, but it’s an empty strength, dwelling in the idea of duty and violence for violence’s sake. For the first time, I’m fighting for something. Elian’s face runs on a loop in my mind, and the moment I remember it’s his life, the life of my kingdom, the pain seeps away.
I twist the Flesh-Eater’s arm, and a crack splinters through the water. He thunders, jaw stretching wide to show every one of his predator teeth. He rolls back toward me, ready to slam his elbow into my chest. But I’m lithe and quick, and when I twist out of the way, he growls.
I tackle him from behind, pounding my body into his as hard as my bones allow. He crashes against the water bed, face burying into the sand. There is blood. So much that I taste it.
He throws himself upright and strikes an arm out to me. For a moment I’m surprised that he grabs me instead of pummeling me, and he uses that to his advantage. Pulling me forward, I realize a second too late what he is about to do. He bites into my shoulder, and I feel flesh being torn from my bones.
I scream and slam my head into his, again and again, until my pain mixes with his. But he is relentless, gnawing and ripping and chewing through me. Tasting me in a way he was never able to before. It’s not until I feel a sharp stab, like a hot poker sliding into my palm, that I remember the eye clutched in my fist.
The power calling to be harnessed.
In one clean move, I slam my closed hand into the Flesh-Eater’s stomach, and when it comes out the other side, he stills. I push him from me, not daring to glance at the wound on my shoulder. He blinks slowly, surprised that suddenly there is a hole through him. That something could puncture that stone-forged body so easily.
Behind him, Elian drifts down.
He stares past the Flesh-Eater and locks his eyes on to my shoulder, which no doubt looks as bad as it feels. I do the same, taking in the hashed red on his cheek and the cracks in his lips and the way his left arm doesn’t quite move right as he hovers in the water.
I’m about to swim toward him when the Flesh-Eater wraps a callous claw around my neck. It’s one final act of brutality, and I feel the instability of his strength. With each passing moment, his grip ricochets between insufferable and barely there.
Slowly, I curve a hand around his thick wrist and squeeze.
Around us, the sirens descend. They watch the barbarian soldier cling desperately to their princess. They see me wait fearlessly for death to claim him. And when Elian plunges his knife into the back of the Flesh-Eater’s skull, they do nothing but smile.
WHEN WE RISE TO the surface, a piece of the Flesh-Eater comes with us.
Elian wipes the flay of skin from his blade and curls his lips. For some reason, this strikes me as funny. The Sea Queen’s most loyal and unstoppable warrior, destroyed by a human prince who is nauseated at the sight of dead flesh. I snort, and Elian turns to shoot me an incredulous look.
“That was funny to you?”
“Your face is always funny to me,” I tell him.
He narrows his eyes, but under the water his fingers slip into mine.
I squeeze his hand and face the Sea Queen, who watches us with broiling hatred. Her tentacles are spread out in every direction, creating a parachute that inches her over the water as though she’s floating.
“You both die today,” she growls.
The water begins to churn around us, a whirlwind spewing scalding black bubbles. Elian flinches as it spits against his skin, and when I see the raw flesh it leaves behind, I pull him toward me and clutch tighter on to Keto’s eye. I summon the magic inside to protect us, answering its desperate calls with one of my own. My skin radiates and my body loosens as the power pours out from me, parting the water like a tide.
The black disperses from around us, leaving an untouched circle of cool water where Elian and I linger safely.
The sirens leap out of the scalding water, hissing as their skin begins to blister and dissolve. They throw themselves onto the snow and Elian’s crew jumps back, no longer under the spell of the song.
Not all of them make it.
Sirens in the center of the water torch like kindling before I’m able to think of saving them. It takes no time at all for their screams to turn to wind and their bodies to foam, and the cauldron of water claims them as though they never existed at all.
The remaining sirens cower against the snow and let out a legion of grievous screams.
“Let’s see your treacherous army help you now,” the Sea Queen says.
“Elian, duck!” Kye’s call punctures across the ravine.
We turn in unison to see Madrid aim her gun at the Sea Queen. The shot fires, and true to Madrid’s skill, it hits the queen square in the back. If it was any other beast, it would have pierced straight through to its heart. But my mother is forged in something from below the depths of hell, and when the bullet ricochets off her, she cackles.
In one swift movement, the Sea Queen swirls and aims her trident at them. An inferno shoots from each pitchfork point, embers discharging through the air until a line of fire blazes across the snow, cutting our armies off. I can barely see them over the flames.
The Sea Queen screams a laugh. “Nobody can save you,” she says.
I seethe, squeezing Elian’s hand just that bit tighter. “I can kill you just fine on my own.”
“But you’re not on your own,” she says. “Yet.”
My eyes widen and the moment she turns to Elian, I use all the power I have to shove him to the side. He arcs through the air, the eye’s protection still holding like an orb around him. I hear the crash of his body hit the water just in time for my mother’s tentacle to smash into my chest. My ribs crack.
My mother wastes no time. Small tornadoes burst from the air, circling around her like loyal subjects. They move like they have minds, and when my mother points a finger in my direction, they lurch toward me. Without thinking, I thrust my arms into the air and drag the water up like a shield. It leaps at my command and then curls into a wave, swallowing the swirling thunderclouds.
My mother may have tricks, but now I have just as many. As soon as the wave demolishes her magic, I feel quenched. As though each time I use the eye, a small piece of my hunger chips away. Feeding the power inside.
The Sea Queen shrieks, and a crack of thunder shoots beside me. Above, the clouds begin to rumble and turn black. Thunder moans, and I smell the electricity of the incoming storm.
“You have a lot to learn,” my mother says.
She raises her trident in the air, swirling it around and around. With every circle, the sky seems to twist, clouds lurching and swarming until the entire sky is made of nothing but gray.
Then lightning rains down around me.