ONE WEEK IS ALL I have. In seven days I’ll turn eighteen and my mother will force me to steal the heart of a sailor. A better creature would take the punishment and be glad that it’s all the Sea Queen has decreed.
I’m not a better creature.
It’s foolish to think about disobeying the queen again, but the thought of being told who I should and shouldn’t kill rattles me. It makes me feel every bit the rabid dog for my mother to release on whoever she decrees. Of course, since killing humans itself is an order given by her, I suppose it’s always been that way. I’ve become so used to being brutal, that I almost forget it didn’t begin as a choice, but a requirement. Kill the humans. Help finish the war they started when they killed Keto. Be a true siren.
I think for a moment about whether I would still be such a monster if my mother and those before her decreed peace in place of war. Let Keto’s death be the death of our battle and turn hatred to bygones. We’re taught never to question or to think of ourselves as anything other than what we are, and it’s smart, perhaps, to ignore the idea. After all, the punishment for refusing to kill would be beyond imagination.
I braid my hair to one side. I’ve swum to the borders of my sea, as far from my mother as I can get without leaving the kingdom. I don’t know what my anger will turn into if I see her now. I can’t think of what reckless thing I might do.
I lie down on the ocean bed and nudge the jellyfish beside me. Its tentacles graze my stomach and I feel a wonderful burst of pain. The kind that numbs and calms and clears my mind. It’s a release like no other, and when the pain subsides, I do it again. This time, I hold the creature there and let its tentacles dance across my skin. Lightning courses up my stomach and into my still heart. It burns and itches, and I let my mind go foggy with agony.
There’s nothing in the world but pain and the rare moments that exist in between.
“Pretty princess, so alone,” comes a whisper of Psáriin. “Wanting pain, wanting bone.”
“Not bone, but heart,” says another. “See inside, see the spark.”
I push the jellyfish away and sit up to look at the two creatures hovering nearby. They are both dark navy with slick fins and the bodies of eels. Their arms are covered in black gills like razors up to their elbows, and their stomachs form large, rigid muscles that press against skeletal breasts. As they speak, their loose jaws go as slack as fishes’.
Mermaids.
“Pretty princess,” says the first of the two. Her body is covered in rusted metal, no doubt scavenged from pirate ships or given as tribute when she saved a wounded human. She has stabbed them through her flesh. Brooches and daggers and coins with threaded wire, all piercing through her like jewelry.
“Wants to be free,” her companion says.
“Free from the queen.”
“Free her heart.”
“Take a heart.”
“Take the queen’s.”
I wrinkle my nose at them. “Go and follow a human ship to the end of the earth until you all fall off it.”
The one with the rusted metal swishes her tentacle hair, and a glob of slime trails down to her eel tail. “Fall from the earth,” she tells me.
“Fall from grace.”
“Can’t fall from it if you never had it.”
They laugh in hisses. “Go now then,” they chorus. “Go find the heart.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask impatiently. “What heart?”
“Win the queen’s heart.”
“A heart to win the queen’s.”
“For your birthday.”
“A heart worthy for eighteen.”
Their tediousness grates. Mermaids are ghastly things with minds that work in mysteries and lips made from riddles. Wearily, I say, “The Sea Queen has decreed I steal a sailor’s heart for my eighteenth. Which I’m sure you know.”
They tilt their heads in what I imagine is their way of nodding. Mermaids are spies, through and through, their ears pressed to every corner of the ocean. It’s what makes them dangerous. They devour secrets as easily as they could loosen their jaws and devour ships.
“Go,” I tell them. “You don’t belong here.”
“This is the edge.”
“The edge is where we belong.”
“You should think less of the edge and more of your heart.”
“A heart of gold is worth its weight to the queen.”
The one with the metal rips a brooch from the base of her fin and throws it to me. It’s the one thing from the mermaid that hasn’t rusted.
“The queen,” I say slowly, twisting the brooch in my hands, “does not care for gold.”
“She would care for the heart of its land.”
“The heart of a prince.”
“A prince of gold.”
“Bright as the sun.”
“Though not as fun.”
“Not for our kind.”
“Not for anyone.”
I’m about to lose all patience when I grasp the weight of their words. My lips part in realization and I sink back to the sand. The brooch is from Midas, the land of gold ruled by a king whose blood flows with it. A king to be succeeded by a pirate prince. A wanderer. A siren killer.
I stare at the mermaids, with their lidless black eyes like endless orbs. I know they can’t be trusted, but I can’t ignore the brutal brilliance of their words. Whatever ulterior motives they have won’t matter if I succeed.
“The Midasan prince is our murderer,” I say. “If I bring the queen his heart as my eighteenth, then I could win back her favor.”
“A heart worthy for the princess.”
“A heart worthy for the queen’s forgiveness.”
I look back at the brooch. It gleams with a light like I’ve never seen. My mother wants to deny me the heart of a prince, but the heart of this prince would be enough to erase any bad feelings between us. I could continue with my legacy, and the queen would no longer have to worry about our kind being hunted. If I do this, we would both get what we want. We would be at peace.
I toss the brooch back to the mermaid. “I won’t forget this,” I tell her, “when I’m queen.”
I give them one last glance, watching as their lips coil to smiles, and then swim for gold.