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My first instinct was to rush forward and bound through the water to save Bellamy and take the trident. But then a voice returned from the depths where I thought I’d left it. It told me to take the trident and finish what Cordelia started. To make Bellamy and the others bow before me as the ocean follows my command. After all, I’d already unlocked its power with my sacrifice. I had nothing more to lose. But everything to gain. A world at my command.
Take what is yours.
A bolt of lightning struck the water in front of me, snapping me out of the trance pulling me under. I knew then that if I were to touch that trident in this state, I would lose myself forever. I would become the very thing I sought to defeat. So instead, I stayed suspended there in the waves, frozen as the whipping wind and churning water spiraled around me.
“Katrina!” One of my friends called me. I couldn’t even recognize their voices. I battled the voice in my head, clamping my eyes shut as I pushed away the siren’s call. I couldn’t overpower it, but I could distract it. So, I shifted the focus, arguing with it until it no longer wanted to convince me to rule the seas. Instead, I redirected it, letting it speak its dark truths to me and reminding me of the monster I never wanted to become.
You left Milo behind in a world where he’ll spend every day fighting until death finally claims him, old, withered and alone.
I shook my head at the painful accusation, swallowing it like bitter medicine. My siren continued. And I willingly listened.
You destroyed his life, just as your mother destroyed everyone around her. You let your heart betray him, and he’ll never forgive you for that.
I swallowed a lump in my throat, opening my eyes as the tears came. Maybe mermaids were too stubborn to cry, but I was still half human, and that side of me wasn’t so tough.
And now you’ve killed your own flesh and blood. We both knew you couldn’t keep your hands clean.
My tail flicked back and forth, and my chest tightened, filling with salty, wet air as heat rose to my face like fire. I never wanted any of this.
All that destruction. All that brokenness. All that ruin. Look at the mess you’ve made. You’re shaping up to be a fine siren.
That was it. The moment the well of tears I’d been storing up broke free, flowing, streaming from my red, tired eyes without stopping. Like a dam bursting, the release of my sorrow and anger was unstoppable. Rivers of rage poured from me, spilling over from my heart into the ocean through my tears. And when my teardrops hit the seawater below, mixing with the ocean, I felt the instant connection within. I felt a power unlike any other.
I thought of the midnight waters around me like paint beneath my paintbrush. I imagined how I might shape it, move it, and control it. And with my mermaid tears falling, I did.
Releasing a shattering cry that broke through even the loudest wave and thunder, I threw my head back, feeling the control I now had of the ocean around me. The water beneath me cupped me like a foaming throne, cresting higher until I overlooked the raging sea below. It lifted me as I screamed, the echoes of my pain commanding the tides.
I forced down the waves, opening up the water’s surface like a tear in fabric. I painted the water splitting, creating a channel of air that corkscrewed all the way down to the ocean floor. In another recess of my mind, I told the sea to take the trident back, to hide it where no one—human, mermaid, or otherwise—could ever reach it again.
A section of water sprouted up, swirling like a small cyclone beside Bellamy and ripping the trident from his grip. I painted the trident far away, buried beneath the sea itself. And with that image in my mind, fresh tears still streaming down with no sign of stopping, the water wrapped the trident in its grip, twisting around it and carrying it all the way down the trench I’d created in the ocean, until it reached the floor so deep below, I could barely see it.
With a ground-shaking blast, the water forced open the sea floor, creating a grave in which the trident would lie for the rest of time. With the last of my mind’s strength, I ordered the waters to bury the trident in depths even I couldn’t fathom. And I watched with mixed emotions as the ocean did as I commanded.
The water violently rushed back over, closing up the split as I felt myself letting go, exhausted from the effort. I dropped down into the waves as the crest holding me dwindled and lowered. The raging storm calmed just as the sea swallowed up the trident, burying it miles below the sand to be trapped there forever by the ocean’s crushing pressure.
I didn’t even have the strength to move my tail to stay afloat, and my battered lungs had all but given out. My painting was finished. But I finally, finally stopped crying.
43
Jolly Roger
Milo
Iwatched on in agony as Katrina and the others vanished before me, leaving me standing in the empty skiff as cannons raged around me. I dove into the water, narrowly dodging a cannonball as it obliterated the little wooden jollyboat. And then, left without a choice but to help Bellamy as he had helped us, I swam toward the dueling ships. Because what else did I have to live for now?
As I climbed up the side of the Spaniard frigate, my thoughts riled in torment. I knew this would happen. I knew she’d be gone. But I couldn’t have fathomed it would’ve been this hard. I knew she was back where she was meant to be, she and far away from all this. I should’ve been content in that alone. But I wasn’t. I was completely, and irrevocably destroyed.
Katrina was right. Loving her had destroyed me. Because loving her always, always meant losing her.
I lost myself a long time ago, and she just took the last piece of me with her. So, I didn’t even recall how I stormed the ship and struck down every enemy in my path. It was nothing more than a blur of steel and blood. And when the captain himself ran over to challenge me, I greeted him with the same relentlessness, unhindered by the wounds I couldn’t feel anymore. We might’ve fought for seconds or minutes. It wasn’t worth noting.
That is, until the moment his blade tore across my left eye. I yelped in reaction, but I couldn’t even process the pain. As if to finish off the scar above it, the strike immediately left me blinded. Shades of red reflected in my good eye as thick blood leaked down my face. I knew from that moment on I’d never be the same.
With one more sweep of my sword, I dealt the fatal blow to the captain of the Spanish ship. Through muscle and bone my blade cut deep, slicing through to his spine as I drove the weapon all the way in and out his back. I watched him slide off the sword and hit the deck as the light left his astonished eyes. It was a quick, clean kill.
But there was nothing clean about the way my soul felt. And for the first time, I didn’t care. So I plummeted myself further into the grime as I dropped to my knees beside the captain’s lifeless body. And I drove my sword into him again and again, fresh blood spraying over me like raindrops with each strike, mixing with the crimson still running down my face. Something had taken hold that I couldn’t manage to stop. And when I thought of being stuck here again in this God-forsaken place and time, I stabbed harder and faster, until the man’s midsection was no more than a bloody pulp.
And then I glanced at the Widow, where Bellamy stood at the stern, overlooking this disaster on the seas. He’d seen everything. He’d seen the trident and Katrina disappearing and my rampage. It was more than apparent by the solemn but baffled expression he wore as his ship positioned itself to sail away.
