I stick my hand into my jacket, pulling out the poppet as I stride towards the siren.
I drop out of the spirit realm behind her just as her arm lifts to throw the spear.
“I didn’t want to do it this way,” I whisper, against her back. “I gave you an out, remember that.”
Magic flows from Opal to me, and into the doll with a single whispered prayer. I feel the connection as the hair in the poppet forms the magical tether between it and the siren in front of me.
I grab a stubby, badly sewn, cotton arm and snap it backward at an unnatural angle.
Adella screams, dropping her spear like it’s on fire. The noise is awful. So high pitched that I have to resist the urge to drop the poppet and cover my ears.
Her arm is broken, cradled against her chest as she whirls to try and attack me.
I go for a leg next. Watching without mercy as she collapses.
She’s immortal.
She’ll heal.
“Yield,” I demand.
“No!”
She grabs for her spear with her remaining good arm, but Opal transforms before she can lift it. The grey tiger’s teeth snap closed around the siren’s hand, snapping the wooden shaft it holds into a splintered mess.
“If you don’t want to lose your hand, you’ll yield.”
I can feel my grip on the daggers holding her friends in place slipping. I can’t hold them and the doll for much longer.
“Do you have any idea what this mating will do for my family?” she whispers.
“Yield.” I pinch the other leg of the doll between finger and thumb as Opal growls.
She knows as well as I do we have to get this over with. I’m playing a dangerous game. At any moment she could decide to let her voice out to play once more. If she does, I’ll snap the poppet’s neck. I think Adella can sense that because she meets my eyes, fury glinting in her glare.
“Say it, siren. I don’t want to kill you.”
She’s going to make me do it, I realise.
Death by combat is more honourable to these women than a humiliating defeat to an outsider.
She looks beyond me, eyes glazed in pain, then back to me.
Do it, I mentally plead with her.
“I yield.”
No one hears her. Her words are too quiet.
“A little louder,” I mutter, twisting the arm of the poppet to disguise the fact that I’m starting to sweat under the strain of maintaining it.
“I yield!” she screeches.
I drop all my magic at once. The power leaves my sigils in a draining rush as I release my hold on the knives keeping her warriors in place. The poppet tether dissipates as the magic leaves it, and I tuck it slowly back into my jacket.
I’ll destroy it safely later, but Adella doesn’t need to know that. Let her believe I can snap her neck at any moment.
Opal is more reluctant to release the siren. It takes her a few moments for her to unclench her jaw, revealing Adella’s bleeding, but otherwise whole, wrist.
