The thought of being “his to protect” set a burrowing fury through the vacant space in my gut—where Theodore’s bond had sat. I had no time to reason with him. I refused to beg his permission. With half a thought, I threw out a silent lure. The captain only gave a shake of his head, then looked up at me with foggy eyes. “What the hell was that?”
My brow knit. The lure hadn’t hooked in. I remembered Lachlan’s letter—the entire crew was Siren-bound and therefore immune to my lure. I jumped down from the rail and blew out a frustrated breath. “I hope you’re prepared to grovel before your king, then, Captain, because I have no plans to remain under your watch.” I skirted around him, but before I reached the gangway, he grabbed the band of my trousers and hauled me back like I was a misbehaving cur on a lead.
I spun, breaking free of his hold, and threw my fist into the edge of his jaw. It was a poor punch, and a driving pain shot through my hand, but he went stumbling backward, groaning and holding his chin, nonetheless.
Heart as loud as the tolling alarm bell, I hurried down the gangplank. When the captain raced down behind me, I threw my arms wide to keep my balance. The man was my height, thinly built, butI was hardly faster than he was. I took a turn on the docks, leaping over the corner where water sloshed up to wet the wood. His boots drummed on the planks, the sound growing louder as he drew steadily nearer. The port had mostly cleared now. Those who remained were naval sailors and soldiers, tending mooring lines before their ships pushed out to battle.
I sent out four lures and praised the bloody Gods when I felt them slice into the sailors before me, taking hold deep in their chests. It had been effortless. My command had hardly formed in my mind before the men obeyed it. Once I raced past them, they made a blockade to bar the captain, tangling him in their arms like an animal in a snare. I ran faster toward the warship, my power suddenly bursting through my chest more intensely than ever, a mass of hot, gurgling sludge.
Two uniformed sailors were loosening the warship’s mooring lines and readying to hurry back up the gangplank. “Wait,” I yelled to them, stalling their progress.
A guttural scream from behind me hitched my strides. I whirled, peering through the windblown strands of my hair, as one of the sailors I’d lured pulled a dagger from their belt. Another wrestled the captain of theHerculeto the docks and set a heavy boot to his shoulder, pinning him as another held his legs.
Panic shot through me like lightning. “Stop.” I’d said the command clearly, I’d thought it with intention, but my lures would not dislodge. That pour of hot sludge continued through me and I gritted my teeth, trying to rein it in. It wasmypower, after all, but the bond I shared with Eusia had changed since the severing ritual. It had strengthened.
My bond with Theodore must have kept her hold on me at bay.
The sailor pinning the captain reared his dagger back, just as the ship’s gangplank ahead of me was being lifted from the dock. “Shit.”I was mere feet away from boarding. “Put it back,” I yelled. “Let me on!”
But the sailors only looked at me with befuddlement and continued hauling the gangplank up.
My attention was too splintered, my terror a buzz in my ears. My entire body was power-riddled, consumed. Possessed. Reluctantly, I sent out new lures, this time to the sailors on the ship, commanding them to return the gangplank to its position. Their faces slackened. Their eyes glazed. As they returned the gangplank, I ran back down the docks, toward where theHercule’s captain fought and shouted.
Two sailors held him down at each shoulder. One sat upon his legs. And the fourth sailor drove his dagger down. I screamed, sending new lures, tugging on the ones that were still hooked through their ribs, but nothing I did knocked them from their task. The dagger sank into the captain’s belly with a sickening, wet thud. His scream shredded the air as I reached the sailor who held the dagger. I extended my talons and sank them into his arm, but the man who sat upon the captain’s knees lunged. He locked an arm around my neck. With all his weight, he brought me down hard onto the docks. I shredded at his arm too, sending his blood pouring down the front of my tunic, but he made no sound, he gave no quarter.
I could only watch as the dagger sawed through the captain’s belly, straight down in a vertical line. From sternum to groin. His entrails bubbled from the gash and spilled to the dock. Blood ran thick and dark through the cracks, it seeped into the waterlogged wood, and still he screamed and screamed and screamed. In a few horror-struck breaths, the captain quieted.
That was when they spoke the prayer. “I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me. Cleanse the sea.” The sailors stood.They used their booted feet to roll the captain’s limp body off the edge of the dock and into the empty slip.
A trembling breath fell through my lips as all the burning power in me began to cool.
Finally, the sailor who held me let me go, and he too walked to the edge of the dock. Blood streamed from his ruined arm, but they all stood blank-faced, watching as shadows passed through the water below them. I rose up to my knees, gaze riveted on the dark streaks cutting through the sea.
The nekgya had come for the body. For the offering. The water frothed and turned pink and then, as if instructed to do so, all four sailors mumbled Eusia’s prayer once more. I held my breath as they stepped off the dock, into the deep, bloodstained water.
I marched up the gangplank, shaking and cold. My tunic was wet with the blood of the sailor who’d held me back, and it clung to my stomach. The bond I shared with Eusia was like a hand slipped inside me. I’d become a puppet, and she the master.
My gaze locked on the sailors at the top of the gangplank. The sailors that my lures were still strung through. Their eyes were glazed, their bodies loose. The thought struck me:They are marionettes at the end of your strings. You are no better than her.
When my boots hit the deck, I released their lures in a rush and waited with bated breath. I waited for praying lips and fisted daggers, but they both shook their heads like they’d awoken from a feverish dream.
One set a hand to his brow like it ached, but both went about their business as they had before. They heaved the gangplank onto the upper deck, and soon the ship cast off into the harbor. It bobbed beneath me, and once its sail caught the wind, it lurched.
“Who are you?” The woman’s voice behind me was rasping and harsh.
I whirled and knew precisely who I faced. There was no doubt, what with her perfectly pressed uniform, her steely eyes, and the abundance of medals pinned to her chest. The warship’s captain. She was reedy and time-hardened, twice as old as all the other soldiers and sailors around us. Her eyes cut down to the bloodstain on the front of my tunic and narrowed further.
My mouth dropped open, my mind blank. I was still dazed from the gutting I’d just witnessed. “I… I’m—” I couldn’t even think of what to call myself. “Captain, I—”
Her fair brow lowered dangerously. “A stowaway, then.”
“No.” I still shook but tried to stand straighter. I tried to imbue my body with the easy command that Theodore always wore like weightless armor. “I’m Imogen Vathia.” All this time I’d been unable to remember Ligea’s inherited name, and now it fell from my mouth as easily as an exhale. She’d beenVathiafor the spirit of the deep water that had helped create her. “Daughter and heiress of the Great Goddess Ligea. I’m here to help you sink those ships.”
The captain’s eyes widened as she studied me. “I knew Ligea. She aided my ship once before, when I was a new captain, many decades past.” She pursed her lips. “You have the look of her.” She scanned her crew as they milled over the deck. “We have rules about Sirens on our ships, Your Majesty,” she finally said.
“And they are?”
A deep thunderous boom rent the air, pulling our attention. The Serafi and Varian ships were close enough to exchange cannon fire, and the first shot appeared to have hit a mast on one of the Varian ships, snapping it in the middle like a branch in a windstorm.
