The captain took a deep, uneasy breath. She glanced down once more at the dark stain of blood. “If a Siren is on board, wax is required for all sailors, so they aren’t affected by their song. Butseeing as you are the Goddess’s daughter, I expect wax will do little to keep them safe from your silent lure?”
My mouth went dry at the mere thought of my power. At how tangled and dangerous it had become. “No,” I managed. “It won’t.”
“I’ll need your word, then,” the captain said, holding my gaze.
“My word?” The wind sliced, pushing salt mist up my nose, setting my power strumming through my middle.
“If I let you remain on this ship, Your Majesty, then we are all at risk. I am entrusting the safety of every crew member and soldier into your hands. The Goddess could be a terror, but she was precise in the execution of her power. Are you like your mother?”
My entire body stung from the onslaught of shame and worry, from the responsibility she was asking me to bear. Dark, sticky blood stained my vision. TheHercule’s captain’s death screams echoed in my ears. I knew nothing at all of my mother, and my power was anything but precise. I was certain, too, that Eusia would relish an offering as grand as an entire warship of Varian bodies. But despite all that, I opened my mouth and said, “I am.”
The captain gave me an approving nod. “Then welcome aboard.”
The cannon fire grew louder. The ship rolled and dipped over the striated sea. I raced toward the bow for a better view. The Serafi and Varian ships had formed two rows, sides of the ships facing one another. Blooms of white smoke exploded between them. The whistles and cracks of cannonballs bunched my muscles. I could not stop one with my power, and the ships floated so close to one another that I had no idea how I might sink the Serafis without pulling the Varians to the seafloor too.
The wind was rough and dragged hair loose from my braid. I firmed my stance, despite how I felt like I was tipping. The captain’s voice rang out behind me. “Trim that sail. Cannons at the ready.” The ship was pulling up alongside the sixth Serafi vessel.She gave me an authoritative nod. “Whenever you’re ready, Your Majesty.”
I stared out at the Serafi ship, taking in the black leather armor I knew so well. My fear felt like fingers curling around my throat, stifling my breaths. Across the narrow strip of water, I spotted the Serafi captain, foreboding in his dark helmet. For a moment, I thought of Evander.
I pictured his face, stretched with disgust as he beheld me. I pictured Nemea’s throne room and my mother’s wing on the wall. I pictured the words below it carved proudly into the marble.
THE MONSTER IS ALWAYS SLAIN.
Black, burning power ruptured through my chest at the memories. I wanted the Serafi crew to freeze, and a wave of lures shot from me, spanning the space between our ship and theirs. My throat burned and I grew cold, like I’d been sliced at the neck and left to bleed dry, but at once, every sailor, every crew member, fell still.
The Varian captain’s voice boomed. “Fire!”
My ears ached from the cracking of gunpowder, but I stood unmoving. I watched as the Serafi ship suffered our assault. Cannonballs split through its side, wood splintered, and clouds of dust climbed high into the salt air. But it was the way the Serafi crew and soldiers slowly began to move that had me most transfixed. One unnatural step at a time, they began to walk toward the ship’s bulwark and climb over its rail to jump, one by one, into the sea below. I’d not ordered them to do it. I’d only intended to make them freeze. As their ship crumbled, as the sails ripped and the masts snapped, I watched the way their mouths moved in perfect unison.
With all of them speaking as one, I could just make out the words.
I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me. Cleanse the sea.
“No.” Eusia was ravenous. Since her creation she had starved for power, for recognition in the shadow of her sister. For years and years, she’d sought a way to fuel her insatiable magic. And now, she’d found a way to keep herself fed.
Me.
My mind sat in a grief-stricken fog by the time we came alongside the next Serafi vessel. It was badly damaged already; massive holes had been blown through its upper hull, but it took on no water.
The captain patted my shoulder proudly, nostalgia and pride deepening lines around her eyes. “Once more, shall we?” she said, inclining her chin toward the Serafis.
I nodded absently. “Of course.” I gripped the ship’s rail, resigned to the awful reality of it all. There was no way to keep Varya and its people safe without giving Eusia the bodies she so yearned for. I focused once more on that sickening, oily power in my middle when I realized what ship sat before me.
It was Seraf’s flagship. I recognized the squared-off stern, the four tall masts. The fanged eel painted on its largest sail. It had been Evander’s ship, and decades ago, when Nemea had been a seafaring king, it had been his. He had pushed it to the farthest edges of the world, to every island, and the northern continent too. There were stories of the haunting collection of Siren bones that decayed in its hull, of the Sirens who had been tied to its masts, left to blister in the sun for days on end.
The fabled ship belonged at the bottom of the sea. The cannon smoke was thick and white, stinging my eyes. I pulled myself aboveit to cling to the ropes and scanned the flagship. My heart crushed as I let the lures build within me, as I set my intention on the vast crew, but I clamped down on them all when I saw a flash of gold through the lingering smoke.
I froze as I made out the shape of that old, crenellated crown. It was Nemea.Here.He had not been on a ship in nearly thirty years. He’d refused, keeping himself safe from all its threats by remaining cloistered in his mountain fort.
His unfeeling gaze seemed to sense me through the smoke. A dark apparition, he stood in the middle of the deck, wearing worn, ill-fitting black armor. Those stabbing gray eyes locked with mine.
My mind couldn’t process the sight of him. On a ship. In Varian waters. I was supposed to go to him. Rohana had told me as much. Eusia had taunted me with it, pointing mehome, home, home.
Power swirled through me, surging like a storm, but I held it in. I pulled at the buttons over my spine and ripped them open, one by one. The captain’s order to fire sliced the air. Cannonballs flew from both ships. One of the Serafi volleys cracked through the bulwark to the side of me and I shielded myself from the splintering wood, but I felt the sharp pieces pierce my flesh. My cheek, my neck, my arm, burned from the stuck shrapnel.
I fought to keep my mind clear, then set my intention on the water and ordered a deep current to slice between our ship and Nemea’s. In two beats, the Serafi ship careened, forcing their cannon aim to skew.
“What the hell are you doing?” the captain yelled to me as I pulled the back of my tunic even wider. “Freeze them! Lure them into the water!”
