It was a fight, but I brought the severing draught clamped between my numb fingers toward my lips once more. “Hello, Eusia,” I said in a frail voice.
Her attention shot to the vial in my hand. I thought I saw a spark of worry in her strange eyes. She smiled fully, revealing the same bluish, pointed teeth that Rohana had. “You did not come all this way only to let yourself die, did you?” Her attention roved over me, noting the way I’d curled on my side, the pool of blood that had grown around me. She clicked her tongue. “All that Gods’ blood. What a waste.”
Behind Eusia, Halla gave her head a horror-struck shake. Her face crumpled with crestfallen disbelief. She was so overwrought, I felt certain she’d not even noticed Aleka’s body in the corner, or my wing lying beside me.
Halla spoke in a desperate whisper. “Please. She never let me near you. Mother never let me…” Her words caught on her tears as she rushed to cut a piece of flesh from her arm. The motion was so quick, I’d nearly missed it. “But no longer. I swear to you… I will happily serve you. Never again will she keep me from you.”
Eusia only stared at me, her attention fixed, as if Halla had not spoken at all. “Get into the pool, Imogen,” she said. “I know how badly you wish tolive.The desire for it rages through you like a storm. If you take that draught, you will perish. If you wait any longer to join me, you will die.” She floated toward me, those white ropy veins—just like the ones that had been in the pool on Anthemoessa—helpedraise her out of the water, high enough for me to see the very start of the dark gash down the middle of her torso. “But I can keep you, darling,” she whispered. “I can sustain you.”
“I… I saw how you sustained my… mother.” My voice died in my throat. I’d begun to shake.
I locked gazes with Eusia and was stunned to see such a wealth of emotion upon her face. Even with the wrinkling bags of flesh beneath her pearly eyes, even with the scales, and teeth, and shrunken body—somehow, her feeling made her look sohuman.It was all so clear upon her: Distress. Terror.Want.
I understood. I knew it all so well.
As a girl, I’d done all that I could to survive. Denying myself, lying, hiding. Clipping away the parts of myself that were not acceptable, keeping myself pleasant and unassuming. I hadn’t let myself hope for anything more then, so as not to break my own heart. I’d thought an upbringing like that would have made me impervious to it, but since I’d left Seraf, since I’d met Theodore, hope had snuck through me like water through a tight crack. Even now, when I saw no way out, I felt it pool in me, felt it spread.
For once, I thought I must be feeling as Theodore did. As if it was not madness to want something desperately, despite not knowing how to make it mine.
My words were air. “I do want…” My vision warped for a moment. I pulled the vial closer, until it was just inches from my lips. “I do want… to live. But… not like you have. Not alone, and trapped, and… and empty.”
“Trapped, am I?” Eusia gave a chuckle that echoed through my head. “I am everywhere. I am in your mind, in your blood. I have populated the sea with thousands of Sirens, and I am within them all. I am not alone, Imogen, not when supplicants across thecontinent and through the archipelago offer up their praise and blood to me.” She rose higher above the lip of the pool, unblinking round eyes boring into me. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I was empty once. I waswithout,but through you and with my sister—through magic—I have been filled. You are too new, too inexperienced to understand. You have yearned for power, darling Imogen, for a way to survive, for a way to beat back every threat. You want love and quiet.” Halla inched closer. “I can give it to you. I can take you outside of the confines of your broken body. I offer you stillness, peace. I can give you the adoration and devotion of an entire people. You cannot know the vastness of it, the elation—”
“I do not want that sort of love.”
She flinched, rippling the water in the pool, then came back toward me. The upper part of her body draped over the stones in front of me, water pouring from the opening in her chest. Behind Eusia, Halla crawled closer, staring at her saint with adoration. She lifted a hand to her mouth and whispered fervently, but I could not make out her words.
Eusia’s attention was fixed fully on me. “You want the God-king—his blood,” she said, and her placid voice sounded suddenly tight. “If you get in the pool, you can have him. You can have the blood of every God left in the realm.”
Somehow, despite my pain and the awful cold, I managed to move myself farther away. My remaining wing draped over my body. My hips touched the wall, and my grip tightened further around the severing draught. Pain made me quaver. “Don’t want it… Not like that.”
Eusia’s taloned hands curled, and I knew that if we were not blood-bound, she would have reached for me. She would have slashed at my skin and ripped at my hair, but as it was, she couldnot hurt me. She was powerless to take what she so desperately wanted.
She gave an impotent growl. “Imogen.I can give you dominion over the whole sea.”
I knew torment as well as I knew myself, and it was carved into her. Her horrific face bent with it, her hollow chest curled in from it. I gave her a slow, conquering smile. “It’s already mine.”
I raised the severing draught toward my lips and paused. Above, muffled by the wood and the distance and the blood that screamed in my dulled ears, I could hear new thuds and shouts. But I could not make out the words, could not make out to whom the voices belonged.
Eusia’s head tipped up at the sounds, before her attention shot back to me. “Halla. Dear Halla.” Panic drenched her words. “Bring Imogen to the pool.”
Halla’s face looked strangely ashen. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.” But when she rose to come toward me, she swayed steeply, catching herself against the wall.
Eusia’s head cocked as she watched Halla. White eyes narrowed and her body went preternaturally still. She spoke in a vehement hiss. “Who taught you that death spell, girl?”
Halla froze, leaning fully against the wall. She sucked in a breath. “I didn’t…”
“Do not lie to me. I wrote that spell once. Hundreds of years ago.” Eusia surged from the pool, thick water running down her fused and scaled lower half. “I feel it in the air. Who taught you—”
Halla looked to me and lowered her chin.
“I did.” I tipped the severing draught into my mouth. I fought to swallow it down, gasping as it quickly clogged in my throat.
Eusia screamed. “Imogen,no.”
Shaking, I pushed myself up onto one hip. My head spun, vision flickering. “We are… different, Eusia. I have all the power you’ve ever… craved. But I will give it away… to keep… the realm safe… from you.”
Eusia whirled to Halla. “Halla.Bring herhere.”
