Even blunted by the nepenthe, my anger crackled. “Lachlan.He won’t see me. He won’t know I’m unwell. It’s the only way to keep him safe. It’s the only way to ensure that neither of us diverges from our duties. Do you understand?”
He glared, twisting his neck until it cracked, but finally he gave me a reluctant nod. We’d cleared the maze of docked ships and passed the few that were anchored in the shallow water of the bay. Lachlan lifted the oars. “You ready to help me?”
I blew out a long breath, recalling every sailor and soldier that Eusia had pulled into the sea with my power. It had felt like myblood was draining from my body when she’d taken hold of my lure, but I refused to be corruptible to the point of useless.
Eusia’s power came fromme,after all.
I firmed my jaw and set my awareness to the sea. The drop-off beneath us turned the already deep water fathomless. I could sense the nekgya suspended within it, hanging as if from a line, waiting for me to reel them up with a thought. A misty gust rolled over my skin, and I closed my eyes to focus beyond them. I sent a command to the sea.
Far below, a current curled and rose to meet us, surging our little boat forward. Lachlan pulled the oars in and let them clatter at our feet.
Theodore’s ship sat upon the horizon. A dark little dot on the line between the sea and sky. The blue bled into a glowing orange, and thin wisps of fog were beginning to draw over the water’s pleated surface.
Lachlan gave an anxious grunt. “How fast can you go?”
“This fast,” I snapped. We moved across the water at a fair speed, but my energy drained from me as quickly as wine from a crack in its urn. I fisted my hands to hide how they shook. “Besides, it’s wiser to take our time and approach under the cover of night.”
Lachlan sat quietly and undid the straps of his breastplate before stretching out his arms. “If you won’t see Theo, then the ship’s healer will take care of your stab wound. You’ll drop dead if you go untreated, and I’m not storming this proverbial castle alone.”
I gritted my teeth. “I won’t die. Nepenthe will do just fine.”
The fog had rolled in like a conspirator, slowing Theodore’s ship to a safer pace and blocking us from being too easily spotted. We were drawing closer now, just as the day was nearly gone, and just as my entire body felt ready to rip in two. I stared up at the massiveroyal warship, burnished in the gloaming light, as Lachlan grumbled a curse about my stubbornness.
Green-and-gold flags depicting Varya’s sigil of a vine-wrapped hand snapped proudly at the top of each of its three towering masts. I’d never realized just how imposing the ship was. It was a true giant, with three levels of gunports beneath its main deck. On the aft of the ship, high above us, hung its intricately carved nameboard. The golden letters were cradled in a lovely depiction of braided vines and bright white blooms.
TheEleuthios.
Agatha would be proud that I remembered its meaning. Named for the Leucosian tenet of the right to personal freedom and self-determination. The right to choose for oneself.
Night fell quickly, and I still used my power to fight the rolling of the ship’s wake and keep us apace, but my vision was growing black holes at its edges and my muscles shook. “Lach,” I said, my voice worn thin. “I can’t…”
“We’re almost there. Bring us to the bow.” He loosened a long length of rope from its coil and tied it to a hulking fishing hook. “There’s lower hanging netting under the bowsprit there. I’ll hook this in, climb up, and throw you down a ladder.”
Shaking and riddled with pain, I somehow managed to bring us to the port side of the bow. Lachlan took a wide-legged stance and began swinging the heavy hook around his head. He threw it up toward the sagging net above us, only for it to miss and plummet to the water with a splash.
“Fuck.” Lachlan towed it back up, fighting the rocking of both vessels, and began swinging it again. This time the little boat pitched steeply, and he stumbled to his knees. “Imogen,help.”
But I could barely keep myself upright, let alone focus enough to command the water around us to calm. My blood felt like it hadgrown thick and cold, my bones heavy as lead weights. I watched Lachlan fight to stand, teeth bared. He muffled a growl as he prepared to throw the hook once more. His desperation brightened my dimming vision like a spark. It pulled me straight and set my jaw.
I wasn’t certain I would make it, but I’d get Lachlan on that Godsdamned ship if it was the last thing I did. I’d get him to Agatha.
In half a thought I sent the command, and almost instantly, I sensed them moving through the water. They came from the shallows, surging toward us, until our little boat tilted and tipped from the way they clung to its edges. Some of the nekgya’s talons were broken or missing, some of their fingers had gone scaled or soft with decay, but they climbed aboard with ease. Three of them came, their bodies jerking yet quick.
For a moment, I watched them through the dark as a mix of awe and shame swarmed me. Eusia had hunted and killed these Sirens, tearing their wings from their backs, making them into undead minions with my ancestral power. They deserved rest, but while Eusia and I were still bound, and they obeyed me, I would use them. No matter how it twisted my stomach.
Lachlan hadn’t yet noticed them. His focus had been set on the net and the hook, which he threw once more. This time it caught beneath the bowsprit but before he could begin to haul himself up, a nekgya was there, taking the rope into her mottled hands.
He yelped and fell back to the bench, where he watched, still and stunned. I wondered how long this nekgya had been dead as her bruised and decaying body climbed the rope with effortless stealth. The other two followed. One had ink-dark hair that was still in the semblance of a long, intricate braid. I could make out little shells thoughtfully strung through it, and my throat clamped tight.
The three of them crawled over the bowsprit’s netting likespiders over their webs until they disappeared onto the deck of the forecastle. I’d commanded them to assist us onto the ship, but I’d not ordered them to be covert, nor speedy. To my shock, I hadn’t needed to.
A breath later, their death-pale bodies returned to the netting and a long rope ladder unfurled above Lachlan and me. Then the three nekgya dove back into the sea, hands knifing through the rough surface, without making a noise. I hissed in a pained breath as I moved toward the ladder, but Lachlan hadn’t budged. His mouth gaped as he stared up at me from where he sat.
The lines of his body were rigid. I could see the disarm, the horror, the question he wrestled with carved into the planes of his face. It was the same question that echoed through my own head.
Dear Gods, what have I become?
5
