The sirens’ song crescendos to a scream, a warning. Something is coming. Something is wrong. I can’t lose her. Not now. Not when we’re this close. She has to make it to the fountain. We have to make it there,alive.
My head splits open like a lightning strike, pain radiating down my arm, causing my hand to seize up. The sirens' voices drill into my skull, a thousand serrated knives behind my eyes. But I don’t look away. I keep my gaze locked on the bastard pinning me down. I struggle to lift myself up.
He slams me against the deck with all his monstrous weight, bone-crushing and brutal. His face hovers inches from mine, shark-like teeth jagged and dripping with spit, a beast ready to rip me apart.
Deep in my chest, my magic stirs. It pulses through my veins, an ancient thrum, igniting my fingertips with fire. My wrists are pinned, but the energy crackles beneath my skin, building, swelling, demanding to be unleashed. I don’t need a spell. I don’t need a sacrifice. I just need anger.
I summon every ounce of fury inside me, every betrayal, every scream I never let out, and pour it into him. The shift in the air is instant. He freezes, eyes wide. He feels it, feels me.
The temperature spikes violently. My rage becomes heat andpower. He grunts, confused and panicked, as the force under his hands begins to burn him alive. His grip falters and his skin blisters. Steam hisses between us. I push harder.
I make him feel every ache I’ve ever carried, every time I was left behind, every drop of blood spilled in my name. I flood him with the fire of my grief, my anger, my truth, of me needing to get toher. He twitches, muscles spasming under the weight of something he can’t fight.
His guttural scream tears through the air. My power erupts from my chest like a tidal wave of heat and light.
“You’re a fucking warlock,” he spits in disbelief and pain. Then comes the crack, a violent, sickening snap that splits the air like lightning. He convulses, his limbs jerking uncontrollably as the power I’ve unleashed tears through him. His body can’t hold it. With one final shudder, he collapses in a smoking heap on the bloody deck.
The air is thick with the stench of scorched flesh and iron. The storm howls around us, the clouds recoiling from what I’ve become. I stand over him, chest heaving, breath ragged. I behead him for good measure. My hands still glow faintly with the aftershock of the magic that had scorched him from the inside out. I tasted what was buried deep inside me, and it was terrifying. Addictive. My fury burned him alive. If this is just a fraction of what I’m to become, I’m ready to take it all now.
I grab my sword from the deck. My focus narrows to Mira. Her heartbeat pounds in my ears like war drums, my compass in the chaos. She’s holding her own, two cutlasses flashing, steel clashing in an X to block a strike. But then, Varn kicks her legs out from under her. She hits the deck hard, and before I can take another step, Varn’s hand connects with her face. The crack echoes. She crumples. My heart stops.
He leans over her, muttering something I can’t hear. She doesn’t respond. Her heartbeat slows like she’s slipping under, leaving me.
I run. Jay appears out of nowhere, moving fast. His blade sinks into Varn’s back, a clean, brutal strike, but it does nothing. I knew it wouldn't. Varn is too strong. Only a beheading could temporarily take him down, but Jay knew that too. He knew, and still he went for it.
It’s the distraction I need to get to her. Varn turns slowly, almost mockingly, and drives his sword straight through Jay’sstomach, swift and fast. Lifts him. Holds him there, high, like a trophy. My body stops moving, but everything inside me breaks. My lungs seize, the air ripped from me before I can even scream. My oldest friend, my right hand. His blood runs down Varn’s sword, coating his arm like a badge of pride.
Jay’s eyes find mine, just for a second. Then they don’t. His body goes limp. And I can’t breathe.
I watch his body crumple, then fall, rolling down the steps like he was nothing, like he’s just another casualty of war. He lands at my feet with a sickening thud. The blood still pouring from him now stains every step I’ve ever climbed to meet him. Steps we used to walk together, leading to the helm, his sanctuary on this ship.
I look down at him. His eyes are empty, his soul is gone, and his blood paints the path I have to take to get to her. I step over him, my heart a battlefield of agony and vengeance. Varn just made the biggest mistake of his life.
I lift my gaze to Varn. He turns and sees me.
The ship lurches violently beneath me, but I don’t stop. I move faster, eyes locked on the quarterdeck. The sky is a blackened void, the wind screaming. The ship tilts further into the whirlpool’s pull, dragging us into a mouth that wants to swallow us whole. The world is spinning. Everything is unraveling, but I don’t care. The sirens fall silent. In the space they leave behind, the world goes still.
I climb, my heart thundering lungs burning. One more step. One more second. But when I reach the top, my world ends. I freeze. The breath is ripped from my lungs. The sound of the world, gone.
His blade is already through her chest. I freeze.
I can’t feel her heartbeat. The rhythm that’s lived inside me since the day we were tied, gone. Our bond snaps. The thread that always tethered us together tears clean through, leavingbehind only darkness. Veyra’s voice echoes through my mind, cruel now in hindsight: “You protect her heart.” She knew. Gods, she knew.
Mira’s warmth, her fire, is vanishing before my eyes. Something inside me shatters, like glass cracking under a pressure too great to bear. Every ounce of hope I have left drowns in this moment. Her light… my light… is fading. And all that remains is rage. Unforgiving, unrelenting, unstoppable rage.
I fall to my knees. It feels like I’m the one who’s been stabbed. Jay’s blood soaks into the wood beneath me, staining everything it touches. My hands shake. My lungs can’t fill. Still, I rise.
I walk toward her, each step heavier than the last. I need to see what he’s done to her with my own eyes. Ineedto hold her.
She slides off his blade. Her body hits the floor with a sickening thud, limp, lifeless, in a pool of her own blood. It soaks into the boards beneath her, spreading in violent red streaks, then darkening. Her blood is changing, turning from crimson to a deep, unnatural black.Siren blood.
I don’t have time to fall apart. I can’t, not yet. My grip tightens around the hilt of my sword, the weight of it suddenly immense, fueled not by duty, but by devastation. I turn, blade raised, and meet Varn’s with a brutal clash. Steel rings out like a violent scream that splits the air. The ship groans beneath us, tilting and crying out like it, too, is mourning her.
Varn has the gall to smile. He has Mira’s blood on his hands. Jay’s still drips from his sword. “You should’ve made me a deal, boy,” he spits, words thick with venom. “You could’ve saved them.” I strike again. His blade meets mine, but I don’t stop.
“You’re the reason she lies dead at your feet,” he hisses, stepping into me, his voice low and cruel. “Her blood is on your hands.” And then he laughs, so twisted, so inhuman that itmakes my vision blur. My pulse thunders in my ears as I look down, just for a second.
Mira is still and silent at my feet. The light in my life, extinguished like a candle in the wind. Anger starts to bubble up inside me, rising. And what rises is a wrath born of grief and blood and ancient magic. Something not entirely human.
