Page 52 of Cursebreaker

The crew follows suit, covering their ears, their teeth gritted, jaws set, eyes shut tight against the pain and effort it must have taken them all to fight the pull of the song. All but two of us resist.

Charlie stumbles a step toward the starboard side, his eyes glazed, and Henry, who had lifted Annie’s hands to cover her ears first, rises slowly, his head tilted, face slack, before sprinting toward the port taffrail.

I feel as if I’m being torn apart. I can’t lose either of them. But I can’t save them both.

Two things happen at once. Gabriel tackles Henry, wrestling him to the deck. But Charlie jumps.

I scream, lurching toward the starboard taffrail, but Owen is faster than me. He’s already there, diving headfirst after Charlie. And before I can take another step, Titus throws his arms around me, crushing me close to his chest.

His arms go limp, releasing me almost instantly, and then he turns, too, as if to make for the taffrail. A swift elbow from Rook knocks him unconscious, and he slumps to the deck like a dead fish.

“We have to fight them!” Rook screams, but I read his lips. He motions with his elbow to the sky, and I finally see them—women with bodies like birds, swooping down into the water and back into the sky, their sea-green feathers shimmering like scales in the moonlight.

Blood pounds in my ears. “How?”

Rook thinks for a moment. Then his eyes light up.

I watch, helplessly, as he removes his hands from his ears. I scream at him to stop, but he doesn’t listen. With a flourish, he takes hold of his fiddle, propped against a nearby crate, and begins to play.

The oppressive weight of the sirens’ song immediately relents. Cautiously, I lower my hands. Rook’s merry tune is met with the bloodcurdling shrieks of the sirens. They dive toward the main deck, as swift as bullets, but my crew and I have already drawn our weapons.

Henry and Gabriel are back on their feet; Gabriel throws down a ladder as Henry nocks an arrow in his bow, aimed at the sea, where Charlie and Owen struggle to break free from a siren’s talons.

Henry misses. Curses. Nocks another arrow.

Charlie disappears under the water. But when the siren surfaces, attempting to grab hold of Owen, so does Charlie, and instead of fighting to get away from the Myth, my brothers grab hold of her. She hisses, throwing her head back in victorious laughter. “Fools!”

Owen shouts, “Now, Henry!”

This time, Henry’s arrow pierces the siren between the eyes.

I stagger toward them, ready to help Gabriel and Henry pull my brothers up and onto the ship, but a flash of bluish green stops me cold.

A siren swoops low, talons outstretched, aiming for Titus.

I get there first. But I’m not fast enough to raise my daggers, blocking her strike. She lashes out, her talons raking across my face in a brutal slash, and my vision goes white.

I taste blood. I’m blinded by it, until all I see is red.

But I don’t surrender to the pain. I lift my blades. I spit blood. I blink away the brilliant light that clouds my vision. And when the siren strikes again, believing she’s already won this fight, I spin, letting my arms fall loose, feeling the weight of my blades in my grasp, sure and steady and powerful.

My daggers glow with heavenly golden light, and the siren’s body drops to the deck with a dull thud.

Her head lands at Rook’s feet.

Lewis and Eliza, who stand at Rook’s defense, both share a look before Lewis drives his blade through the siren’s open mouth. Owen was the one who told us stories about the sirens—about how there were rumors they could still sing even after they’re beheaded. It doesn’t seem like Lewis is taking any chances.

The final siren’s beady eyes, like two wells of ink, find me as she flaps her wings, rising higher into the air. “I will not die like my sisters,” she says, her voice hoarse. “The bounty on your head is not worth my life.”

“Bounty?” I ask, panting for breath. “What bounty?”

“General Azeron has offered something of great value in exchange for your capture.” She cackles, raising the hair on the back of my neck. “You cannot hide, little princess. They’re coming for you.”

She disappears, lost to the fog as we approach the border of the Dire. A single spear of lightning illuminates the shelf of black clouds, the siren’s silhouette there and gone in a flash.

But I don’t have time to think about her warning, about Will or his bounty.

I turn my attention to the rest of the crew, ensuring they’re all accounted for. Henry hugs Annie close; Lewis and Eliza share a kiss; Margaret and Jack embrace. Charlie and Owen sit shoulder to shoulder against the taffrail, their clothes soaked, hair dripping wet, laughing uncontrollably. Full, rich belly-laughter that causes them to wheeze and grasp at their chests. And for an instant, I think I might go to my brothers, but the sight of Titus coming awake gives me pause. Rook and Diana tend to him, teasing him about missing all the fun even though he doesn’t seem coherent enough to understand.