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We keep backing up as bodies pile up in front of us. The sounds of metal striking rock continue to pound at our backs.
“I will concede that I do feel more alive when I think I’m about to die,” he says.
“You’re not going to die,” I tell him.
That’s when one of them jumps me. I’d been fighting one cannibal, and the next one, instead of waiting his turn, launcheshimself over the first and flattens me onto my back as my sword goes flying from my hand.
The impact would have been painful enough without the bones on the ground digging into me. Sharklike teeth bite into my shoulder, and I let out my own sort of growl. I reach my left hand up around the cannibal’s throat, squeezing and pushing those needles out of my skin. They’ve been filed down to points! They’re gnashing, eager to pierce into my skin once more. His breath is rancid. I have to choke down my last meal.
Riden is busy blocking the tunnel by himself now while I grasp around frantically for my sword. Eventually my hand finds something hard and heavy. A human femur, I think. I bring it down on the cannibal’s head, which knocks him out instantly.
I push and wiggle to get the dead weight off of me. Two seconds later I have my sword in hand again. I kill the man I’d just rendered unconscious—I don’t want him waking up ever again—while Riden holds off the rest.
I’m bleeding now, and the cannibals become even more frenzied by it. Apparently their own bleeding companions lying around the cave floors have no allure for them. It is only the unenchanted sailors unfortunate enough to land on this island that whet their appetites.
One morechinkand I hear rocks cascading behind me. Light bursts through the tunnel, temporarily blinding the cannibals in front of us.
“Run!” I shout again.
The light burns my eyes as I turn, and I run blindly at first, tripping over the rocks and forest floor. But I don’t stop. My breath makes my raw throat ache, but I ignore the pain. I can only imagine how everyone else must be feeling ifI’mgetting tired.
They are only yards behind us. Deshel is slowed down by the body she carries, but no words would convince her to drop it. Nor would I dream of doing so. To not be buried at sea is to be damned for eternity, never finding rest with the stars.
Deros and I reach the beach first. Our strides never falter as we shove our strength into the single rowboat left for us, plunging it into the ocean. The others tumble in, and we are finally drifting off toward the ship. Toward safety.
The cannibals wade into the water. Deros and I row with every bit of strength we have left. But as soon as the cannibals get in over their heads, they falter, scrambling for purchase on the sand below, swallowing water—drowning.
They forgot how to be men long ago.
***
“What happened?” Niridia asks when we finally drag ourselves back onto the ship. “What beasts did this?” She stares in open horror at Lotiya’s body.
“Men,” Sorinda answers.
“Not just men,” I say. “Bewitched men. They were pirates once. Men from my father’s own crew.”
“How is that possible?” Niridia asks.
“On his first voyage here, my father claimed they were set upon by sirens, but not all of his men made it off the island. Itwould seem that those left for dead were enchanted to guard this place and feast on any who stopped on their way to the Isla de Canta.”
“How do you know they were your father’s men?” Riden asks. He stands near Deshel, who hasn’t yet dropped Lotiya’s body.
“Some of them bore Kalligan’s mark. My father’s men distinguish themselves by drawing the letterKon their foreheads. Years ago, those who wished to truly prove their loyalty would carve it into their flesh, letting the skin scar. Father’s mostly done away with that, since it makes it difficult to hide them in a crowd or to send them out as spies.”
“Just a moment,” Enwen pipes up. “You’re telling me you can bewitch men into cannibals?”
“No. I am merely half siren, and my abilities last only as long as I have song to fill a man’s ears. As soon as my song fades, the enchantment ends. It would seem that full sirens are much more powerful than I.”
Enwen sticks out his tongue in disgust, as though imagining his own life as a cannibal. Everyone else is silent as they take the new information in.
Deshel breaks it as she lets out a single laugh, one without any humor in it. “We risked our lives to save a siren. Who then left us to be hunted down by the king. And now we were almost eaten alive because of that siren’s enchantments from long ago.” Her gaze cuts to me like a knife. “I hope you feel her life was worth my sister’s.” She sets the body down.
A new kind of silence fills the ship, that of held breaths.
I’m already running at her. I have a fistful of her shirt in my hands as I slam her into the ship’s railing and tilt her backward, so most of her weight is teetering off the side, held up only by my arms.
That kind of talk is tilting toward mutiny, and I won’t have it. “Lotiya was family to me, not in the way she was to you, but still in all the ways that mattered.”
