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CHAPTERONE
LIRA
The weightof the blade strapped to my ankle burned against my flesh. I licked my lips and brushed my sweaty palms against the lace of my dress. No more time for hesitations. This was finally my chance for freedom.
I took a step forward and frowned at my pearl-lined slippers. They looked dreadful pressed against ebony dirt instead of the polished wood floors the cobbler had meant for them to trod upon. I suppose it didn’t matter because he also hadn’t crafted them for a soon-to-be-murderess, but here they were.
Music from the show buzzed through the air.
Mediocre.
Not that the sirens in our group could truly unleash their talents.
It would probably kill the entire population of this abysmal town.
And it would definitely draw the attention our troupe avoided.
Night had fallen, and stars danced across the sky in the distance. Half the moon peeked behind scrambling tree limbs. In a few weeks the blood moon would appear, then the monsoons would come. Our slow time. This was one of our last performances of the season. The makeshift stage we’d crafted the previous day glowed in lantern light with a crowd huddled around it utterly entranced. The sirens in our group were careful to only use a wisp of their powers, of course. Fae would be drawn towards us if we left too much of a trace of magic. Then someone might find out that our troupe was more than a traveling music show—that we lived illegally among humans, feeding off them. That would cause trouble, and the only one allowed to cause trouble was my mother.
My nose wrinkled at that. I could feel her watching me from behind the tarps that covered the backstage, waiting to see if I’d follow through. I took another step over the muck and hissed as mud smeared the silk of my slipper. A note peeled past my lips, and ice crawled over the ground in lacy patterns. Shit.
I looked back over my shoulder. Mother’s pale blue eyes tightened, deepening the wrinkles over her fair skin, but she didn’t march towards me, snatch my wrist, or growl through her teeth,you’re not a fledgling anymore, Lirasei. You should have better control over your powers by now.So she must not have seen my slip with the ice.
Loose ends are trouble, I could hear her saying, and I shivered.
I shifted back towards the throng. Crowds in small farming villages always had a strong smell to them—hay and sweat and sour milk and the charcoal-tang of fires mingled with the earthy smell of animals. A handful of men pressed close to the edge of the stage beneath the draping branches of an oak tree. Their eyes widened as they watched Margo sweep across the stage, her velvet gown rippling behind her. Easy targets. The one's Mother might go for.
I scoffed. I wanted her to believe my choice, but I wouldn’t go that low. Tonight, I would finally be brave rather than the weak and trembling Lira some others in our group whispered about.Are you sure she’s Palaria’s daughter? Could there have been a mix-up?
I wished their gossip was true.
The magic grew in me like a tumor. It strengthened by the day and made it clear I was the daughter of Palaria, even if I’d proved a disappointment. It showed I was the only one with her blood and therefore the only one who could take her weakening magic without diluting it. Unfortunately, sirens could only birth one child and always a daughter. I was Palaria’s sole heiress.
I brushed my thumb over my arm where Mother had inked a mark of magic that designated me as her inheritor. These cruel powers were not something I wanted, though. I didn’t want to lead this vile troupe. All I wanted was out. Margo’s voice rang around, and the audience released a breath along with her. I wasted time. I jerked my sleeve down and stepped towards the crowd.
The plan was a simple one. Get pregnant. Hand my only child over to Mother so she could raise her to become the heiress she always wanted. And then I had to end the life of the man I chose tonight.
That was the cost of my freedom.
Cruel but fitting for a siren.
If I were braver, I would have killed Mother and seen if the dark magic of our family went with her. A hundred opportunities had presented themselves in the previous year, but something always stalled me. I couldn’t bear to do it. I was weak, a liability, and prone to hesitation over action. Mother had reminded me of this so much that it felt like a note nested in my mind—a song I could play at any moment.
Not tonight, though. It was time for me to make my own destiny.
I weaved between the people who clapped and cheered, the coarse fabric of their wool skirts brushing against the backs of my hands as I pushed into the midst of the group. Once I’d believed sirens were, if not good, at least neutral. I thought sirens were basically humans who happened to have powers in our song. We were nothing like the manipulative and cruel fairies that terrified people.
Then I’d returned from the human boarding school where I’d spent my formative years, and Mother had quickly disabused me of that notion. Sirens, it turned out, were every bit as wicked and malicious as fairies.
Margo’s voice rippled on the wind, and I shifted in her direction. If I finally got free of the group, I abandoned her as well. I wasn’t friends with many in our group. But Margo had embraced me when I’d returned five years before. She was the only friend I had here. I gave my head a shake to knock that thought out. She’d be fine. This was the life she wanted.
Margo loved it all—the rich fabrics of the dresses, the rotating crowds and lovers that she found in them. She adored waking up in some mud-flecked town only to spend the day traveling and then falling asleep in the bustle of a massive urban center later the same day. In her spare time, she even hummed the songs we all knew so well they sent a shiver of revulsion down me every performance.
This wasn’t the life for me, though.
I returned my attention to the crowd. I needed to choose someone passing through town, someone whose absence others wouldn’t notice.
A couple stood near the back of the audience against a horse and wagon. The man was tall with a rash of ruddy hair. I would go for him, but of all the immoral, wicked things I’d contemplated doing, stealing a committed person wasn’t one of them, and I didn’t plan to change that.
