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Jacques rolled his eyes and gave a wave with the back of his hand. Adrian leaned into my ear, his soft musk tickling my nose as his breath fanned against my skin.
“Even if you don’t remember me fondly,” he whispered, “at least remember how warm it felt sleeping next to me.”
He leaned back, a proud smile on his lips just before the sirens tugged him away to the middle of the court. I wanted to follow, but Jacques raised his hand up to stop me.
“You’re staying with me during the trials,” he commanded. “No more running off.”
“You’re not part of the trial?”
He shook his head sharply. “I judge sirens. The sirens judge humans. I get a break this time around.”
He pulled me into the rows of seats with the other sirens that had come to watch. I scanned behind me, looking for Luc. He was a few rows back, his eyes narrowed, completely focused on the lake in front of him.
I didn’t have to read his soul to know that he was waiting for Adrian’s death.
“Did you say your goodbyes?” Jacques asked, nonchalant.
I sighed. “I tried. Adrian accepted my goodbye. Henrik refused to speak to me at all.”
King Melchior came through the doors, Vito and Hugo beside him. Everyone in the stands stood as the king walked in, and we all bowed as he went to his throne. He stared at the human crew in front of him, nodding to the sirens standing on the lake.
“Your souls will be judged today,” the king said to the crew. “Should they be true and pure, you will return to your homes with no recollection of this place. Should your souls be cursed and evil, you will be sentenced to the afterlife.”
To this, Henrik gave a twisted laugh.
“You think you really have the power to get rid of us all, Your Majesty?” Henrik asked. “There isn’t a king alive that can’t be dethroned.”
King Melchior paused at this, then turned his head away as if he hadn’t heard it.
“You may begin,” he told the sirens.
The sirens held up their knives, ready to cut their skin. Jacques laughed beside me.
“I thought the first mate was the honorable one?” he asked me, scratching his chin. “It seems like the fool wants to burn in hell.”
“I don’t understand why he’s like this,” I said. “He’s never been so angry or twisted. It seems like the closer we got the Eros, the worse he became.”
The sirens cut the men’s hands, the blood dripping into the water. Jacques stiffened.
“Wait…” he said, spinning to me. “You said he was an astrologer, didn’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right…”
“Shit.”
Jacques jumped from his seat and ran forward, just as the throne split in two. The red light burst through the cracks.
The light of the Eros.
There was a high-pitched wail, something gut-ripping and inhumane, and it took me a moment to realize that Henrik was the one to make the sound. He ripped from the sirens and sprinted toward the light. Jacques knocked him to the ground before he could make it. Teal snakes burst out of the lake as they had the day of our own trial, and the crew screamed in terror right before a majority disappeared in bright explosions.
The guilty. The guilty had been sent to the afterlife.
As my eyes cleared from the light of the explosion, I saw that the teal snakes had wrapped around Henrik completely, sealing him closed like a caterpillar in a cocoon. Another one of the Judges and a few sirens had gathered around him, holding him to the ground as a bright light swarmed him.
Before I could even breathe out, the light that was supposed to sentence him to death turned black, blazing like dark fire around his body. His eyes turned yellow as he made the high-pitched wail once more. The sound was so terrifying that I fell out of my seat onto my knees.
What was happening?
