Yet still, Niya felt a slip of uncertainty. What will it be like to dance without constraint?
“Follow my lead,” Arabessa whispered beside Niya, her form unmoving as she held tight the neck of her cello. Larkyra stood on her other side. None but they would be able to tell she was speaking. “Do not doubt the right of this wrong, sisters. Our king guides us true.”
The floating chandeliers dimmed, save for one right above where the Mousai stood and Valexa knelt. Achak slipped away into shadows to stand with the others.
Niya met the gazes of each of her sisters through their masks, seeing the resolve in Arabessa’s eyes, the trepidation in Larkyra’s. She understood why Larkyra would be nervous.
While this would be Arabessa’s and Niya’s first kill, Larkyra had suffered endless hardship with taming her gifted voice since birth. An upset wail from her had unintentionally harmed many. Niya and Arabessa certainly had the scars, as well as a buried cat, as proof. Larkyra had only recently learned to master her voice’s immense destructive power, which made Niya wonder why she would be asked so soon to let it out again. But while Niya could question her father, she could not doubt her king. His reasoning for things ran deeper than their Jabari lives or even this caved kingdom.
For a moment Niya and her sisters did not move but held each other’s stares. We are one, the energy around them seemed to say. We are forever bound by what happens next.
With a collective deep breath in, they began their performance.
A melodic note from Arabessa’s cello had Niya twisting softly to the tune. Her eldest sister sat to her right, her arm and fingers fluidly moving to bring forth a song that spun its way into Niya’s bones. It was a haunting tune, deep and drugging. It started simple, but Arabessa soon used her powers to double and then triple the notes, layering one on top of another.
Niya’s hips swayed before she turned her body over completely to the swirling tempo. She felt her skin warm, as if it glowed from the fire in her blood, and perhaps it did, but Niya’s thoughts had turned inward, to the whispering of her powers.
Bewitch them, spin them, draw them in. Their souls are weak for you to win.
Niya closed her eyes under her disguise, allowing her limbs to move as desired. Larkyra’s voice joined in, elevating the vibrations in the room to edge insanity.
Though she had heard it many times, Larkyra’s singing still devastated Niya. So beautifully inhuman were the notes flowing from her mouth that they made one instantly desperate, hungry. As if the listener knew such sound had left with the gods and this moment would be fleeting.
Arabessa’s song picked up speed, as did Larkyra’s. Sweat ran along Niya’s brow as she wove between their magic, bending and twirling through the purple and golden threads, adding her own red to dazzle in the air. She spun in circles around their prisoner, sensing the senseer’s desire and agony as she strained against the shackles that kept her bolted to the ground. Valexa was trying to fight against their spell, but she was old, and her capture had weakened her. As though Niya had plunged a sharp knife into skin, she sensed her powers take hold of the senseer. But instead of screaming, the old woman moaned, surrendering to their sweet torture, swaying with the tempo they set.
Larkyra concentrated their efforts by molding her voice into words.
Welcome to your final summons,
The will of our righteous king;
No one slips here uninvited,
For only terror and agony we bring
Bend forward and break the traitors,
A promise to darken all dreams;
Here is your final undoing,
Our pleasure to let out your screams
Niya was now merely a reaction to Larkyra’s song and Arabessa’s sounds. In the distance she could hear a scream, like steam from a kettle, but it was lost in her dark euphoria. Her magic had turned dangerous, hotter and pointed, a slice from a sharpened blade. The sensation was frightening in that it felt so good.
But Niya’s worry was weak, for faith in her eldest sister was stronger. Arabessa would keep them true, guide them back. Arabessa would make sure they fulfilled the purpose of their performance.
And Arabessa did.
She conducted them, pushing and pulling her bow against strings.
It is time, her melody said. It is now.
Niya danced her thread of magic to ball up into the center of the room with her sisters’. The air turned vibrant with their mixed spells. A star shining deadly bright.
Burn, her magic cooed. Feed on flesh and bone. Take her heartbeat for your own.
Yes, she thought, yes.
Niya’s mind filled with the crescendo, melody and notes soaring high, high, high, until it all came crashing down on the woman, a glittering, deadly wave. Her head tilted back in a scream. Their spell funneled into her open mouth, the star swallowed up with a snap of her jaw.
Thud.
The body dropped.
The room was drowned in dark quiet.
A single chandelier shining light on what remained.
Valexa lay motionless on the black marble floor. Her shackles broken, her eyes and mouth frozen open in her last pleading wail as blood trickled from her nose and eyes.
Niya breathed heavily in the stillness that settled over her mind, deaf to the roars of hedonistic delight rising from the court around her. All she could do was stare at the body by her feet.
Dead.
She had killed someone.
They had killed someone.
She was terrified.
She was excited.
She was . . . she was . . .
A tingling along her neck made her aware of his presence. She tilted her head up to an empty balcony covered in shadows. Though she could not see him, she knew he was there, blending into the jagged edges of his palace, watching.
Their king.
He spoke not a word, but she felt what he did not say—pride.
That was the night his precious Mousai were born.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Niya tried and failed to ignore the cold stare of Alōs as he sat behind his desk. A full moon framed him from behind as his ice-shard energy filled the room, setting a crackling of frost to stretch along the windows at his back.
When Niya breathed, it came out in cloudy puffs.
She had seen Alōs plenty of times in the past days, but it was always on deck, in the open air. She had almost forgotten the suffocation of standing near him in a confined room.
Burlz’s corpse lay on the ground between them, a large rhino put down.
Despite Alōs’s obvious rage, Niya did not feel a slip of guilt at seeing the dead man.
Better to let everyone on this ship know what happened when you tried to hurt her.
I hurt back.
Kintra pushed into the room, handling Prik by the collar, before dumping him beside Niya. The man sniffed, head bowed as he cradled his recently knocked-out tooth. Alōs did not spare Prik a glance as Kintra placed a curled wire rope on his desk before standing sentry beside him, arms folded over her chest.
Alōs’s smooth voice finally broke the silence. “Only a few weeks aboard my ship, fire dancer, and you’re already making enemies.”
Niya lifted a brow. “I had an enemy aboard this ship before I stepped on deck.”
“Indeed,” he mused, leaning back in his chair. “Yet it appears you wish to make more.”
She narrowed her gaze, frustrated at how easily he could incite her. “I have done nothing but what has been asked of me since becoming part of your crew. If that causes bad blood, then I suggest you rethink how things are run here.”
Alōs tsked, glancing toward Kintra. “Killing a crew member, as well as insulting her captain? How shall she be punished?”
“Some time spent in the box might suffice,” suggested Kintra, eyes remaining pinned on Niya.
“Hmm, that does sound appealing.”
“As I recall it”—Niya’s hands tightened into fists at her sides—“I was sleeping in my hammock when this lot tried to stick me with a dagger. If killing was afoot this night, it was not planned by me.”
“What say you, Prik?” Alōs finally turned his attention to the reed of a man next to Niya.