“Please!” I shout as I try throwing my father’s men off me. There are too many of them.
It’s Deros who takes the shot through the heart. Deros who sinks to the ground with lifeless eyes. Deros who I’ll never see again.
I want to run until my legs fail me. Yell until my voice runs dry. Pound at my father’s head until it flattens into a puddle on the ground.
But none of those things would change the fact that he’s gone.
“You cannot get to the treasure from the island!” I scream at him. “It’s under the water, where only sirens can reach it.”
The fourth pistol he’d drawn lowers slightly. “How do you know this?”
I can barely see through the water that’s gathered at my eyes, but I somehow manage a quick lie. “I’m unaffected by the siren’s song, but I still hear it. They sing about it. I heard them singing as they counted their coins and moved about under the water. The only way to that treasure is below the surface.”
Father is silent. I can tell he thinks over the words very carefully, deciding whether or not to believe them. I’m desperate for him to believe the lie.
“Then we’ll have to deal with the beasts first,” he says, “before we go exploring underwater with our diving bell.”
“No!”
“You care what happens to the sirens now? Good. You can watch from the porthole.” He grabs me by the arm, and it takes him and three others to restrain me, but I don’t go without a fight. I get a good kick in between the legs of one of the pirates, then take a fist to my jaw. My nails rake down the face of another man.
In the end, they wrestle me into my own cushioned cell. The one with a tiny porthole, too small to shimmy through, were I to knock out the glass.
“You don’t have a say anymore,” Father says. “You’re going to stay locked up until you’ve learned your lesson and watched every member of your crew suffer and die.”
I scream at him, rattle the bars, but I know there is no escaping from these cells. They were built for me, so I could stock up my abilities. I know there is no getting out of them.
No running to my bleeding crew members who are still alive. Mandsy is already at Niridia’s side to help her. She shouts orders to Sorinda, who is in the cell with Reona, trying to staunch the bleeding wound.
I can’t even warn the sirens about what’s coming for them. They are too far away for me to sing to them. Were I under the water, I could do it, but like this, trapped above it—I’m useless.
Father exits the brig, satisfied by my temporary punishment. He leaves Tylon and several of his men to guard us, now that my ship is his. As if. Not while I draw breath. The Ava-lee is mine.
Tylon offers me several sneering, preening looks before saying, “Thank you, Alosa,” much too loudly with the wax in his ears. Only when he’s satisfied with his own gloating does he leave me and my crew belowdecks.
I kick at the bars and hiss profanities in his direction.
When he is out of sight, there’s nothing I can dwell on but the bleeding girls in the brig. On Deros’s body. Wallov closes his friend’s eyes and sits on the floor next to him.
“Push harder, Sorinda!” Mandsy says. “It will hurt her, but it’s better than her dying! Wallov, toss her your shirt!”
Mandsy has already tied a tourniquet above Niridia’s knee. She focuses now on directing Sorinda.
“She’s having a hard time breathing,” Sorinda says.
Her voice less urgent, Mandsy asks, “Is blood coming out of her mouth?”
“Yes.”
Mandsy blinks slowly. “Let go of the wound, Sorinda. Hold her hand and talk to her.”
“What is it, Mandsy?” I ask.
“The ball must have struck a lung. It’s kinder to let her bleed out than choke on her own blood.”
Every breath I take seems to fuel my hatred for my father.
“It will be all right,” Sorinda says, her voice taking on a soft tone. I didn’t think she knew how to be soft. “The pain will stop soon, Reona. Close your eyes. Just listen to my voice.”
I cannot take this. I cannot stand being trapped in here and unable to do anything while my crew dies around me!
“Athella?” I call out.
“They searched me too well, Captain,” she answers. “I haven’t so much as a hairpin on me.”
“Sorinda, do you have any weapons hidden on you?”
“No.”
Reona lets out her last breath. Sorinda releases her hand, setting it gently at her side.
For several seconds, I can do nothing but blink. “We’ll find a way out of this. Everyone think.”
I refuse to give up, even when my own mind tries to tell me it’s useless. Tylon has the keys. He will keep them close. He won’t let anything go wrong. Not now that he thinks he’s so close to getting what he’s always wanted.
Thank you, Alosa, he said. For betraying my father. For taking myself out of the running. For making him look good. He thinks my father’s legacy will go to him now. I curse Tylon’s name.
“How’s Niridia?” I dare to ask.
“I’m fine,” she says. Her grunts are audible now that Reona’s gurgling gasps have ceased.
“She’ll be okay,” Mandsy says, “so long as I can get to my kit soon. I need to dig the ball out of her knee.”
What I need is to get Tylon back down here. I can’t get us out of here unless I can reach something useful.
“Are you all right?”
Riden is in the cell next to mine. I haven’t been able to spare him a glance with everything else happening.
“I’m fine,” I say. But it’s not true. Not with the two bodies in the brig.
“What happened after you left?”
It clears my head to focus on something other than the deaths around me. I tell them about meeting my mother again and what she offered us.
“We were that close to beating him?” Niridia asks.
“Stop talking,” Mandsy tells her.
“It distracts me from the pain!”
“We’ve been in tough situations before,” Riden says, “and we made it out alive. We’ll do it again.”
“Are you working on another brilliant plan?” I ask.
“Not yet. But I’m sure I’ll think of something. And this time, I’m going to avoid getting shot.”
The situation is too dire for me to laugh, but I appreciate Riden’s efforts at lightening it. I stare at the porthole in my cell. It offers a torturing glimpse of freedom while being utterly useless.
Through it, I see the fleet move farther out to sea, and my ship moves with them just a ways. Just enough for me to get a view of the fight that’s about to happen, I realize. The ship is moving for my benefit.
Though my father’s men all have their ears covered, it won’t stop them from communicating. The fleet already has signals in place. My father has different flags he hoists up in the air, each one with a different meaning. They can still coordinate an attack.
My focus is no longer on me and my crew, but my mother and the sirens. They won’t come to the surface, will they? Not when they can see the hulls of all those ships. They must know they are at a disadvantage. But how could they know their voices won’t work on the men? They’ll think themselves invulnerable when pitted against them.