“I did what you asked,” I said again.
“I asked you to make a human suffer,” the Sea Queen said. “To take its still-beating heart and rip it out.” A tentacle slid over my shoulder and around my tiny neck. “I asked you to be a siren.”
When she threw me to the ground, I remember feeling relieved. Knowing that if she was going to kill me, she would have crushed me under her grasp. I could take a beating. I could be humiliated and bloodied. If taking a few hits would quell my mother’s temper, then it wouldn’t be so bad. I would have gotten off easy. But I was a fool to think that my mother would choose to punish only me. What good was it to scold her daughter when she could shape her instead?
“Kahlia,” my mother said. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Sister.” My aunt swam forward, her face suddenly wretched and pained. “Please don’t.”
“Now, now, Crestell,” my mother said. “You shouldn’t interrupt your queen.”
“She’s my daughter.”
I remember hating the way Crestell’s shoulders hunched forward as she spoke. Like she was already preparing for a blow.
“Hush now,” my mother cooed. “Let us not fight in front of the children.”
She turned to me and stretched out her arm toward my cousin. It was like she was presenting Kahlia, the same way I had done with the Kalokaírin heart. I didn’t move.
“Kill her,” the Sea Queen said.
“Mother—”
“Take her heart while she still screams, like you should have done with the human prince.”
Kahlia whimpered, too scared to move or even cry. She glanced over at her mother, then back to me, blinking a dozen times over. Her head shook violently from side to side.
It was like looking into a mirror. Seeing the horror on Kahlia’s face was like seeing a rendition of myself, every drop of terror I felt reflected in her eyes.
“I can’t,” I said. Then, louder: “Don’t make me.”
I backed away, shaking my head so adamantly that my mother’s snarl became a blur.
“You stupid child,” she said. “I am offering you redemption. Do you know what will happen if you refuse?”
“I don’t need to be redeemed!” I yelled. “I did what you asked!”
The Sea Queen squeezed her trident, and all the poise that remained vanished from her face. Her eyes grew to shadows, blacker and blacker, until I could only see the darkness in them. The ocean groaned.
“This humanity that has infected you must be quelled,” she said. “Don’t you see, Lira? Humans are a plague who murdered our goddess and seek to destroy us. Any siren who shows sympathy toward them – who mimics their love and their sorrow – must be cleansed.”
I frowned. “Cleansed?”
The Sea Queen pushed Kahlia to the seabed, and I winced when her palms slammed against the sand.
“Sirens do not feel affection or regret,” my mother seethed. “We don’t know empathy for our enemies. Any siren who feels such things can never be queen. All she will ever be is defective. And a defective siren can’t be allowed to live.”
“Defective,” I repeated.
“Kill her,” my mother said. “And we’ll speak no more of it.”
She said it like it was the only way I could ever make up for my sins against my kind. If Kahlia died, then I’d be a true siren worthy of my mother’s trident. I wouldn’t be impure. The emotions I was having were a sickness and she was offering me a cure. A way out. A chance to rid me of the humanity she claimed had infected me.
Kahlia just needed to die first.
I moved closer to my cousin, clasping my hands behind my back so the Sea Queen couldn’t see how much they were shaking. I wondered if she could smell blood from the crescents I had stamped into my palms.
Kahlia cried as I approached, great howls of terror spilling from her tiny lips. I wasn’t sure what I planned to do as I got closer to her, but I knew I didn’t want to kill her. Take her hand and swim, I thought. Get as far away from the Sea Queen as we can. But I knew I wouldn’t do that, either, because my mother’s eyes were the ocean and she would see us wherever we hid. If I took Kahlia, we’d both be killed for treason. And so my choices were this: to take my cousin’s heart. Or to take her hand and let us die together.
“Stop,” Crestell said.
She swooped in front of Kahlia, creating a barrier between us. Her arms were spread wide in defense, fangs bared. For a moment I was sure she would attack, slicing her claws through me and putting an end to this madness once and for all.
“Take me,” she said.
I paled.
Crestell grabbed my hand – it looked tiny in hers, but nowhere near as delicate – and pressed it to her chest. “Take it,” she said.
My cousins gasped around us, their faces contorted in terror and grief. This was their choice: watch their mother die or see their sister killed. I stammered before my aunt, ready to scream and swim as far away as I could. But then Crestell shot a look to Kahlia, who trembled on the seabed. A worried, furtive glance, quick enough for my mother to miss. When her eyes returned to mine, they were filled with begging.
“Take it, Lira,” Crestell said. She swallowed and raised her chin. “This is the way things must be.”
“Yes,” my mother cooed from behind me. I didn’t have to turn to know there was a smile cutting across her face. “That would be quite the substitute.”
She placed a hand on my shoulder, her nails scraping over my skin, clamping me into place before she lowered her lips to my ear and let a whisper form between us.
“Lira,” my mother said so quiet that my fin curled. “Cure yourself and show me that you truly belong in the ocean.”
Defective.
“Any last words, sister?” the Sea Queen asked.
Crestell closed her eyes, but I knew it wasn’t to keep from crying. It was to seal the fury in so that it didn’t burnish her irises. She wanted to die a loyal subject and keep her daughters safe from my mother’s revenge. From me.
When Crestell opened her eyes again – one such a pure blue and the other a most miraculous shade of purple – she looked nowhere but at me.
“Lira,” she said. Her voice rasped. “Become the queen we need you to be.”
It wasn’t a promise I could make, because I wasn’t sure I was capable of being the kind of queen my mother’s kingdom needed. I had to be without emotion, spreading terror rather than feeling it, and as my breathing trembled, I just didn’t know if I had it in me.
“Won’t you promise?” Crestell asked.
I nodded, even though I thought it was a lie. And then I killed her.
That was the day I became my mother’s daughter. And the moment it happened was the moment I became the most monstrous of us all. The yearning to please her spread through me like a shadow, fighting against every urge I knew she’d perceive as weakness. Every flash of regret and sympathy that would lead her to believe I was impure.