In my world, Kahlia is the sole remnant of my lost innocence. The only proof that there’s a tiny part of me I haven’t let my mother get her hands on. I don’t know why, but Elian has evoked the same feral feeling that used to be reserved only for her. The desire to allow sparks of loyalty and humanity in me to take hold. We’re the same, he and I. Just as looking into my cousin’s eyes feels like looking into a memory of my own childhood, being around Elian feels like being around an alternate version of myself. Reflections of each other in a different kingdom and a different life. Broken pieces from the same mirror. There are worlds between us, but that seems more like semantics than tangible evidence of how dissimilar we are.
Everything is murkier now. And Elian made it that way in a single second, with an action as easy as breathing: He smiled. Not because I was suffering or bowing or making myself malleable to his every whim and decree like I’ve done with my mother. He smiled because he saw me. Free and alive, and already making my way back to him.
I’ve been so focused on putting an end to my mother’s reign that I haven’t thought about how I can put an end to her war. Even if I get my hands on the eye, I still planned to take Elian’s heart, just as my mother ordered, thinking it would prove something to my kingdom. But what? That I’m the same as her, valuing death and savagery over mercy? That I’ll betray anyone, even those who are loyal to me?
If I find the eye, maybe it’s not just sirens who don’t need to suffer anymore, but humans, too. Maybe I can stop the age-old grudge that began in death. Be a new kind of queen, who doesn’t create murderers from daughters.
I think of Crestell, shielding Kahlia from me and laying down her own life instead.
Become the queen we need you to be.
“I should get the captain,” Kye says, breaking me from my thoughts.
I slide from the bench, letting the pain soak through me and then drift away. I gather my footing and focus on this newfound urgency. “No,” I tell him. “Don’t.”
Kye hesitates by the door, his hand already pressing down on the handle. “You don’t want him to come?” he asks.
I shake my head. “He doesn’t need to,” I say. “I’ll find him.”
31
Elian
PáGOS DRAWS NEAR, AND with every league the air grows thinner. We feel it each night, our bones creaking with the ship as she sweeps through water that will soon turn to sludge and ice. It doesn’t matter how much farther we have, because Págos is something that is always felt from within. More and more with each fathom, it looms somewhere deep inside. The final part of our quest, where the Crystal of Keto waits to be freed.
Rycroft is as much a ghost now as he has ever been, hidden belowdecks with barely enough gauze and meds to stay alive. The minimum necessary to make the journey with us. I haven’t been down there, delegating that responsibility to Torik and other members of the crew who can handle him well enough and show restraint even better.
Madrid can’t be trusted. Not when it comes to one of her own countrymen. Her memories tend to taint her morals and I can understand it. Kye, equally so. There isn’t part of me that trusts him to watch over Rycroft and deliver food that isn’t laced with poison. And then, more than any of them, there’s me. The person I trust the least.
Lira may be alive, but that doesn’t put an end to things. The relief has layered over my anger like a film, masking the rage well enough that it can’t be seen, though never enough for it to disappear. But whether I go down there or not, Rycroft can sense the fate that awaits him. Even he can hear the slow wolf call of Págos. From the depths of the crystal cage, where Lira once was, and where he will remain until I give him over to the ice kingdom. He can catch the whistles in the wind, in a room as dark as his soul. And when we finally arrive, he’ll live with them as he rots in a jail as cold as his heart.
“You’re not drinking.”
Lira hovers on the ladder steps to the forecastle deck. A blanket is wrapped loosely around her shoulders, and when it slips, she shrugs it higher. I try not to notice the wince as she moves her arm too quickly, stretching her side and jarring the wound.
I reach out my hand to pull her up, and the look Lira gives me is nothing short of poisonous. “Do you want me to chop it off?” she asks.
I keep my hand hovering in the space between us. “Not particularly.”
“Then get it out of my face.”
She pulls herself up the rest of the way and settles next to me. The edges of her blanket skim my arms. It’s always so cold these nights, enough that sleeping with my boots on seems to be the only way to keep my toes. But there’s something about being up here, with the stars and the sound of the Saad swimming for adventure. It makes me feel warmer than I ever could be bundled up in my cabin.
“I’m hardly an invalid,” Lira says.
“You are a little.”
I don’t need to face her to see that her eyes are burning through the air between us. Lira has a way of looking at people – of looking at me – that can be felt as much as it can be seen. If her eyes weren’t such a surprising shade of blue, I would swear that they were nothing more than hot coals for the fire within.
I finger the Págese necklace, which hangs from my neck as Lira’s seashell hangs from hers. The key to everything. To ending a war that’s lasted lifetimes.
“If you get shot,” Lira says, “I’m going to treat you like you’re incapable of doing the simplest tasks.” She cradles her arms around her knees to keep out the cold. “See how you like it when I hold out my arm to help you walk, even though you’re not shot in the leg.”
“I’d be flattered,” I say, “that you would look for an excuse just to hold my hand.”
“Perhaps I’m just looking for an excuse to shoot you.”
I give her a sideways glance and recline on my elbows.
The deck of the Saad is littered with my friends, splashing drink onto her varnished wood and singing songs that knock against her sails with the gusts. Seeing them this way – so happy and at ease – I know nothing could ever be thicker than the ocean that binds us. Not even blood.
“Madrid said that you are going to hand Rycroft over when we get to Págos.”
“There’s been a price on his head for some time now,” I say. “But the services of the Xaprár were too valuable for any kingdom to warrant attacking them. Now that the shadows have been decimated by us, I don’t doubt he’ll be a wanted man. If nothing else, it’ll be some extra sway to make sure the Págese king grants us access to their mountain so we can get the crystal and finish this whole thing.”
Lira leans back so that we’re level. Her hair is more unruly than ever, and the wind from the approaching storm does nothing to help. It blows into her eyes and catches across her lips, clinging to the freckles of her pale cheeks. I clench my hands by my sides, resisting the impulse to reach over and push it from her face.
“Do you really hate the sirens that much?” she asks.
“They kill our kind.”
“And you kill theirs.”
My eyebrows pinch together. “That’s different,” I say. “We do what we do to survive. They do it because they want to see us all dead.”
“So it’s revenge, then?”
“It’s retribution.” I sit up a little straighter. “It’s not as though the sirens can be reasoned with. We can’t just sign a peace treaty like with the other kingdoms.”