“I’m going to bed,” I tell her. “Like the queen ordered.”
Amara nods, perches on her tiptoes, and kisses my cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she says. “And I can ask Kye about your exploits. I don’t imagine a diplomat would lie to a princess.” With a playful grin, she turns to her room and shuts the door behind her.
I pause for a moment.
I don’t much like the thought of my sister swapping stories with my crew, but at least I can trust Kye to tell his tales with less death and gore. He’s fanciful, but not stupid. He knows that I don’t behave the way a prince should any more than he behaves as a diplomat’s son should. It’s my biggest secret. People know me as the siren hunter, and those at court utter those words with amusement and fondness: Oh, Prince Elian, trying to save us all. If they understood what it took, the awful and sickening screams sirens made. If they saw the corpses of the women on my deck before they dissolved to sea foam, then my people wouldn’t look upon me so fondly. I would no longer be a prince to them, and as much as I might desire such things, I know better.
5
Lira
THE KETO PALACE LIES within the center of the Diávolos Sea and has always been home to royalty. Though humans have kings and queens in every crevice of the earth, the ocean has only one ruler. One queen. This is my mother, and one day it will be me.
One day being soon. It’s not that my mother is too old to rule. Though sirens live for a hundred years, we never age past a few decades, and soon daughters look like mothers and mothers look like sisters, and it becomes hard to tell how old anybody truly is. It’s another reason why we have the tradition of hearts: so a siren’s age is never determined by her face, but always by how many lives she has stolen.
This is the first time I’ve broken that tradition, and my mother is furious. Looking down at me, the Sea Queen is every bit the tyrannical sovereign. To an outsider, she may even seem infinite, as though her reign could never end. It doesn’t look like she’ll lose her throne in just a few years.
As is customary, the Sea Queen retires her crown once she has sixty hearts. I know the exact number my mother has hidden in the safe beneath the palace gardens. Once, she had announced them each year, proud of her growing collection. But she stopped making such proclamations when she reached fifty. She stopped counting, or at least, stopped telling people that she did. But I never stopped. Each year I counted my mother’s hearts just as rigorously as I counted my own. So I know that she has three years before the crown is mine.
“How many is that now, Lira?” asks the Sea Queen, looming down at me.
Reluctantly, I bow my head. Kahlia lingers behind me, and though I can’t see her, I know she’s shadowing the gesture.
“Eighteen,” I reply.
“Eighteen,” the Sea Queen muses. “How funny you should have eighteen hearts, when your birthday is not for two weeks.”
“I know, but—”
“Let me tell you what I know.” The queen settles on her carcass throne. “I know that you were supposed to take your cousin to get her fifteenth, and somehow that proved too difficult.”
“Not especially,” I say. “I did take her.”
“And you took a little something for yourself, too.”
Her tentacles stretch around my waist and pull me forward. In an instant, I feel the crack of my ribs beneath her grip.
Every queen begins as a siren, and when the crown passes to her, its magic steals her fins and leaves in their place mighty tentacles that hold the strength of armies. She becomes more squid than fish, and with that transformation comes the magic, unyielding and grand. Enough to shape the seas to her whim. Sea Queen and Sea Witch both.
I’ve never known my mother as a siren, but I can’t imagine her ever looking so mundane. She has ancient symbols and runes tattooed over her stomach in red, stretching even to her gloriously carved cheekbones. Her tentacles are black and scarlet, fading into one another like blood spilled into ink, and her eyes have long since turned to rubies. Even her crown is a magnificent headdress that peaks in horns atop her head and flows out like limbs down her back.
“I won’t hunt on my birthday as recompense,” I concede breathlessly.
“Oh, but you will.” The queen strokes her black trident. A single ruby, like her eyes, shines on the middle spear. “Because today never happened. Because you would never disobey me or undermine me in any way. Would you, Lira?”
She squeezes my ribs tighter.
“Of course not, Mother.”
“And you?” The queen turns her fixation to Kahlia, and I try to hide any signs of unease. If my mother were to see concern in my eyes, it would only be another weakness for her to exploit.
Kahlia swims forward. Her hair is pulled back from her face by a tie of seaweed, and her fingernails are still crusted with pieces of the Adékarosin queen. She bows her head in what some might interpret as a show of respect. But I know better. Kahlia can never look the Sea Queen in the eye, because if she did, then my mother might know exactly what my cousin thinks of her.
“I only thought she would kill him,” says Kahlia. “I didn’t know she’d take his heart, too.”
It’s a lie and I’m glad of it.
“Well, how perfectly stupid you are not to know your own cousin.” My mother eyes her greedily. “I’m not sure I can think of a punishment unpleasant enough for complete idiocy.”
I clench a hand against the tentacle that grips my waist. “Whatever the punishment is,” I say, “I’ll take it.”
My mother’s smile twitches, and I know that she’s thinking of all the ways this makes me unworthy to be her daughter. Still, I can’t help it. In an ocean of sirens who watch out only for themselves, protecting Kahlia has become somewhat of a reflex. Ever since that day when we were both forced to watch her mother die. And throughout the years, as the Sea Queen tried to mold both Kahlia and I into the perfect descendants of Keto. Carving our edges into the right shape for her to admire. It’s a mirror to a childhood I’d sooner forget.
Kahlia is like me. Too much like me, perhaps. And though it’s what makes the Sea Queen hate her, it’s also the reason I choose to care. I’ve stuck by her side, shielding her from the parts of my mother that are the most brutal. Now protecting my cousin isn’t a decision I make. It’s instinct.
“How caring of you,” the Sea Queen says with a scornful smile. “Is it all those hearts you’ve stolen? Did you take some of their humanity, too?”
“Mother—”
“Such fealty to a creature other than your queen.” She sighs. “I wonder if this is the way you behave with the humans, too. Tell me, Lira, do you cry for their broken hearts?”
She drops her grip on me, disgusted. I hate what I become in her presence: trite and undeserving of the crown I’m to inherit. Through her eyes, I see my failure. It doesn’t matter how many princes I hunt, because I’ll never be the kind of killer that she is.