Lira dives to the side, and a tally of my crew rushes after her. I try to keep her in my focus, but there’re too many swords and bodies, and it’s only seconds before I lose sight of her.
I can see the queen, though. She hovers in the center of the moat on a line of frost that breaches the water like a small island. With the Crystal of Keto in my possession, she’ll let her sirens do the dirty work. Watch as they sacrifice themselves for her treasure, never once risking her own neck for it.
If I can just get close enough to her, then I can use the crystal to send her back to the hell she came from.
I dart in and out of leaping sirens, my crew hot on my tail. We slice our swords into them, careful to avoid the sprays of acid blood. Kye yells something, and I turn just in time to see him crash to the floor, a siren skewed on top of him. Madrid kicks her off before the blood has time to do damage, and hauls Kye back to his feet.
“Keep going!” Yukiko yells, gesturing to the queen with her sword. “We’ll hold them off.”
She is the epitome of a Págese princess in that moment, above the holds of jealousy and bids for power. A pure, raw warrior, like each of her brothers and the kings and queens before them. She swoops her sword over her head, circling it through the air with enough force to create a storm. She’s ready to kill.
“Come on!” Kye roars.
He thrusts me onward, Madrid shooting cover fire behind us. The sound of gunfire and screaming rattles the mountain. With every step we take, another member of my crew branches off to wage war on an attacking siren. They are everywhere, springing from the water and slithering along the ground like snakes. I run past so many bodies, my boots slick with ice and death, until a legion of devilish shrieks stops me dead.
A group of six sirens leap from the water, their nails shining like daggers. They land like cats, fins bent in the middle and hands arched to claws.
“Watch out!” Kye yells, and Madrid grunts from beside him.
“I know,” she says, peppering the deadly creatures with arrows. “I’m not blind.”
The sirens pounce out of the way, deceptively agile even on land. Their gills expand against their bare ribs, revealing the raw flesh beneath.
“You sure about that?” Kye asks, and Madrid elbows him in the side before thrusting the crossbow to the ground and unsheathing her sword.
We attack with more brutality than ever.
I go for the throat before any one of them can open their mouths to sing. Around us lullabies crash and echo alongside the cries for mercy, but there’s too much noise for it to have any effect past dizziness. Too much death for their songs to take shape. Still, I won’t risk it. One note and they could send us into a frenzy.
I lash out with my sword, slicing across a jugular. And then another. They come thick and fast and like the heads of the Hydra. Whenever I leave one siren severed on the floor, another leaps out in her place.
One of them stabs Kye, her nails sliding into his knee. Her finger goes so far through, I half-expect the rest of her hand to follow, but he presses a pistol to her temple and when she falls lifelessly to the ground, he pulls his leg out from her grip without so much as a wince.
“Go ahead!” Madrid yells, slinging Kye’s arm over her shoulder. She plunges her sword into the mouth of a siren. “Get the queen!”
I sprint, rolling to the floor in a duck as another siren leaps toward me. I can feel my skin sizzling underneath my shirtsleeve when I stab her. Siren blood, eating its way through. I rip the fabric away and heap snow onto the charred skin before continuing on.
Bullets cascade around me, shooting through the air like fireworks. The water is riddled with them, alongside the floating bodies of sirens. I hear the battle cries and death cries. My crew is dying, the sirens are dying, and I can’t seem to tell which screams belong to who.
I gasp a breath when I finally reach the fork of land in the water. My feet pound across it, but I barely have the chance to get close enough to the Sea Queen before something slams into me, lifting me off the ground. My cheek cracks on the ground.
It’s not a siren. It’s a merman.
The creature flips back into the water and roars with the splintered teeth of a shark. I choke a little, but when it attacks again, I’m ready. I’m a tornado of steel and fury, slicing clean into its rubber flesh, across its branded chest and deep grooved stomach. But the merman doesn’t relent no matter how much it bleeds.
It grabs me by the throat with a webbed hand and roars loud enough to split my ears. I drop my sword. The edges of its spiked fingers puncture my neck and it lifts me off the floor with one muscular arm. I scramble, fumbling blindly as I gag for breath. When my hands latch around the screaming blade, I don’t waste time.
I slam my knife through the base of its chin, driving the blade up until the handle slams against bone. The power surges back through the steel, like no kill before. It is pure animal and instinct and as my knife drinks it up, I do too.
The creature falls to the floor by my feet and the Sea Queen’s nostrils flare.
“Tha pethánete,” she barks.
“Sorry, I rub a hand over my throat. “I don’t speak bitch.”
The water boils in fury around her. “When you die,” she says, “do you think my daughter will weep?”
I lift my knife. “Kill me and find out.”
39
Elian
I KICK MY SWORD up off the floor and catch it, holding both blades before the Sea Queen.
She hisses. “Just like a human, to rely on weapons to make a kill.”
With a raised hand, the Sea Queen hoists a body of water up and sends it thrusting toward me. I dive out of the way, but the edge of the great wave clips my ankle and sends me spinning through the air. I land with a skid, ice burning through the fabric of my leg.
She regards me with an impish look of satisfaction and then raises her hand once more. I ready myself for the impact, but the hit never comes. Instead she sends a hammer of water toward a line of half a dozen of my men. It envelops them instantly and then drags them into the clawing pit of sirens.
I snarl and throw my sword in her direction, but it bounces from her glass skin.
“Fool,” she spits. “Ilthia anóitos.”
“You’ve lost already,” I tell her, heaving myself to my feet. “I have the Crystal of Keto. Lira couldn’t take it from me.”
But even as I say the words, I’m unsure. The crystal may have been humming before, but if anything, it feels like dead weight in my pocket now.
The Sea Queen recoils at the sight of the crystal in my hand.
“I’ll make sure Lira is punished for that when this is over,” she says, sliding backward. “In fact, I think she already is.”