Page 20

A full day and a half later, I clung to the rail of the ship as it glided across a crowded bay, toward Panos Port.

I was ready to be off the water and touch solid land.

To sleep soundly, dreamlessly, without being jostled by the sea’s merciless surface.

I’d fallen into a malaise after my row with Theodore, and that Godsdamned plucking in my chest wouldn’t cease.

Agatha stood close at my side, face pinched in a troubled scowl. Theodore lingered not far behind me. I could nearly sense what direction he paced in, bow to stern, and back again.

Our blood bond still had not settled.

“I think something’s wrong,” Agatha said, leaning toward me so he wouldn’t hear. “The two of you shouldn’t be ill any longer.”

I frowned at the thought and stared into the water below. It was so clear, I could see straight to the bottom. Clusters of fish darted this way and that, looking like silvered arrowheads. Bright sprays of coral dotted the white sand of the seafloor.

“You don’t know that.” I tried to keep myself from sounding as worried as I felt. “It’s not even been three full days.”

She only offered me a sharp look, jaw tightly set. “And as I’ve said, it should only take two. ”

“You performed your binding a long time ago. Maybe you’re misremembering.”

“It was two.” She was adamant. Then she paused to think. “Though our binding was different from yours. We didn’t spend time apart during those two days. We…” She looked at me sidelong, then away quickly. “Were together often.”

“Together?” I caught her meaning a beat later and grimaced. “Oh sweet Gods. Let’s assume it’s our lack of togetherness that’s the problem, then.”

“You could…” Agatha glanced at Theodore over her shoulder, then back at me. Her brows rose suggestively, disappearing into her thick curls.

“No. We couldn’t.” I scoffed. “He’s more interested in sending me off to be tortured in a severing ritual than bedding me.”

“Still—you can’t be this sick indefinitely.” She brought her voice even lower. “I don’t think he’d say no.”

“Think about what you’re suggesting!” A briny gust rolled over the water and wound through my loose hair. “And he most certainly would say no. He thinks I’m nothing but a superfluous imposition.”

Agatha shrugged. “I’d wager you’d be no imposition at all in this.”

The suggestion was laughable. Theodore and I had hardly spoken since he’d told me what my task was to be.

Since he’d told me that he thought I was the descendant of a Great Goddess.

That was laughable too. I knew my story.

I was an orphaned child of noble birth. Nemea took me in because of my family’s money.

Nothing more. But despite my lifelong surety, Theodore’s belief had left me bereft.

Agitated, I brushed my thumb over the heap of scars that sat in the middle of my palm.

“Do you think he’s right?” I asked Agatha. We both leaned on the rail, and I pressed my shoulder to hers. “Do you think my power is like that of the Great Goddess Ligea’s?”

Agatha stared out over the water. At the little white stone buildings clustered tightly around the docks.

More fanned out to dot the sprawling green hills of Varya.

She shook her head. “She was the last Great Goddess to survive, but I never saw her. I knew all the stories of her power, though. Sailors would say the sea called to them, but it was her pull they felt on their bones. It was her call that rushed silently through their ears. And she could ruin them all without lifting a hand. They would pray to her and ask that she fill their nets. They’d ask for calm seas.

And she would oblige, where she saw fit. ”

My throat grew thick. “I can do none of those things.”

“Not now. Not yet… perhaps.” She looked at me with the shine of hope in her eyes.

“Every God’s power is different, but it’s always the greatest among the descendants who can wield it with ease.

I have to sing to lure, but you do not.” She looked to Theodore.

“And the king—he doesn’t need to touch to heal flesh or to make plants flourish. ”

My attention snapped toward her. “I’m sorry—what?”

“What?” Agatha reared back at my reaction.

“Every time the king has healed me, he’s touched me.”

“Oh. Well.” Agatha’s lips curled into a knowing smile. “I can’t imagine why.”

I forced my eyes shut. The wind whipped again, blowing more salt mist into my nose.

It should have calmed me, but it only fanned that unsettling hum in my chest. I glared at Theodore over my shoulder.

He stood about ten paces away—as far as he could without either of us growing ill—looking resplendent.

His golden laurel crown sat upon his head, twining through his black locks.

His brown coat was cut precisely to the lines of his broad chest, his narrow waist. The emerald cape pinned to his muscled shoulders billowed in the wind. Damn him. I had to look away.

A wispy fog had rolled over Varya’s port city of Voros, veiling the newly risen sun.

A portion of the city was walled, with little stone lookouts sitting upon its corners.

Flowering vines covered the wall like a verdant cage.

My gaze followed it all the way out to the peninsula that Genevreer Palace sat upon.

It was brilliant despite the fog, with its creamy white stones and tiled roof the color of ash.

Even from the ship, I could see how Varya’s famed flowering vines crept up its walls like dark veins webbing a fair body.

The city bustled and the land bloomed, all of it rich because of Theodore’s power. I’d never felt so small. “Agatha, I can’t do this. I can’t control my power in the least. I have nothing to my name, no way to protect myself. I’ll be alone—”

She curled her hand around mine. “I told you I’d be with you. I promised you.” She squeezed my hand tighter. “You won’t be alone.”

We stood like that, hand in hand, as the ship kept its course for the docks.

I watched the turquoise water ripple and froth, when suddenly, some energy rocked through my body.

What had been a hum in my chest became wild tugs and jabs.

They crescendoed and I set a worried hand to my stomach.

It was as if that string inside me had become many and they were being plucked by a hand coming from somewhere far below.

I looked past the gentle waves to the seafloor. It had changed. It was no longer pristine white sand, strewn with colorful coral. Now it looked to be covered in dark, twisting rocks. I leaned farther over the rail, squinting, when I realized—they were bodies.

Many, many bodies. Their unmoving limbs were knotted and overlaid like the strands of a weaving. I gasped as a spindly arm appeared just beneath the ship’s hull. A ghostly white shoulder, shadowed with decay, came into view next.

Then the whole corpse. A woman. Dark hair fluttered around her head like black fire. She was dead, I was certain of it, hanging lifeless not ten feet below the surface.

Then she moved.

She swam with the grace of a living thing. Like she was used to the water, meant to be in it. She strained toward the rolling surface, right below me, and her black eyes locked with mine.

Her face was blank, the edge of her jaw studded with a pattern of barnacles as intricate as white lace.

She was dead. It was the sea that seemed to hold her together.

She floated on her back over the waves. Leathery kelp had knit itself through the rotting edges of the holes in her torso.

A stringy tentacle grew from her chest, right above her heart, and it curled down her shoulder to hold her arm in place at the joint.

Bits of flesh were missing from her face, from her limbs—but her dark eyes saw me.

Rotting lips mouthed a single, silent word.

Home.

I screamed when two strong hands clamped onto me and jerked me back and off the ship’s rail.

I’d nearly climbed over. Theodore set my feet on the deck and held me so tightly around the waist I could hardly pull in a breath.

His gaze locked with mine, all fiery and full of terror.

“Bloody Gods—Agatha was yelling at you. Didn’t you hear her? ”

Agatha was pale beside me, a hand clutching her throat.

I shook my head. “No. There was a…” The jabs in my chest had returned to their quiet, even hum.

I felt so cold, so strained with fear, that I threw my arms around Theodore’s neck and held tight.

I hated myself for seeking comfort in him, but he was so steady, so warm.

The moment seemed to draw out, long as a string of honey, before he curled his arms around me in return.

With a quiet exhale, he let his body soften against mine.

It felt like a candle flared inside me—the bond—glowing bright.

I raised my lips toward his ear. “I saw a woman. In the water.”

“A nekgya.” He pulled back to look in my eyes. “They hunt the waters closest to the islands.”

Despite his proximity, a chill slipped through me. “What do they hunt?”

Those eyes. A mix of pity and wariness filled them before he drew me back into his embrace. He spoke softly, his voice heavy with contrition. “Sirens.”

The carriage clacked over the blue cobblestoned streets, winding us through dense trees, their leaves a lush spring green.

The boughs held large red blooms with centers like orbs of gold.

I could hardly recall disembarking from the ship or walking over the docks to the shining carriage that had awaited us, but I remembered Theodore.

He’d led me the entire way with a hand at my back, close and attentive.

I sat beside him now, and across from us, in awkward silence, sat Lachlan and Agatha.

“They hunt Sirens,” I said in a shocked voice, staring out the window. “Agatha, did you know? Why didn’t you tell me?”