Page 3 of When the Wicked Sing (The Leruna Sea #1)

The sun soared across the sky like a falling star until twilight descended, quieting the crashing waves and seabirds.

From one shade of darkness to another, Mariana lifted herself from the sea onto a line of rocks not far from the beach ahead of her.

Her nails sank deep into the slick algae to keep herself from falling before she settled onto her elbows.

Crabs skittered across the rocks, making Mariana scrunch her nose as she flicked one of them away.

Her gaze homed in on the dark waves crashing against the sand.

It was the mortal island of Tassos, one of many within the Andros Islands.

The village was settled beside a river where they grew crops, herbs, and spices for trade.

Lanterns surrounded by mesmerized insects hung on wooden posts around the village paths, casting a soft glow through the fog.

No sign of them yet , she thought to herself.

Aurora appeared beside her so quietly that Mariana didn’t notice until they were shoulder to shoulder. The skittering crabs made more noise than her, but Mariana expected nothing less. After all, her sister was a lethal warrior .

She glanced at her, at their touching shoulders. Where Mariana’s pale blue skin blended into the sea, Aurora’s brushed brass skin stood out. But under the cloudy night, she could hardly tell the difference between their shoulders, except that Mariana’s was covered in tattoos.

Their hair whipped gently in the wind, mingling the dark teal and blood red strands.

Mariana lifted a finger to her sister’s golden cuff, tracing the geometric pattern carved within.

Mariana’s bracelet—a fiber cord threaded with colorful shells and beads—was a cheap comparison to the beautiful cuff.

Aurora had made it herself; she loved gold jewelry and made everything she wore, from the several earrings piercing her ears to the necklaces around her neck.

She said it made her happy, and she deserved it after everything she’d gone through. Happiness was a rarity in Salus.

After the Banishment, Salus became a haven for the last remaining sirens. It was a long-forgotten ruin at the bottom of the Leruna Sea. It was deep enough that any creature without the ability to breathe underwater would drown or be crushed by the pressure before they could reach it.

The few siren survivors, many of whom were skilled architects, engineers, sculptors, and designers, rebuilt Salus into a fortress that would stand the test of time. Queen Cybele called it their sanctuary; Mariana called it their grave.

The only way sirens could reproduce was with male fae. When sirens were suddenly forced out of the fae realm, reproduction plummeted. Their numbers had dropped steadily for years as the old grew weary and frail, eventually dying .

“They’re here,” Aurora whispered, and Mariana snapped her eyes up to the dark, lapping water ahead of them.

Cursed sirens approached the beach slowly, their heads peeking out of the water, their tails lapping gently in the waves.

They began to sing. A soft, eerie melody sent chills over Mariana’s skin.

“We shouldn’t be here,” she heard Aurora mutter.

Mariana’s gaze hardened. She had to see this. She wanted to understand what happened during the culling. But when she turned her head and saw the concern in her older sister’s golden eyes, she understood.

The culling was forbidden to watch or partake in by anyone who wasn’t cursed or ready to accept the Scourge. But no matter what Cybele said, Mariana was the heir; she had to know. And Aurora wouldn’t let her do this alone. Together, they would watch the darkness unfold.

Mariana turned her eyes back to the beach. Mortals shuffled out of the fog toward their fate. Her breath hitched when she saw their glazed eyes and slack hands, enchanted by the haunting melody.

The mortals of these islands were taught to believe that if they heard the song of the sea under a full moon, they were worthy sacrifices to the underwater goddesses.

In return, the sirens would keep their fish ecosystems thriving and the reefs clear of unwanted predators.

They had no idea it was cursed sirens falling victim to the Scourge and its promise of eternal life.

The instinct to protect them unexpectedly overwhelmed Mariana .

This was what Astra wanted to stop.

Astra had advocated for the end of the culling.

Under intense scrutiny, Astra decided not to accept the Scourge, to live forever.

Mariana had always admired her eldest sister’s decision and knew the queen did too.

Astra was Cybele’s firstborn, and as Astra began to feel her body change, with slight wrinkles near her eyes and wisps of gray in her hair, she pushed heavily for a peace mission to the fae realm as an emissary to restore Sirenia.

Cybele only allowed it because it was Astra’s final wish.

Astra would have lost her ability to transform her tail into legs and walk on land in a few years.

She’d felt that if she didn’t die trying to save their people, she had failed in life.

A siren would reach her life’s third and final stage at around five hundred years.

This was when they had to choose between the path leading to death or the Scourge’s path to immortality.

The Queen of the Sea was an exception to this rule.

Cybele would not begin her descent into the final stage of life until Mariana, who had inherited the power of the sea, had matured.

If a queen chose to put off producing an heir, she could live for hundreds of years before her instincts gave her no choice but to reproduce.

Cybele had witnessed two generations of sirens being born and dying before finally giving birth to Mariana.

Now, her mother would soon begin to grow old.

The first sign of an aging siren was the fading of her magic, when the power to control mortals with her voice would weaken.

Her body would wrinkle, and her scales would turn gray.

Half a century later, the Goddess, Amphitrite, would guide the siren’s soul on their journey to peace.

This was a siren’s inevitable ending—before immortality became essential to survival.

Before the Banishment, the Scourge was considered evil, for all it did was take away a sister everyone loved, replacing them with a husk, a ghost of who they were.

Despite Queen Cybele’s firm disdain for the Scourge, she allowed the cullings to keep the siren population from declining. The fewer warriors they had, the less protection they had.

The Scourge offered a path to eternal youth and strength for any siren willing to endure its curse.

By accepting this fate, a sister’s soul would gradually decay, her organs and eyes would turn black, and she would lose not only her ability to walk on land but also to reproduce.

Stripped of her very identity, she would become a neurotic, soulless creature, confined to the sea for all eternity—all for the sake of immortality.

The Siren Witch’s head bobbed up from the waves, her headdress dripping seawater.

Renowned as the most powerful cursed siren alive, she alone had been permitted to study and practice the dark magic unlocked by the Scourge, despite Astra’s objections.

As the queen’s only blood sister and most trusted advisor, her growing power commanded profound respect from all cursed sirens and ensured their obedience.

Astra had always made it clear that she did not believe in how sirens changed their views on the Scourge, even as a survival aid.

She rejected that excuse, claiming that the Goddess would have shown them the way to a safer world, but instead, sirens have lost their way.

She’d once said that sirens were created out of love and sacrifice and that to steal anyone’s life, anyone’s soul, to achieve immortality was reprehensible .

The Siren Witch strongly disagreed with Astra, insisting it was the path to unlocking a siren’s true potential.

Why did it feel so wrong if it was that easy to justify the culling?

Shivers danced along her spine as Mariana watched the scene ahead. She could feel the sinister energy radiating from the song.

A dozen mortals entered the water. Then clawed hands reached up and gently pulled them down into the waves.

“Calliope,” Mariana breathed, recognizing the sister who had guarded her when she was young. “What is she doing here?”

Aurora gripped her hand in support as they watched Calliope kiss a man with a heavily bandaged stomach. They looked like two lovers lost in their own world. Then, a white glow formed within the chest of the mortal man and slowly transferred itself through their locked lips and into Calliope.

Every embraced mortal within the pack began to slacken, their hands and legs no longer working to keep close to the siren kissing them.

They were dead.

Mariana’s vision began to blur as her eyes unexpectedly filled with tears.

When the glow faded, each siren released the lips of their mortal and pulled their lifeless body down into the darkness of the sea.

“Where are they taking them?” Mariana whispered in alarm when they all disappeared underwater. “They don’t let their families bury them?”

Aurora shook her head, fear in her eyes. Mariana found it hard to believe Aurora was afraid of anything. She was their best warrior. She was known in the fae realm as an assassin, the Scarlet Serpent.

Aurora hated that name.

After the Banishment, she’d worked tirelessly to forget it.

She took a vow to never kill ever again except under the direst circumstances.

Instead, she devoted her time to becoming an armorer, choosing to protect her fellow siren sisters with nearly indestructible armor made from scavenged basilisk bones. It was her legacy.

“We have to go. The sun will rise soon, and I want to find out what happened to Astra’s Guardians.

The witch said she’d give a report after the culling.

” The hitch in Aurora’s voice as she slid down the rocks made Mariana pause.

Guardians had been wearing sun-protected armor when they were discovered dead near the entrance to Salus.

“Rora?” she said gently, causing her sister to go still and meet her gaze. Mariana wanted to tell her it would all be okay, but she knew that was a lie. None of this was okay. “Thank you for coming with me.”

What Aurora had done by being there for her in that difficult moment was worth more than just a thank you. Still, by the slight tilt of Aurora’s lips, she knew her sister appreciated it.

“I’ll be there before sunrise, but I need a moment alone.”

Aurora gave her a nod before slipping into the waves.

As soon as she was gone, Mariana left the rocks and approached the beach. The waves flowed through her hair, and she wished they could wash away the sick, shameful feeling coursing through her at what she had just witnessed .

A dozen mortals were dead because they didn’t have a solution to their problem with the fae. No mortal deserved this.

The cursed were ordered never to take more than one soul per siren at a time, once a month.

They were only allowed to call on the weak-minded adults who were no longer in their prime, dying, or sometimes an assaulter in need of penance, as though that made up for all the deaths.

As the number of sirens who chose the immortal path grew, so did the number of mortals required to die month after month.

Mariana glared at the silent dark sky and wanted to shout at how unfair it all was. She let her head dip under the water and was about to leave when a flicker of light rippling above the waves caught her attention.

She peeked her head out of the water. A weeping child wrapped in a blue sleeping robe with a lit torch in her hand stood alone on the beach. Her crying eyes were locked on the dark water before her.

Mariana swallowed the painful lump forming in her throat as she wondered who the girl mourned.

Who was taken from her? Who heard the siren song and disappeared under the moonlight into the sea forever?

With her heavy breaths clouding the air in front of her, the little girl sniffled and peered down at her bare feet, taking a nervous step toward the waves.

They greeted her with a sweep of salty water.

The girl dropped her torch on the sand, the water snuffing out its light, and began walking into the water.

Mariana’s blood ran cold .

Just as the sea grazed the little girl’s stomach and the ends of her curly hair, Mariana quickly lifted her hands and pulled the water away from the child.

The girl stopped, gawking at the churning barrier surrounding her. She lifted her eyes straight into Mariana’s and gasped.

Not knowing what to do, they stared at each other for a long moment before Mariana lifted her hand and gestured for the girl to leave. The child continued to stare at her with puffy eyes.

Guilt washed over Mariana at the thought of what she was about to do. She opened her mouth and began to sing to the little mortal.

Her lips moved carefully, words about hope and love slithering into the child’s ears.

Mariana sang softly, as a mother would sing her baby to sleep, influencing the child to return home to her bed and dream of only the best memories.

The girl’s mouth lifted into a little smile, and her body obeyed the song.

Mariana finally sank back into the sea when the little girl disappeared through the dense fog and into town. Her heart was a heavy weight in her chest. It dragged her down and settled her on the sandy bottom.

The kisses of a thousand tiny fish began pecking her skin clean of impurities, and she let the lonely bitterness crash down upon her.