Page 38 of When the Wicked Sing (The Leruna Sea #1)
Aurora squeezed the sponge into a jar, and she watched the gray, shimmering oil drip to the bottom of the glass.
She pulled her hand out of the thick, kelp top that trapped the oil in the jar.
The sponge immediately refilled with saltwater, and Aurora went back to wiping the queen’s forehead.
With each wipe, more oil appeared, beading along her mother’s face.
Aurora sighed, the sound mingling with the soft clink of her gold bracelets as she worked.
It appeared to be tainted magic leaking from the queen’s pores, but Aurora had no idea why. What had her mother done to suffer such a heavy backlash of fallout? She’d have asked Cybele herself, but the queen had remained unconscious since whatever had happened.
She repeated her movements. Swipe, squeeze, swipe … But nothing she did made it any better. Tainted magic was toxic to those who breathed it in. It had to be constantly maintained until the fallout receded .
Three sirens entered the queen’s chambers, and Aurora handed the task to Malea before noting the other two in the room.
Aurora glanced between the Siren Witch and Luna. Both claimed to have no idea what had happened to Cybele, which Aurora hardly believed. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them; it was that their family loved keeping secrets like they were diamonds to hoard.
“How is she?” the witch asked softly, her posture stiff and hands clasped tightly together as she gazed at the queen’s still form. She looked worried, an emotion Aurora hadn’t realized the witch even possessed.
Clearing her throat, Aurora crossed her arms. “Still hasn’t woken up. Whatever happened to her is taking its toll,” she said with an insinuating lift of her brow, which the witch ignored.
“Will she survive?” Luna asked with her arms wrapped around herself.
“She will, if by some miracle, we can secure the amulet. We must hope that wherever Mariana is now, she brings it back to us.” The witch approached Cybele and squeezed her wrist tightly before moving back toward the door. “Keep me updated,” she said to Aurora over her shoulder, then left.
Aurora scrubbed her face with her hands, frustrated with … well, everything.
“My mother told me about the amulet before she left,” Luna said in her sweet, gentle voice.
It sounded so much like Astra’s. “What it can do.” Aurora uncovered her eyes to look at her niece.
“Mariana knows what’s at stake. And yet she’s still not back with my mother or the amulet. ” Her tone took a turn toward venomous.
“What are you talking about, Luna?” Aurora asked darkly.
“Mari was taken against her will.” They’d confirmed it with a village boy in Egan Village, who claimed to have seen it happen.
A hooded boogeyman snatched her right up!
he’d said in a squeaky voice. Aurora had to clarify who or what he was referring to with the boy’s parents.
Turned out to be a mortal superstition. Still, Aurora listened to how the boy described this “boogeyman ,” and it sounded like a fae was responsible for taking Mari.
“Besides,” she added, “she’s only been gone for a week. ”
Aurora had fought with the queen tooth and nail about going after her sister, finding her, and getting her back immediately.
The queen wouldn’t have it and had said Mariana now had the chance to prove herself like she had been begging for.
Aurora still couldn’t stomach their mother’s refusal to rescue any of her daughters.
Luna shrugged. “I heard she escaped, and the queen forced her to go back to her captor. That it was the only chance of saving my mother.”
Aurora’s eyebrows lowered. “Where did you hear that, Luna?”
Luna didn’t answer her. Instead, she moved toward the door before stopping. She glanced back at Aurora.
“If Mari doesn’t come back with my mother and the fae get ahold of that amulet, she’ll be a traitor. And you know what happens to traitors of the crown.”
They were fed to the vile beasts lurking in the darkest parts of the sea. And from the warning glinting in Luna’s moon-like eyes, Aurora could see she was hungry for blood. Luna didn’t understand that Mariana was already willing to die trying to save them all.
But Aurora would never let that happen.
“Be careful what you say, Luna. Like calls to like, and if you let that darkness consume you, there will be no coming back.”
“There’s no darkness in my soul,” she spat. “Only the light of the moon. And she sees everything.” She left with the whip of her tail, and Aurora shook her head.
The Goddess Selene was the “ she ” Luna referred to, whom Luna was named after.
Sirens didn’t pray to her like they did to Amphitrite—other than most of the cursed.
Before the Scourge became a necessary evil, very few had even recognized her as a goddess.
Something about that had always bothered Luna.
She and many cursed sisters fully embraced what it meant to be one of Selene’s Midnight Daughters—sirens who never wore armor enchanted by Cybele so they could bask in the sunshine, instead they chose the darkness of the sea under the full moon.
Even though Astra didn’t understand Luna’s fascination with the unpopular goddess, she had always accepted it.
Told her daughter she could pray to whomever she heard in her heart.
Aurora thought all of it was the craziest shit she’d ever heard.
Who wouldn’t want to feel the sun’s warmth on their skin?
See their scales glitter under the sunshine?
Who would want to only see the world under the cover of darkness?
Luna would shout at her that she would always have the moonlight to guide her through the world, but that wasn’t true.
A new moon was always swallowed between the folds of the midnight sky.
Something Luna seemed to forget, along with the fact that Astra had named her daughter Luna, not because she wanted her to become a Midnight Daughter, but because she was a celestial light of the heavens that brought hope to those trapped in darkness.
Aurora glanced down at the queen and sat on the other side of her bed, watching Malea repeatedly wipe Cybele’s forehead. She wondered if what Luna had said was true.
Had Mari returned to Salus, and had Cybele somehow forced her heir back into the wild to fend for herself? It was difficult to believe, but Aurora knew deep down that Luna spoke what she thought was true.
“She’s changed,” Malea observed softly, glancing at the door Luna had exited through before her eyes landed on Aurora. “I know it isn’t my place—”
Aurora held up her hand. “It’s fine, Malea. You know it’s fine. Please, continue.”
As Queen Cybele’s lady-in-waiting, Malea heard more than any other siren in the whole palace. She always refused to reveal a single hidden truth, but Aurora could see how she struggled.
“Malea,” Aurora said gently. “Tell me.”
Malea sighed. “The way Luna is behaving—it worries me. I always liked Astra, and you know I’d die for Princess Mariana, so if somehow Luna knows what’s happened, then clearly, it’s not being kept a secret.”
Aurora went still.
Swallowing, Malea murmured, “Mariana came back through a portal the witch opened for her when she reached out for help. I didn’t see what happened, but I heard Mariana say she thought a trap was waiting for her in Aurelia. ”
Aurora’s stomach tightened, her mouth pressing into a thin, grim line. “The queen didn’t listen to her,” she added, knowing the answer.
Malea sadly shook her head. “The queen asked me to fetch Mariana’s armor.
” Malea closed her eyes briefly, like the next part hurt her.
“Then she told Mariana to go back to her captor. He’d lead her to Astra.
And then I—” Malea averted her eyes briefly, biting her lip.
“I heard gasping, like Mariana was in distress. I heard the witch say, ‘You know what you have to do,’ and said something like Mariana had to go back or she’d die.
I still don’t understand what she meant.
” Malea shook her head and continued wiping the queen’s forehead.
“I don’t know, but the queen was on the floor the next moment, the princess was gone, and the witch was telling me not to say a word. ”
And yet Luna knew everything. There was only one other siren who could’ve told her.
“Thank you for sharing this with me, Malea. Your loyalty to Mariana doesn’t go unnoticed.”
Malea gave her a small smile, making Aurora’s heart constrict with an old memory of when they had been courting each other. But that was a long time ago, before the Banishment.
Lifting her mother’s limp, pale hand to her face, she kissed the top and got up from her seat.
Cybele’s hand suddenly gripped her own. And what she mumbled loud enough for Aurora and Malea to hear made the room fall still.