Page 25 of Wicked Tides #1

Dahlia

We are children of a cruel mother.

Daughters of an absent father.

~ Unknown

Meridan was freed from the mast only to be taken down to the holding cell with me afterward.

The hate bleeding off the crew’s faces was thick.

I could see it in their eyes. None of them had kept a siren alive long enough to interact with one and their desire to kill us made them unpredictable.

They were accustomed to capturing and beheading, but now their captain was allowing two to remain on his ship.

It boggled my mind. But if there was one thing I could tell, it was that Vidar’s men trusted him.

Maybe more than they trusted themselves.

If I could bend him, it would bend his crew.

Neither of us struggled when we were taken to the holding cell.

I was too focused on being alone to ask Meridan what happened than anything.

After we were shoved back into the hold, I watched the two men leave us there in the near darkness, listening to their footsteps fade toward the upper deck.

Then I swung around to face Meridan, who had already settled on the floor against the wall.

“I hate it here,” she said, her eyes wandering.

“Then why did you come?”

“I didn’t mean to. I was nearby, using the ship to deter pursuers.”

Our eyes met and I immediately saw a shift in her demeanor. Without prying eyes to peel her apart, she dropped the hard mask and deflated her lungs in defeat.

“Kea is dead,” she muttered.

I stilled, unsure for a moment that I heard her right. “What?”

“When he took you, we followed. We stayed deeper so he would not see us. He didn’t…

but they did. The xhoth. We fled, but Kea was killed.

” Her voice turned stony and flat. “They speared her right beside me. Dragged her back. I saw them rip into her with claws and teeth. They are a menace. One that rivals hunters like Vidar because they swim our waters. I never thought I’d see the day when they came up from the depths like this.

This is the third time we’ve seen them in as many months. ”

My heart ached to know that two of my sisters had been killed in a matter of days by an enemy we barely believed existed until they appeared to us.

I had been so close to exacting revenge on Vidar.

I shook my head, enraged that I was being so selfish when Kea and Voel were both gone, brutally murdered by something that wasn’t even supposed to be there.

With a deep sigh, I walked over and slid down the wall to sit beside her.

“This is wrong,” I said, listening to the vast expanse of rolling water around us. It seemed darker. Deeper. Angrier now that new monsters occupied it. “We both know the xhoth shouldn’t be here. Have things really become so off balance?”

“I’ve never worshipped Akareth. Perhaps this is my punishment. Perhaps he has sent his sons just to eat us all. ”

“Don’t be foolish. Akareth, if he exists, is of flesh and bone like anything else. And so are his sons.”

“Either way, now we are trapped between two enemies.”

I let out a breath, coming to terms with it all.

Above us, I knew the girls were freely roaming and I recalled the exact look on Vidar’s face when he held his blade to the older girl’s throat.

He was crueler and more ruthless than even his father was.

He was part of the reason the sons had crawled to the surface from their dark caverns and trenches.

Ahnah still had the will to smile and it was problematic for me to want to preserve that when she was the spawn of the very thing that I hated. Humans. Men like Vidar.

But her smile was too precious to destroy. I knew what it was like to lose it. I might as well have died when my childhood was ripped from me.

I winced at my compassion. It made me weak, but I couldn’t help it.

I inched closer to Meridan.

“I don’t know how much safer we are on board this ship,” I whispered.

“Nowhere is safe. At least if these men choose to kill us, beheading is known to be their most popular method.” She swallowed, taking a deep breath of the stagnant air in the hold. “Kea was awake long enough to see her limbs floating away when the sons got her.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, saying a silent prayer for her before I let the overwhelming frustration burn through my heart. I didn’t have space to hate someone or something more than I hated Vidar, but the sons were making a rotten cavity for themselves in my terrible heart whether I liked it or not.

“What do we do, Dahlia?”

Her voice was smaller than I’d ever known it to be. We weren’t used to fearing the ocean like that. We were outsiders. There was a certain unease about being rejected everywhere and having no place of refuge. The sons planted a different kind of dread. One that made me feel helpless .

I balled my hands into fists against my knees.

“There is something awful happening in the water,” I said.

“Worse than the xhoth?”

“The men on that merchant ship did not have silentiums.”

“Not all men do.”

“No, but more than one had had a sigil carved into his skin. Our sisters had visited them.”

“You think they were under someone’s influence?”

I nodded. “I think those men were doing someone’s bidding. Not just anyone’s bidding, actually. The symbol was Kroan.”

“Then the girls…” She paused “What were the girls for?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps the men were meant to bring them bodies. Ligeia’s clan hunts these waters. She always had a greater taste for humans than even my mother. And with so many hunters on the surface, she would not be above making men do the work she did not want to.”

“I don’t want to believe our own kind is swaying men to bring them innocent children, but I do. I also don’t want to believe Akareth’s sons are now hunting us. What has become of us?”

“Our people are desperate. Hunters are killing us and there are rumors that some of us are being taken alive, silenced, and sold to men far from the sea. Far from our home.”

Meridan’s face twisted with disgust.

“That they eat our tongues is barbaric enough. Now they must defile our bodies?”

“We devour them completely when it suits us.”

“And selling us? Imprisoning us? I’d rather die than be shipped away in chains for sick men to use.”

“It is a hateful and endless cycle, Meridan. One we will never escape.”

“I wish I could hide in the depths and never come back. Without knowing the xhoth are down there, of course.” She paused a moment, picking at her nails.

“And the girls? Do you think these men will truly help them or will they all meet the same fate as us? For all we know, Vidar is the foulest man alive. He almost killed that girl in front of you. He doesn’t even care for other humans let alone us. How could he be trusted in any way?”

I raised a brow. “You trusted him enough to free him on that island.”

She cocked her head. “Desperation is something I’m familiar with, too.”

“You shouldn’t risk yourself for me. Nor should you have let him go. You should have run.”

“You would risk yourself for me. You would deny it, but I know you would. It’s in your soul to care about others.”

“It’s in my soul to kill,” I groaned.

“Is it really? You and I have not been to the true depths like others have. Like your mother had. Our minds have not yet been stripped and shattered by whatever is down there. To say it is in your soul to kill is somewhat of a lie, I think. I think we kill for reasons, even if they’re our own.”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not. What are we going to do?”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “I don’t know what we are going to do, but Vidar has already uncovered more than one of my weaknesses and he’s already using them against me.”

“Then we find one of his.”

“I think I have.” I inched closer to her, lowering my voice. “You know there are scattered whispers that we can see into the dreams of our enemies if we eat of their flesh.”

“Mystics like to ramble about it, yes.”

“I’ve eaten of Vidar,” I reminded her. “And I believe I walked in his dreams. I think I am connected to him, whether I want to be or not. Now that we’re near, something has changed.”

Her white eyes widened a bit when she processed my words. I could see the thoughts churning in her mind just like they’d been churning in mine .

“You can plant seeds,” she whispered. “Poison him against himself. Against his crew. Bend him to your will.”

“That would take time.”

“We may not have time before he chooses to kill us. We will have to take our chances with the monsters below.”

“He wants to know about them. It’s the only reason we’re here. So, we will give him what he wants. It will give us time and I can outsmart him if I have that time.” I turned my darkened gaze toward the swinging lamp and ground my teeth. “I can take Vidar’s mind apart.”

“You could use him. Make him protect us. Turn his crew into our own just like that other crew was being used.”

It was a lot. Especially for someone like me who was completely unlearned in using a man’s dreams against him.

It was in our nature to manipulate. To reform a man’s resolve.

To replace his desires and amplify his needs.

So few of my kind stretched that ability further than their voice, but I knew I could do it. I was Reyna’s daughter.

And from that point onward, I was going to peel Vidar apart and expose his core. I was going to break him.