My eyes found Lyla again. She was watching me… not Akareth. Her attention was fixed on me as if waiting for me to do something.
Or perhaps she was taking as much pleasure from my circumstance as our father was, praying it would undo me. Vengeance was a potent motivation and she had plenty to avenge.
“And once we’re silent? Then what?” I said. “You cast us aside. You call another to see how they can entertain your curiosities?”
“Like little buds, peeled apart for me to see what lies beneath. Yes. I watch my most beautiful designs kill. Devour. Skeem. It’s… fascinating. For now.”
I recoiled at the imagery.
“How long have you been here?”
“I have always been here. Older than stone. Older than breath. I am the silence between heartbeats, the pause before creation remembers itself. When I slumber, the world softens. It grows complacent, stagnant,rottingin its stillness. But boredom is a cruel hunger, and chaos... chaos is my feast. The Kroans were all too eager to offer themselves to my need.”
“You made us this way…out of boredom.”
“A creator, I am not. I did notmakeanything. I simply encouraged. Added. You are all a magnificently dreadful species, thirsty for disorder. For conflict. Near perfect.”
I took in a deep breath of the increasingly foul-smelling air, reminding myself that I had nothing else to lose. Nothing else to give. I glimpsed my empty hands and imagined myself cutting open my head, pulling my brain from my skull, and surrendering it to Akareth. It was a nauseating thought to give my mind to another.To allow it to be used as theater. As a thing to be molded, broken, and restitched in a thousand different ways only to ease his boredom.
“You’re no god.” I slowly rolled onto my knees and slouched back on my ankles, hair hanging in strings around my face. “You are just a creature displaced in a world that is not yours.”
“Very bold of you, daughter.”
“I’mnotyour daughter. Sirens do not need a seed to be born. We are the seed. The ocean is our mother. You are just a pretender. You always have been. Even now you wear a mask.”
“No seed? I pull the strings on your thoughts as a man pulls the strings on a puppet. How then do you think Kroans have been blessed with such power to sway men the same way? By will of the sea? Daughter, it is my seed that planted such a gift. Youaremy daughters. All of you. And I am your god. The source of your terrifying power.”
I was going to die that night. Of that, I was certain. My heart had already perished. My body was soon to follow. I lurched unstably to my feet one final time, trembling under my own, oppressive weight.
“The only way you ever gained control over us is by stripping us of everything we are. So, you control nothing but empty vessels. And that is like a child calling itself a god over its wooden toys.”
His pale, deformed head slowly slanted to one side, but still, his expression was as dead as a rock like he was donning a guise over which he had no control. He did not know how to feel. How to express. He was nothing.Hewas nothing.
“Is a child not a god over its toys?” he said.
“A child is naïve.” I glanced at Lyla again. “But you get so much wrong. You couldn’t even break her and you took her as a baby to the depths. She knew nothing outside of your influence and still, she is not without hope. I know it. You’ve not claimed her completely… even if she does not believe it.”
Lyla swallowed, her features softening a touch as if my words had soothed some tension from her muscles.
Akareth made a sound that I did not recognize. A hiss of sorts, but it was not made of breath. Lyla moved toward his outstretched hand to stand beside him, dwarfed by his stature. The Kraal grew bolder, slithering out of the water, their smiles deforming their faces as they dragged their heavy tails behind them, inching toward their terrible master like magots to a rotten piece of meat.
He regarded me, eyes so dark I could feel them eating away at what was left of me like a rat picking at scraps. I watched as his mouth began to twitch, lips stretching one way and then the other in an eerie effort to smile. But the smile kept going, unveiling uneven rows of sharp, pin-like teeth that consumed the lower half of his face. My nose wrinkled at the filthy features before me.
“You will be a joy to take apart. Like your mother.”
He took a step forward, his hand slowly rising, bony fingers uncurling toward my face once more. I clenched my jaw, preparing for the sickness I would feel if his skin touched mine. He took another step, the air around him turning rancid and thick. I dug my heels into the ground, rooting myself in place as the backs of his fingers brushed the side of my face. Nausea indeed unfurled in my stomach like a weed. He felt cold. Wet. Clammy. It was like he had tried to copy the texture of skin, but like his face, he’d failed to make it accurate. Or perhaps that was how I imagined him, like he said. Maybe he was not real, just like his dreams were nothing but visions feigning truth.
Did he even fucking exist?
The tips of long nails scraped lightly along my jaw and over the side of my neck, making me shiver like he was raping me all over again. I closed my eyes, my body tensing at the memory of his touch reaching too deeply. I nearly gagged at the thought.
“Your greed will destroy the world you find so entertaining,” I said.
“Perhaps. I shall like to see how it ends.”
“You… took everything from me.”
“If there is truly nothing left, then I have so much space to fill.”
