“Vidar, there’s one more thing,” I said just as he was about to walk away. “This cannot wait. Do not trust the water. Tell all of the men. Xhoth are not the only thing we need to fear now, I suspect.”
“Aye, Meridan mentioned something. Other sirens.”
“Not like us. They can mimic any voice they hear. The whole crew must know. Even a silentium cannot deafen any of us to their tricks. We all must be smarter.”
“I’ve never seen them before. Why is this only being mentioned now?”
“Even we have dismissed them for years. I never would have thought it worth mentioning before.”
His jaw ticked. “I will spread the word. Any other monsters we should know about?”
I shrugged. “Not at the moment.”
“Right.”
Pulling me in, he gave me a quick but reassuring kiss on the lips and then headed toward the helm. As soon as he stepped away, my view of the neighboring ship was unobstructed and I saw Aeris standing near the shroud, staring across the water at me. Our eyes met as the two ships prepared for the short journey side by side.
I’d known humans and sirens to fear me. To hate me. The way Aeris gawked felt more like she was worried. Worried I would ruin everything she loved and she very clearly loved her pirate captain. Perhaps she loved his crew the way I was growing increasingly close to Vidar’s.
I wished I could tell her that I was worried, too. That I didn’t know how things would turn out.
I also wished I could tell her that none of that mattered. The growing number of enemies in the water could only mean one thing. A few skirmishes here and there were no longer how the war was going to be fought. The deep was ascending and it was going to be a slaughter.
Tears of sadness. Tears of joy.
The salt of the ocean doesn’t know the difference.
~ C.K. Douns
One decision on the sea could be the difference between winning and losing everything. I wasn’t sure where we went wrong when it came to Gus or if there was ever a path that didn’t lead to his demise. I knew we were all hanging on to the end of a frayed rope with one hand while hungry beasts were waiting below, but somehow, losing Gus was still a punch to the gut that I wasn’t prepared for. It knocked the wind out of me. Made me stupid. Made me lose myself for a moment.
As we sailed through the open ocean and I was allowed hours of silence to absorb our situation and even a few hours of sleep, my wits started to come back to me like a pack of scared animals emerging from their burrow after a storm. I had my wrists rested between the pegs on the thick, wooden wheel as the sun started to set. It had been a sunny day, which was a fool’s sign that things would lean in our favor. I was proud to know my men weren’t fools and every crewman that was on the deck was hard at work doingsomething productive with their hands while their eyes were on the water, expecting the worst.
Sailing just outside the Weaver’s wake was Nazario’s ship, the Amanacer. The man had a drive after all. My brief conversation with him that morning yielded only an agreement on a destination. The real conversation would need to happen when we were someplace more suitable for the task.
Reach the island. Bury Gus. Get our bearings.
And, if circumstances allowed, let Dahlia speak with the siren bitch secured in my hold.
My nostrils flared in silent anger over the fact that she was alive. I curled my fingers into fists, biting my teeth imagining the things I would do to her if she didn’t prove useful to us. Out of sheer pleasure, I would cut her to pieces and savor her screams the way she savored Dahlia’s. The way her people had savored the suffering of Dornwich.
Stupid. It was stupid of humanity to think they could control a siren, even without her tongue and blades. Dornwich was proof that a siren whose heart was still beating was capable of far more than anyone wanted to accept. If Treson Harbor had not yet fallen to the same fate, I suspected it would soon. The way Meridan explained the overtaken town to me made my skin itch. I’d seen all manner of horrors, but things were taking a turn even I felt ill prepared for.
And the voices. They could mimic us now and that didn’t just make my skin itch, it made my whole body stiff like a corpse. Invisible hands were on all of us, making it known that we had only just begun to see the power of the abyss we’d all been teasing for generations. Our petty fighting had finally reached its end and the true battle was drawing closer.
“Land, cap’n!”
I glanced up at the crow’s nest and saw David pointing toward the sunset. Moments later, the tall palms of my father’s little island came into view, their silhouettes dark against the fading light. I knew the waters around the island ran deep and the shelf droppedoff sharply, so we anchored close to shore, making the trip to land an easy one. A few runs with the boats brought over most of the crew and a fair share of supplies. While the men stacked crates and barrels near the tree line, Mullins and I carefully lifted Gus’s wrapped body into one of the boats.
When it came time for us to board, I turned and caught sight of Dahlia as she helped move the last of the supplies. There was a look about her—jaw set, chin lifted, fists clenched at her sides. I didn’t need to ask what was on her mind. I knew she was thinking about our prisoner.
“She’s not staying on this ship,” I said. “We’ll stuff her into one of the cages we keep below.”
“You have cages below?”
“Something I’ve always had and never intended to use,” I shrugged. “They’re small, but unless you give a shit, I don’t care at all about her comfort.”
She nodded and the two of us ventured down into the stores, a place she’d never had a need to go before. Behind the water barrels were two covered cages barely large enough for a woman her size to crouch inside. We hauled it up, straining to drag the iron around corners and into the hold. Lyla was bound in the middle of the cell in the same position she’d been thrown in, her ankles tied up and her wrists locked behind her back. The leather belt that had been placed in her mouth had been replaced by a harness that buckled under her chin and over the top of her head with a wooden bit between her teeth.
