“It’s a female,” I say with a wince, the throbbing of my now deformed fin sending shock waves of pain up my entire body.
The copper-haired siren scoffs as she attempts to swim past me to where the fae is floating. I block her path, yelping in pain with the movement. Sparing a glance, I watch Mashaka dart behind the sirens.
“I know who you are.” Orange eyes gleam with malice as a smile wide enough to show her canines lifts her cheeks. She swims until her chest brushes against my own, our scales scratching against each other. “Princess Aria, the disappointment of the Siren Queendom.” Her eyes flick behind me, and her smile grows, making her features turn predatory. “Tifala, what do you think our glorious queen would say if she were to learn that her very own daughter wassavingthose from our wrath?”
“It’s afemale,” I say, backing up towards the fae.
Cackling travels on the water between us as she tilts her head back in glee. “This is exactly what we need, Tifala, to get back in the queen’s good graces. To get back into Lumen.” She turns her gaze to me, dipping her chin towards her chest. “Imagine theembarrassmentthe queen will feel to know that you, once again, have disappointed her. What would she give us to keep this transgression a secret?”
Tifala’s green eyes gleam with the same eagerness, making a pit form in my stomach. I shake my head, my fingers curling and muscles tensing in anticipation of an attack. “She’d rather kill us all than have anything held over her head like that. She treats me no differently than anyone else under her command.” But I can tell that my words don’t reach them.
They close in on me until the one that ripped through my tailfin shoots her hand out to cover one set of gills on the side of my neck. Tifala attempts to swim past me, but I lurch in her direction, digging my claws into her arm as I grip on to her. She hisses, slashing out towards me and cutting the strap of my bag where it hangs across my body. I feel the weight of it leave as I struggle to keep her in my grasp. White flares slowly creep in to the edges of my vision, my oxygen intake slowing by half.
“Traitorousbitch,” the siren slowly suffocating me seethes before her other hand covers the rest of my gills, cutting me off from oxygen completely.
“No,” I grunt out, forced to release Tifala.
“I can’twaitto get back into Lumen. It looks like betrayal doesn’t just run inmyfamily line. I will use you to gain my freedom back,Your Highness.”
Pain singes my nerve endings, spots of black now merging with the white and clouding my vision. I can’t see the other siren, can’tthinkbeyond the fact that I’ve failedagain.Another death on my hands. Another tarnished mark on my soul.
I stare into those orange eyes, the hatred mingling with desperation, and wasn’t that just the existence of sirens as a whole now? No matter which side of the line they stood on, our people were consumed with desperaterage.
My fingers begin to weaken around her wrists, my grip slipping as the view in front of me begins to fade.
Screaming.There is screaming. My eyes fly open while oxygen rushes into my body, my gills no longer obstructed. I blink quickly, trying to get my bearings as I spin in a circle. A shadow darts past, leaving small bubbles in its wake as it collides with Tifala. She growls, slashing out with her claws into the shadow’s side. A high-pitched wail slides along my bones, the owner of it darting backward before swimming in my direction.
Mashaka.
I rush towards him, but then the glint of orange and red scales flashes above me, and I change my direction to where the siren is lifted partially out of the water, her upper body leaning onto the substitute raft still holding the fae. Anger, hotter than the pain firing down my tail, propels me faster until I’m right beneath her. I don’t think, letting some feral instinct fuel me, as Idigmy talons into either side of the siren’s waist. I avoid her scales, instead finding the softest part of her flesh for me to gut. An ear-piercing scream sounds above, but I ignore it as I force my claws to slice deeper into her skin—her muscle—drawing them down towards her middle as dark blue blood leaks out into the water.
My hair is harshly yanked back, my throat bared as Tifala stares down at me. “You willpayfor that. Go, Zina, I’ve got her.”
Her closed fist, talons retracted in, rains down on my temple, the impact making my vision grow hazy again. I feel a quick jerk through my hands, the warmth of Zina gone as she frees herself from my hold. My head snaps to the side as I’m pummeled with another hit. Disoriented, I reach back to try and claw at Tifala. My movements are too frantic to land, and I watch, horror barreling through me, as she winds her arm back again—her teeth gritted and green eyes glowing with the kind of vengeance that has waited decades to be released. I squeeze my eyes closed, preparing for the pain and the possibility of being dragged back to my mother with the tale of what I’ve done. But the fist never connects with my skin.
“No!” Tifala screams, letting me go.
I right myself, watching as she rushes to get to where Mashaka has clamped his mouth over Zina’s neck. A cloud of dark blue blood blooms like a veil around them, but through it, I watch as the siren claws at Mashaka to no avail. He lets out a deep noise, and then there is a massivecrunch.
Chapter Sixty-Eight: Aria
Tifala’s growl is beastlyas she reaches the other siren a second too late. She claws at Mashaka, digging into his shiny dark gray skin until his own scream vibrates through my very bones.
“Mashaka!” My pace is slow, barely faster than the equivalent of a crawl in my mortal form, but I push forward.
Tifala claws and shreds at Mashaka, the now lifeless Zina sinking beneath them to the depths of the ocean floor. New blood—redblood—clouds the water quickly.Too quickly.Mashaka is able to get his mouth around one of her wrists, clenching down as it snaps her bones. Her hand hangs limply, but she pays it no heed as the talons on her other hand stab into him before she drags them along his side. He wails, the sound like a ballad of death; one that I know he won’t be able to come back from. Tears blur my eyes, my magic swelling in my throat from my instincts roaring within me. But our songs don’t work on each other.
Tifala is so focused on killing Mashaka that she doesn’t sense me behind her. She doesn’t have time to stop me when I use every last ounce of adrenaline and strength in my body to jab my talons into the gills on both sides of her neck. Iprodthem inside of her, pushing hard as Iscreamand not stopping until I think I hit bone. Until I imagine that I can feel the tips of my claws touching in the middle of her throat. I scream again—one that forces the ocean into dead silence. Tifala falls limp, and I forcefully snatch my hands away from her, watching as her stiff body drifts towards the ocean floor, a trail of blue blood following.
But she isn’t the only one.
“Mashaka!” I cry, my tail moving unsteadily as my hips undulate and bring me towards him. “Mashaka,” I repeat, retracting my claws to gently grasp on to him. He’s too heavy, and I’m too weak to hold him aloft in the water, so we begin to sink together as I gently roll his body over until I can see his face. “No. No.No.”
Though they are open, no life swirls in his black eyes. A sob forces its way out of me while I carefully caress the space beneath them, his silky skin paler in color.
“Why did you help? You were supposed to choose yourself,” I remind him, the water growing darker as we sink farther away from the sun’s reach. “You didn’t stop the Tula Ledge monster.You—” I stop speaking, unable to navigate the words past the sadness lodged in my throat.In my chest.
Mashaka is dead. This grumpy, sometimes downrightmeandelphinidae, is dead, and my heart is breaking. Because he had riskedeverythingto save me. The only being in my life to have ever done so. I drape myself over his body, his warmth already a fading memory. As my ears pop and pressure squeezes me the lower we sink, I wonder if it’s better to just stay here in the icy depths of the ocean. If it’s better to succumb to the slow death that seems to linger around me no matter where I go.
