“I’ve been following you since I spotted you at the seamounts. Your little display of anger was quite impressive to watch. It almost made me think you were the one who tipped us off that the Queen’s Legion was coming, but then I remembered hearing whispers of you being gone for weeks on a mission for your mother. What did the queen send you out for?” She keeps her back to me as she slowly inspects the treasures of the dead, sometimes lifting one up to examine it more closely.
“Nia, you can’t tell anyone about—”
“No,” she interjects, finally turning to face me. Her pace as she moves towards me is slow and calculated, and she waits until she’s close enough that I can see the freckles on her cheeksbefore she speaks again. “You do not get to issue the commands here. It seems I’ve stumbled onto something quite forbidden, wouldn’t you say?”
I shake my head, ready to plead with her to keep this quiet. Maybe if I tell her what she wants to know, she’ll leave with the promise to not say anything. “My mother sent me to the Northern Island to retrieve a set of spelled rings. I don’t know what her plan is for them; she never told me. Please, Nia, I swear that is all I know,” I plead, showing her the palms of my hands.
“Let me see your bag,” she demands. I untie it, handing it to her and watching as she riffles through it. The only thing in there now is the dagger I found in the early days of the trip. Nia tosses both to the ground, deeming them worthless, as she turns to look all around the cave. “How long have you had this little space?”
I hesitate, unsure if her knowing the truth would be better or worse. Her head snaps towards me, her blue eyes flaring in warning. The truth, then. “A few years. I started collecting items from the males who were felled by our song.”
Nia lifts a brow and smirks. “Morbid. And nobody else knows of its existence?”
“No. Iswearit. It serves no purpose other than for me to have a space of my own.”
“Not anymore,” Nia says under her breath, her gaze tracking up to the hole in the rock above us.
Fear keeps its fingers wrapped tightly around my throat as I prepare to keep pleading, but Nia, with a move faster than I expect, punches me directly in the face, right below my left eye. I let out a yelp, my body propelled backward until it slams into the wall. Nia is there, sending another closed fist into the other side of my face. I try to cower behind my raised arms, but she pins them to my sides before leaning in towards me.
“That was for agreeing with your mother to keep us doomed to the seamounts.”
My flowing tears mix into the seawater as I stare at her. “I am onlyoneperson, Nia. And the least influential one at that. It would have changednothing.”
Releasing my arms, she slams my head against the rock, wrapping a fist tightly into my long braids. Her figure blurs in front of me as I grip her wrist and try to right myself.
“They’re just excuses, Aria. Pathetic,weakexcuses. But you have the opportunity to make it up to me—tous.All you have to do is let us meet here.”
My ears ring, my focus waning with the dizziness in my head. “What do you mean?”
“The cave.” She gestures with her chin. “When we were tipped off last week about your mother’s impending raid, we were able to get the children and older sirens out to Eersten before the Queen’s Legion came, but we lost a lot of our weapons and gear that we had slowly been stockpiling. With this cave, I can safely coordinate meetings with the sirens I send out to spy on the Legion. We’ll take our weapons back and store them here until the time is right.”
“Nia,please,” I cry, squeezing my eyes closed. “This is theonlyplace I have that is safe—”
“And what a fucking luxury that is, you spoiled, stupid brat. You claim you want to help us, that you areonly one person,yet when I ask you to give me access to the one thing that could help us, you selfishly try to keep it.No. If you want the queen left unaware about this little spot, you’ll do as I ask.” Her forearm presses into my neck, forcing my eyes to open and look into hers. “You will help me find where your mother has hidden the weapons they stole from us and then bring them here. Do that, and I won’t let anyone else know about this place. When it comes time to end your family’s line, I will allow you to keep your pathetic life. Do you understand?”
Not knowing what else to do, I nod my throbbing head in silence. Nia eases up her hold on me, prowling around the cave one final time before looking at me over her shoulder.
“Pleasure talking with you, Your Highness.” She pushes through the sea kelp and leaves.
I sink against the wall, my hands cradling my head, as the weight of what I’ve agreed to drags me farther down into darkness. The irony of being asked to help Nia find weapons my mother took from her mere minutes after my mother has commanded that I find the sirens of the seamounts has me biting down hard on the inside of my cheek. I am not a spy. I am not some sort of clever sleuth.I cannot do this.
Gently rubbing my eyes, I swim to the center of the cave that is no longer my own and curl in on myself, burying my head in my arms.
Every time I manage to close my eyes, I think of all that has happened to me—all that still awaits—and find that I’d much rather be awake. When a familiar, gentle set of knocks rouses me from the glass art I’m working on, I nearly knock it over in my rush to the door.
Lyre lets out a small laugh as I barrel into her, squeezing her tightly to me. “Where have you been?” I ask, my mouth muffled in her lavender hair. I had been home for days and hadn’t seen her in the palace or out on hunts. Her arms wrap around me once before she forcefully draws back, her gaze going to the hallway.
“I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to see you until now.” She offers no other explanation as nervous energy rattles her body. When I back up into my room to beckon her in, she shakes her head. “We’ve been summoned by her.”
I follow Lyre down the hall from our rooms, bypassing the throne room and heading towards the palace exit. “Do you know what is happening?”
“It could be one of a number of things,” she responds quietly. After feeling the weight of my stare on the side of her face, she sighs and adds, “None of which I believe are good.” My lips draw down in a frown as I fully take in my sister. While appearing on the outside as lovely as she always has—her light purple scales glistening against the phosphorescent lights that glow from the plants on the ocean floor—there is something draining her that wasn’t there before I left for the Northern Island.
Shaking off my feeling of unease, we join my mother and the rest of my sisters outside the palace. Allegra ignores me, her gaze sharp in the direction of the Continent’s shores. Sade’s biceps flex as she ties her orange braids back, her sunset eyes finding mine with a short linger before she diverts them. Dyanna, her pink-colored scales glimmering against her dark skin, twirls a piece of seaweed in her hand, looking more bored than anything else. My sisters and I have never joined my mother like this outside of the queen’s assemblies.
“Daughters, it is time to begin the first act of my grand plan to bring us back to the surface.” My ruby brows raise in surprise as I glance around our small group to gauge everyone else’s reactions. While Lyre shares my confusion, Allegra, Sade, and Dyanna do not. Our mother offers no other explanation as she turns to face north, towards the Continent. “Let us rewrite history.”
We swim for a while, the full moon at its highest point in the sky our only source of light. When my mother diverts towards the surface, we all follow, breaking through the water one at a time. I eye the length of the shore in both directions, trying to surmise how far west we’ve gone.
