But deep down, I already knew who was inside.
“Clare? My love, Clare, is that you?”
A siren man with a long, scraggly, gray beard and suspended gray locks rushed into view, and his song slammed into my soul.
I could feel my heart crushing under the weight of his words.
He called for my mother.
“No, I am not Clare,” I said out loud, my voice breaking.
His song flooded my senses in fast and frantic drumbeats that felt flat and dull. As if aged and worn from time and suffering.
“Little princess,”he said through his ancient, tired song.
Tears were blurring him. I nodded my head.
“Yes, it’sme,” I whispered.
“She told me so much of you, sweet little Elowyn. I begged her to take you to Naiadon to save you both. But she knew your destiny, your greatness. She knew that one day you would be queen.”
His music painted gossamer colors in my mind, the story in the journal coming to life, but this time through Aegir’s eyes. My mother, a young woman with raven hair dancing in a tavern. Her laughter unrestrained. Her warm smile aglow in the tavern’s candlelight.
They walked the beach, and the ocean echoed in her eyes. Aegir knew a queen stood before him. A low, bitter note intertwined with the imagery. Because destiny ensured she did in fact become a queen, but never his.
Bruises blued her pale flesh. Her smile dimmed, but the crashing sea never faded from her eyes as she met Aegir each night, even as her belly grew. Aegir’s hand pressed to her stomach, pure joy flooding through him as he felt a baby kick. The powerful sound of nature radiating from within. My song. The one I heard under the sea with Hylos.
Naiadon projected into my mind. They walked in the glade, smiling at the birds. They sat by the hearth in the study, reading books and drinking from warm mugs, as Hylos and I had once. They swam through the sea on the backs of the sea horses, and the smile of the young woman in the tavern persisted across my mother’s face when she was with Aegir. A smile I never knew. Not until now.
Then a discordant harmony shivered down my spine. Mother was older. The same as I remembered her last, again with child. Every dawn Aegir watched the two beings he loved most in this world pass through the opening, into danger. Until one day, only Hylos arrived below her portrait, the ocean echoing in his eyes.
I knew her fate. Executed on Highthorn’s steps for betraying the king. But now I knew her crime. Loving another man and giving birth to his child. Tears streamed down my face in rivers of bittersweet pain. Aegir gave her life purpose, and for that, my father sentenced her to death. Executed for daring to find joy.
Aegir searched for her. Even though he knew in his heart that she was gone. Even when he heard it from the foul mouth of a peasant, a rotten-toothed smile gleefully declaring the death of the Highthorn Whore. But he didn’t give up. He needed to return her body to where it belonged. To allow her to finally rest in the sea.
After years of searching, he went desperately into the lion’s den; Highthorn Castle. Where he was captured, but not by my father. No, it was a courtier who stumbled upon him, keen enough to know his power. A woman with eyes like a hawk’s.Jessal.She tricked him with promises of being united with my mother. Foolishly, he believed her. Then she captured him. With time, the courtier became the new queen of Oakhaven, taking my mother’s place, all while using Aegir’s power.
Black shapes passed through the warped glass, the figures bending over a massive object beside him. Then torturous pain clawed at his skin, but I felt as if his skin was my own. The pain twisted the threads of his song, inverting his lulling notes into something darker. I felt the split as fragments of him were pulled away, siphoned into the waiting vessel.
When they left him, he was weak and hollow, abandoned in the dark until the full moon swelled and restored his strength again. Then they returned, and the ritual repeated: carve into his song, rip it from him, and feed it to the object that Aegir showed me. It looked like a pipe organ, but with markings like those on the obelisks in the Womb of Nymphaea. Did it work like the structure? Taking song and echoing it somehow?
Five long years of this—five years of his song being turned against his people. Because they used it to capture them. Agony sank Aegir to unfathomable depths of despair. He watched sirens arrive with songs strong and defiant, only to hear them falter, fade, and fall silent over time before they vanished, replaced by others. He knew their magic was being drained, but the method was unclear to him from his prison. What wasthe point of it all? Why were they doing this? It remained an unanswered question that gnawed at what remained of his mind.
Nymphaea take my power, please.Aegir’s prayer surfed on his song. A prayer he made every minute of every hour. Repeatedly driving him mad. But the Holy Mother did not answer his prayers. He kept his power. He charged the mysterious object against his will. And they captured his people.
The song’s vision ripped from my mind, slamming me back to the present. Back to the prison I stood before now. “I hear your mother,”Ageir’s song flooded into my mind.“I hear her song blended into your own. The song of my queen.”
“Get away from there!” Cedric shouted, and pulled me back hard, breaking the spell. Aegir looked at him, anger marking his worn features. “Do not trust him, Princess. He helped her. Never trust him. Defend your land with Hylos by sea. Take the crown. That is what your mother wanted.”
“What have you done to him?” I looked up at Cedric, tears streaming down my face. He dragged me, his hand gripping my arm hard as a vise. I slammed my fist into his back. Hard as Nixie taught me, muscle memory centering me in the stance she made me repeat. Cedric stopped, stunned.
He turned to me, letting go.
“It’s the only way to help our people.”
“Heisa person, Cedric.” My voice shattered.
Cedric’s heavy gaze searched me, something skulking in the thickets of his eyes.
