Raylik shook his head in a disbelieving no, but said, “We should have known.”
A cannonball whistled between us, slamming into another siren, unnaturally indenting her chest in blood and gore. Her body was propelled into three others behind her.
“Hurry, Elowyn,” Raylik shouted, then raced toward the impact we had both just witnessed.
Which way, my rider?the creature sang.
It startled me, but quickly I sang back,To the siren king.
The sea beast chuffed and raced through the water. I leaned left, then right, weaving through sirens fighting and dying.
Then a familiar ship caught my eye. Black and blood-red sails in the distance. The ship that had stunned Hylos. The ship that could lull sirens.
No. No.No.
They all would be rendered incapacitated in mere moments.
Faster please, we must get to him.The beast let out a nicker and doubled its speed, my hair whipping around me in tendrils of red and blue.
Men and women fell around me from the ships above as sirens threw spears through the salted air that shattered armor and crunched bones. The air was heavy with the scent of iron from the blood that tinted the sea.
Then I saw Hylos, still in his chariot. He waved his hands, guiding orbs of water that raced above his army and shot into the sails. Ships were engulfed in his wake.
He turned his head to me as if he’d heard me coming, those hard, sapphire-blue eyes cutting into me.
His song roared on drumrolls,What are you doing here?
That ship headed toward us, it’s the same that almost took you. Hylos, they are coming for you. Your army will be lulled and taken,I sang back.
His eyes scanned the horizon until he spotted the sails.
With a steady hand and his power, he willed a large swell to rise. It grew and grew and rushed toward the ships. Then with another push, it toppled over, swallowing three ships whole before us.
Move onward!Hylos commanded his army. It obeyed, progressing toward land. An arrow whizzed past my head.
The steed below me reared, crying,Careful, rider.
But there was no time for care.
I watched Hylos, his face stern and without mercy, eyeing his target. Land.
There had to be something I could do. Some way to stop this. I had all this power coursing through me, yet knew so little about how it truly worked beyond natural inclination.
“Holy Mother, please help me,” I prayed to Nymphaea, who had taken me this far. “Please. I cannot do this alone,” I begged.
The battle raged on all around me. It was too big. Too great. I could not stop it. Not alone.
But then a song grew inside me, unfurling in my chest. No. From my chest. I listened to it carefully and soon it grew.Elowyn Blackthorn.The voice bellowed through me,You are a queen!
It was unmistakably my mother’s voice, but sharpened within my own. But how?
Then, another woman’s voice joined her. I’d never heard it before, but the very marrow in my bones knew it to be my mother’s mother, a woman lost to history altogether, whose name I shared.
Another woman shouted on with her, and it was her mother, who also bore the name Elowyn. Then her mother, and her mother, and hers rang true. A chorus of Elowyns wailed and cried and sang across time and space, demanding to be heard. To be known. To be recognized.
How?I asked the calling song.How can I hear you, Mother?
Music carries through centuries. Sung into the ears of babes. Hummed as one passes you in the street. It surrounds you. It is you. We are always singing to you, my love, but in this form, you can finally hear us clearly, and we sing to give you strength for what is to come.
