A knock rapped on my door. Quickly, I jammed the journal under my pillow and stepped across the room.
I opened the door to Nixie and Lumina.
“Morvyn said you were up for a picnic, still care to join us?” Nixie asked, a white woven bag slung over her bare shoulder like we weren’t hundreds of feet below the sea. Like I wasn’t the daughter of a king they called enemy, and they weren’t creatures I’d only heard of in holy prayers.
Lumina stood beside her in a filmy yellow gown.
It was another opportunity to explore this place and maybe find an escape. I nodded in agreement. “Sure.”
As we walked through the castle, it was apparent that the news of the human royal in Naiadon had broken. Eyes followed me intently as we walked through the halls, more so than when I was merely the human woman wandering freely among the sirens. Whispers followed in our wake, pricking my skin. A humanroyalin their midst was clearly more interesting. Especially one they believed could aid their regent in a war against her father.
We turned into a section of the castle I hadn’t seen yet and ascended a grand staircase, the stone steps broad but shallow. How far was I from Arlo and his men here?
The air felt warmer with each step upward, and then a familiar sound warbled in the distance. My heart faltered and my eyes grew wide; the birdsong I’d heard in the library. Did something else glow and sing for my touch? Lumina and Nixie looked at me knowingly. So they heard it too.
“Is that—?” As if answering my question, the birdsong rang true.
Nixie smiled at me brightly. Even Lumina’s lips drew upward.
I hurried up the stairs two at a time until they flowed to rolling, clover-covered hills, skyward glass bowed above, and the blue-green sea beyond it. The room brimmed with sunlight and was teeming with life. The sun made the space warm, like a giant greenhouse, as birds trilled and dove through oak trees.
“We thought you might miss home, and this is as close as we’ve got here in Naiadon,” Nixie said beside me. Lumina stood on my other side.
“How are there birds here?” I asked in awe.
“Hylos’s mother cherished the sound of birds in spring,” Lumina said as we walked out into the glade. “Aegir created this place and brought them here for her.”
The clover-covered ground, lush and soft, pressed against the bare arches of my feet.
“Love brought them here,” Nixie said.
“But how did he get them down here?” If all this life could get here, surely there was a way for me to leave this place with a crew of men in tow.
Nixie stopped and spread the blanket on the ground under an oak tree.
I craned my neck to admire its reaching limbs against the sea-sky. It was purely magical that it stood rooted here at all.
“It isn’t clear. But I’m sure he invoked something similar to your bracelet. He was a very powerful siren,” Lumina answered as we gathered on the blanket.
“Is that—” A hum buzzed by my ear as a fat, happy bumblebee zipped by. “Are those bees?”
“Yes,” Lumina said. “The glade is a fully functioning garden. We have an apiary, two dozen fruit trees, and of course, many florals. We crafted an ecosystem and each living creature plays its part in maintaining the grounds. The bees pollinate the flowers, the flowers grow then perish, fertilizing the ground, the birds eat other bugs found here, and on some days water will collect and it will even rain. Those are my favorite days.” The sound of life was music to my ears.
“After Aegirleft,” Lumina continued, “it went by the wayside, but I’ve been working on getting it back into shape, along with some others. Made sirens, like us”—Lumina nodded to Nixie—“especially cherish this space. A parcelof land but on our terms.”
They were both made. How many other sirens here were like them?
Nixie pulled out a bundle of silk, untied it, and revealed red gems of jellied sweets coated in powdery white. She offered me one. “Love created the glade, and now love keeps it alive,” she said.
Lumina’s proud smile waned with a touch of mourning. Something in this space was bittersweet for her, and I wondered if it was because of how close it likely was to Hylos’s own heart. How close he himself was to her heart.
“This place is amazing,” I said, stuffing the treat in my mouth, the sugar powder sticking to my fingers.
“It is,” Lumina admitted, her eyes closed and head lolling back, savoring the sun’s blessing.
All of this, the castle, this glade, for Hylos’s mother. The woman whose journal I may have found in the library.
“Hylos’s mother enjoyed birdsong, and Aegir created this very castle for her; is that because she was human?” I asked.
