The archway into the manor reveals itself as a massive tube of coral. Tiny fish race overhead, glimmering like fireflies. Multicolored kelp is knotted and strung up as garland. Unlike the kelp I saw before, this is still vibrant and green.
Fenny swims ahead to the duke’s side. I swim behind. The other two siren—Sheel and Lucia—take up the rear. I’m grateful that in the past four and some years I was able to get some additional experience swimming in the waters to the south—the seas without sirens. But I am nowhere near as graceful as them.
Ilryth and Fenny glance at each other, giving small nods and shakes of their heads, but I hear nothing. Their hands don’t move, either.
Perhaps there is some way to communicate privately?
“That’s exactly what it is,” the grizzled man behind me says. Horror rips through me at the realization that he just heard my errant thought. “Once you master telepathy—if you’re able to master it at all—you’ll be able to speak with only the people you want. Though, if you master anything first, I’d suggest it’s learning how to keep the majority of your thoughts to yourself.” He has a slight smile, not unkind. A bit knowing, perhaps, as though what I am experiencing is a common issue. For a siren, perhaps, but not for a human.
Unless I’m not the first sacrificed to this Lord Krokan. Everyone assumes sirens kill humanspromptly, given how none who are taken into the sea by them ever return. I never could find any mentions of sirens bartering with anyone else. Never, in all my travels, did I see any other markings like the one on my forearm.
But if we’re all sacrifices for them, then that would also explain why there’s little information. All these thoughts of sacrifices fill the back of my throat with a metallic taste. But I try and keep my face calm. If I could remain levelheaded every time I went before the council to defend myself against Charles’s cruel claims, I can do it now.
“How do I master it?” The alternative is to live with people possibly reading my mind, and that’s not acceptable. But there’s also a curious streak in me. Magic isreal. And, at long last, maybe I have the chance to use it, too? “I can’t say I have a lot of practice withthinkingmy words to speak them above water.”
“I wouldn’t imagine you would. Given that humans are not inherently magical creatures, despite your origins here in Midscape as children of Lady Lellia.”
Midscape?
“Yes, where you are now,” he answers the question I hadn’t consciously intended to broadcast. I curse inwardly and he laughs. He heard that, too, apparently. I’m struggling to tell which thoughts they hear and which I keep to myself. Perhaps it’s the ones that are clear questions or strong wonderings? “Humans were originally from this land, back when it was one with the Natural World, before the Fade.”
“And this place is called Midscape?” I intentionally try to broadcast my thought, trying to focus on how it feels when it’s purposeful and I want other people to hear.
“Technically, you are presently in the Eversea, which is notquiteMidscape, if you ask me and many of the other sirens whose home this is.” He adjusts the vest he wears, smoothing over the tiny mother-of-pearl disks that shine like the opalescent scales of Ilryth’s tail. “Wedged between the Veil and the Fade, sustained by Lady Lellia of the Lifetree and guarded by Lord Krokan of the Abyss, we are not like the others of Midscape. Our magic is older than even the vampir. Though I’m sure they would argue otherwise. It is a hobby of many of the peoples of Midscape to debate whose magic is oldest and most powerful.”
“The others are not descended directly from the first gods, as we are,” the young woman, Lucia, says with a note of pride.
Others? Vampir? I have traveled the world far and wide, scoured every map and heard every tale, but I have never heard a whisper of Midscape, nor vampir. At most, rumors of fae… Though, if sirens exist then why couldn’t there be more? Why wouldn’t the old stories of the fae have some grounding in fact?
I am in uncharted territory. The first to explore a world of magic.Think of the possibilities…
I suck in my lower lip and bite on it, slowly releasing at the point of pain. The action focuses me. I can’t get wrapped up in things that don’t actually matter. Magic. Strange new worlds. As fascinating as it all is, none of it is my priority. I must stay focused on what’s important: Getting back to and saving my family.
Siren buildings are nothing like the construction of human ones. There is little concern for protection from the elements. There are no stairs, and no doors. The structures are built from walls of compressed shells, coral, and rock. Balls of light hang in nets of kelp, or from rope. Some are stored in coral sconces on the walls. It all makes an unnatural-feeling and yet oddly organic world.
Other tubes branch away from the main atrium. Through two more, and we’re in a birdcage of whale bones and coral.
“Sit.” Ilryth points to the center of the room, where a lone pedestal stands.
I fold my arms and don’t move. “Say please.”
“Excuse me?”
“Aren’t you a noble duke? Where are your manners?”
“The rest of you, leave,” Ilryth snaps.
“Your Grace, she’s not—if she tries to run—” Sheel begins to say.
“If she tries to run, I’m hunting her down myself.” There’s a deadly promise underneath Ilryth’s words. But I don’t shy away from it.
I keep my gaze locked with his as if to say,challenge accepted.Maybe he even hears the words. Let him. Let all of them.
Lucia drifts forward with tiny movements of her tail. “We could help, brot—”
“I said leave.”
The other three hear the warning in his voice clearly. They all cast me wary glances, then look back to Ilryth with equal uncertainty. But, in the end, the three of them leave, dispersing through the whale bones and out into the open water that surrounds us. None looking back.
