Creon let his hand fall. They all stared at me.
“Use your army to attack, but our target should be Adaro,” I said. “Don’t worry about the Utopian government until the king is dead.”
“Mee,” said Lysi again, but I didn’t care that I was being argumentative. This wasn’t the time for politeness.
Dione narrowed her eyes.
“Besides,” I continued, “what makes you so sure Utopians will fight Adaro with you? What if they’re too scared to go against him? What if they even support him and see your attempt as treason?”
“This is not for you to question,” said Dione, temper flaring.
“But—”
“Mee, stop it,” said Lysi.
Dione once again raised a hand, commanding silence, then said more calmly, “We do intend to stop Adaro, but the majority voted on saving the queen as our first priority.”
A majority vote?Interesting. Maybe she was trying to convince me that many of them supported this plan—but a majority meant there was also a minority. Others did not agree. But how many? Could I rally them?
“How will the coup work, then?” said Lysi with a sideways glance at me.
“I have told you enough,” said Dione. “As I said, no one has the full details. It is the only way we can assure that, if someone is captured or leaks information, they will not be able to reveal everything.”
“We modelled this strategy after Adaro himself,” said Dreadlocks. “Those who have worked under his government tell us he makes sure no one knows everything about him—not even his closest allies.”
I didn’t like it, but what could I do? They’d told us the basics, as I’d told them the basics of the leviathan. And, like me, they’d withheld information—maybe even lied.
My insides twisted with frustration. Here we had a whole army ready for action, and I could do nothing. Every moment I spent here, powerless, people were dying at the hands of Adaro and the serpent.
I didn’t want to destroy the chain or the anchor. I wanted to sink the ship. Lysi and I would need to have a serious conversation later.
“You can trust that once we have lured Adaro to Utopia, we intend to kill him,” said Dione. “But we need your help for this. How can we destroy that serpent?”
Lysi and I looked at each other. How was I supposed to convince them to helpmebe the one to kill Adaro, without revealing why?
The silence stretched a beat too long. Dione opened her mouth—and a lie came to me in a flash. I blurted it out before she could speak.
“The legend says only a descendant of Eriana can defeat the serpent. To do this, he or she must kill the serpent’s master.”
They all gaped at me, including Lysi. I exhaled into the words, trying as hard as I could to believe this was true.
I need to do it. I am the only option.
“And you, as you said, are a descendant,” said Dione, her stare so intense it seemed to burn my skin.
I nodded once. The glopping of water against stone grew louder in the silence.
“So you, personally, wish to be the one to kill him,” said Dione.
My heart skipped a beat, but I said steadily, “It has to be me. It’s in the legend.”
Did she know I was lying? I cursed my inability to control my reactions. Lysi was so much better at hiding jolts of emotion than me.
“The Eriana Kwai mermaid is how we defeat him, then,” said the white-blonde mermaid. “She is written in the legend.”
Everyone looked to Dione with a mixture of hopefulness and uncertainty, but she merely continued to stare at me as if analyzing my every pore.
“You have a personal vendetta against him?” she said.
