“Audrey,” I spoke with a familiar numbness coating my voice.
“Yes?” She asked, placing a hand on my shoulder.
“If you don’t kill Ilia…” I turned, giving her a good look at my face so she could see exactly how serious I was. “Then I will.”
Something shuttered over her eyes as she pressed her lips together. She blinked at me, squeezed my shoulder, and released her hold. Only then, when there was distance between us, did she dip her chin once in acknowledgement.
“This is bad,” Liam murmured, pulling Audrey back toward him.
“Your observation skills continue to impress, Li.” Fergus chuckled to himself.
“I’m afraid there is more,” Sergei spoke low, turning his laptop around to tap some more. “This was just aired moments ago, before I re-entered the tunnels.”
Ilia was standing at a podium. Reporters and cameras circled him as three microphones hovered over his face. He wore his crown and his medals, standing tall. His lips were tipped up in the smallest, most condescending smirk I had ever seen him wear. To his right stood Amber, wearing her guard attire with the mask and hood down.
“For too long our land has been divided,” Ilia spoke, looking like every slimy politician I had ever had to watch give a press release in the human realm. “The ongoing debate on whether the Mellhawn Gates must stay open or closed has caused contention in our beloved continent. Tynara, surely, must be disappointed in the divisive behavior of my fellow Hyvenmerians.”
Burning rage made my hands ball into fists. He was masterfully weaponizing a belief system to confirm his own problematic interpretations of events. “The halflings who have invaded our borders and taken up valuable space from honorable Hyvenmerians must accept the responsibility their reckless and selfish decisions have caused.” Ilia stared down his audience, and the determination in his gaze made me want to claw the smug look off of his face with my own bare hands. “After discussing the issue at length with the Dahl and Ahlstrom royals, we have concluded that it will be best for all of Hyvenmere, if the Mellhawn Gates are destroyed, once and for all.”
Cold seeped into my gut. A burst of noise from the reporters holding cameras and recording devices closer to Ilia made him pause his speech for a moment to nod condescendingly at his audience.
“The halflings from the human realm have overstayed their welcome,” Ilia continued. “They will have twenty-four hours to leave of their own accord, before my guard will be forced to escort them out. Once balance is restored to our sacred lands…” Ilia couldn’t stop himself from smirking as he finished with, “The Mellhawn Gates will be destroyed, keeping humans out of our realm once and for all.”
The reporters, thankfully, were not satisfied with that conclusion. Even as Ilia waved politely and started to wander away from his podium, a flurry of questions followed him.
“What about the halfling-inclusive mating bonds?”
“How do you plan to destroy the ancient gates?”
“What exactly made Queen Ada change her mind on this issue?”
But Ilia didn’t give a shit; he just left. He didn’t need to defend this decision or question the support of the fae and nereids. In his mind, it was done. That gave us less than twenty-four hours to kill Ilia, free Drustan, and release the whismerric sirens into the safety of Lyndoruun.
What none of us were expecting, though, was the grunt that came from Caelena’s office door. All of us turned around to see who had entered, not realizing that Sergei had left the door open when he barged in with his laptop.
“Ilia must be stopped,” one of the siren mothers said. “He cannot do this.”
“We’re working on that,” Caelena assured her. “We need more Hyvenmerians to help overwhelm Ilia enough for us to take him down. But the fae and nereids aren’t willing to help other than being a landing pad for refugees. In the meantime, Ilia’s men get closer to us every passing day, so our main priority has been finding a safer place for you all to go?—”
“Let us go and fight, then,” one taller siren mother responded, producing a knife from a sheath on her hip and pointing it at us. “You all cannot fight every battle of ours for us.” She smirked with her words, flicking her wrist to twist her knife this way and that. “I have years of pent-up rage inside of me, ready to ignite. Let us end this nonsense, once and for all.”
I widened my eyes and cautiously backed away from her. “For sure.”
“Ilia is done terrorizing our children,” a third siren mother spoke, hands balled into fists. “He must be stopped. With the prophesied on our side…” She gestured toward Audrey, who stood tall with her acknowledgement. “Surely, Tynara will grant us her favor.”
“Ilia won’t stop,” Caelena muttered.
“He won’t,” I agreed.
All of us stood in heavy, unbearable silence. The reality of what needed to be done weighed on us all like the mountains we hid under.
“It has to be now,” Audrey announced reverently. “Everyone else is on the move with Fergus. We have to take him out now. Though I need to make this clear…” Audrey lifted a finger to everyone in the room, “If there is an opportunity to take down Ilia without killing him in cold blood, I’m going to take it. I am not eager to take a life, likeothers…” her words were cutting, and even though she wasn’t looking at me, I still received the acknowledgement she intended, “But a message must be sent. Ilia is not the ruler of all of Hyvenmere. It doesn’t matter who guards the Fjellenheim Mountains, who the prophecy is about—not one single Hyvenmerian has the authority to do what Ilia is about to do. If we don’t act now, and the fae and nereids allow Ilia to see this plan through, it will set a very dangerous precedent that might be impossible for Hyvenmere to come back from. Ilia can’t be so wasteful with siren lives if they happen to be whismerric, and he cannot destroy the Mellhawn Gates. Hyvenmere already knows what it’s like to experience such an imbalance, and keeping the gates open and encouraging relations with humans has only proven to even the scales. Just as the goddess herself desires.”
“The sooner Ilia is defeated,” Liam whispered.
“The sooner innocent children no longer have to live in fear.” Audrey finished.
Those seemed to be the words that made everyone come to a resolution. We all agreed we had to go do what needed to be done. I felt my own call to go to the city of Lydhavn, one I had no desire to speak aloud because, in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter as much.
