“Sisters?” I ask.
“It is time, Aurelia,” Argonia answers swiftly, her voice spilling across the darkness as she approaches the colonnade. “The north entrance has been conquered.”
“The south has fallen, Aurelia,” Phylla responds next, her voice faint from somewhere behind us.
The men beneath me exchange frightened glances. One reaches thick, clumsy fingers toward the lone sword on the floor. Before he can grasp the hilt, I slam my foot down on his wrist and twist my heel in the way I was taught by my queen—the way that severs every bone in his delicate forearm. He shrieks out his pain, and I devour the sound.
Kneeling, I drag my stolen sword across his metal chest plate. Silver on gold. It screeches the most earsplitting song.
“S-siren,” he manages through trembling lips. His face has paled to a sickly seafoam green, and a fine sheet of sweat coats his forehead now. He knows what is coming; he has heard stories of the terrible sirens of the Sel, probably on the knee of his mother as a child.
“Siren,” I agree with a small tilt of my head. Short locks of sunset peach fall in front of my eyes as I cross my arms over the bone-white armor of my people. “I could control the last dredges of your mind with a single note. Does that scare you, human?” He doesn’t answer, clamping his mouth shut resolutely, so I grip his chin with my free hand and jerk my head toward his comrade. “I could make you gnash teeth through your friend. How do you think he’ll taste?” When he still says nothing, I lean closer, inhaling his fear. “This is a celebration, isn’t it? Perhaps the two of you should feast on each other?”
The scent of fresh piss scrunches my nose. I cannot tell if it is from this guard or the other. Both shake like frail tendrils of seaweed in a summer storm.Cowards.I shove his face away, disgust filling my throat like bile. These men are not worth the full force of my ire. No,thatis reserved for their king.
I stand, lifting my chin, and glare down at the pathetic guards.
“P-p-please,” the other murmurs, pressing his hands together insomething of a prayer. “Spare me. I’ve done nothing wrong. I—I have never hurt merrow.” His eyes widen desperately at whatever he sees in my expression. “I swear it.”
If not for the fury blazing in my chest, I would vomit on his boots.
Baring my teeth, I kick his face toward the lavender-haired merrow, toward the dozens of others who swing beside her. Debased and degraded.Dead.
“Perhaps not,” I snarl, “but you protect the garden from which they are strung. You defend those who mock our deceased. The blood staining their hands has rubbed off on yours. You are covered in it. This whole kingdom isdrenched.”
“Please—”
“For the fallen,” I say, and I slit his throat before he can finish the plea.
His words gush from his lips with a burbling of blood. The other guard hastens to move, to climb onto his one good knee, but I stab him through the skull before he can flee. I pierce his brain as easily as one might pierce a sponge. He deserved so much worse.They all do.
“The east is secured,” I say to my sisters. “It is time to wreak havoc.”
“Great luck,” Phylla sings softly as she departs.
“Great luck,” Argonia and I echo.
The wish is not needed. The goddess is on our side. This kingdom will not long survive.
We open our respective gates at the same time, in perfect synchronicity, and march inside Mortia’s royal garden. Phylla, with her brilliant blue hair and blue lips, weaves toward the largest crowd beneath the freshest merrow corpses. Red-haired Argonia pushes toward the bar, surrounded by masked revelers. And I—
I set my sights on the king.
Sitting upon a glittering throne in the center of the garden—a throne painted with iridescent scales—he throws his head back with a riotous laugh, and his golden crown nearly topples from his golden hair until he throws a hand up to catch it. The movement upsets the goblet in his other hand, but he only laughs louder as his wine spillsacross the floor. His eyes glimmer with dark brown delight behind the blackened feathers of his raven mask.
The sycophants surrounding him follow suit, chortling and chuckling as the perfect little puppets they are. Performing for their ghastly master. So caught up with being near the king, they don’t even notice me—not the Sel’s bone-white armor affixed to my breasts and hips, not the peach hair curling around my ears.
Not the sword in my hand dripping scarlet on their glistening marble floors.
Of course, they notice the screams.
Beside a bursting fountain of crystalline waters, a drunken courtier holding two goblets of berry wine stumbles into Argonia. My sister doesn’t wait for an apology. She simply grips the man’s head between her hands and wrenches it from his neck. Argonia’s biggest strength has always been her… well,strength. Even if she weren’t a siren born of the Sel, she would be one of the deadliest weapons in the ocean. In the world. And with the courtier’s head dangling from her fingers… it is a tad bit hard to miss.
Gore explodes around her in an instant, followed by the shrieks of panic and terror. The human corpse thuds to the floor, and my sister turns, stabbing her nails through the cheek of a curvaceous woman, gouging white flesh with blackened nails. Argonia kicks the woman in the chest as she pulls out her fingers. Screaming, the woman careens backward into the fountain, cracking her skull on the stone and crumpling instantly. Another dead as the water bleeds scarlet. My turn to laugh.
And I do—I laugh, and I curse that woman with the same breath, kicking out at another who streaks past in terror. Breaking her knee, still laughing as Argonia swoops down to break everything else.
They laughed when they murdered these merrow. They laughed when they painted themselves with my kin’s scales.
