The king’s gaze locks on to mine through the sudden chaos. I lift the sword to my mouth and lick blood from the blade. His eyes narrow with unconcealed hatred. He shoves forward, shunting aside the sycophants who flee in all directions.
“Merrow,” he curses.
“Murderer,” I hiss.
Behind me, the screams rise, but my sisters do not sing. My grip tightens on the stolen sword as Constane charges closer. I do not sing either—not yet—because we want them to know, we want them tofear, just as the others did. All those merrow above our heads. Before we take away their will, their lives, we want them to know they’velost. “You will pay for your crimes, Constane. You will suffer. My name is Aurelia of the Sel, and my sisters and I will finally bring you to your knees.”
“It’sKingConstane.” He snatches a dagger from his back pocket, one as bejeweled as his trousers, and holds it in front of him in a weak show of defense. Too slow, too blundering from the wine. “And I don’t think you will, demon.”
He expects me to attack like my sisters, to duel him with this sword in my hand. Because of Argonia, he doesn’t yet realize that we do not need brute force or human weapons. We are sirens of the Sel, and our voices could demolish kingdoms.
The time has come for this kingdom. The time has come for this king.
So I open my mouth, and I sing.
My vocal cords coax out notes of death, horror, torment, and torture. They climb higher with grief and loss andrage, the pain of such needless cruelty and evil. I direct it all at the humans—the humans who laughed, who danced, who now flee and beg and weep on their knees for mercy. They did not give the merrow mercy, however. The woman across the garden still clutches brittle lavender hair between her fingers as she wrings them, pleading with Phylla to spare her.I didn’t mean it. Please, please forgive me.
Phylla does not forgive. And I sing, and I sing, and I sing.
One by one, the humans begin to die.
My sisters join me now, our song throttling the glass ceiling. Blood trickles down ears, from the corners of glossy lips, from eye sockets and nostrils onto opulent masks. It smells like decay. Likevengeance. And I inhale deeply as I glare at the king before me, as I watch his jaw clench, his cheeks growing ruddy from the exertion of trying to remain in control. Of trying not to succumb. Mymelody weaves faster, as haunting as the sound of crashing waves on a pitch-black night.
Others in the garden drop like rocks. My sisters sing them into plucking out their own eyes or ripping out their own teeth. The metallic scent of viscera thickens further, overpowering even the pansies and tulips. The lilies and anemones. It is not enough, however. None of this will ever be enough.
“Your family has made a legacy of slaughtering our people,” I sing darkly, stalking closer to the king, circling him as he falters and sways. I want to see the light leave his eyes. I want mine to be the last face he sees. “May the Fathoms fill your eternity with dread.”
King Constane finally collapses. Though he does not scream, his body quivers from the pressure building in his skull, and his hand begins to rise against his will. The dagger turns around in his palm. It faces his heart.
I lean closer, near-giddy with triumph.
“Goodbye, Constane.”
My voice carries, crooning louder and louder, as the dagger travels closer and closer to his flesh. And then—
And then Phylla’s song comes crashing to a halt. In the midst of her melody, it just… stops, and my own song pitches off-key, my stomach plummeting as if I’ve missed a step. Frowning, I glance to my left, but I don’t see her anymore. Her blue hair has vanished amidst the crowd, and those nearest her have straightened with expressions of hysterical relief—bleeding and broken but no longer dying—as if they’ve been miraculously saved. But that isimpossible. There is no one here to save them. No one can ignore a siren’s song. No one candefeatus.
Frown deepening—ignoring that sinking pit in my stomach—I whirl back to face the king, refocusing my gaze.Phylla is fine. She just ducked behind the fountain.My voice steadies once more, and Constane slices through the cotton swathing his broad chest. He slices through skin, drawing blood, and—
And Argonia’s song dies with a wet, gurgling scream. A scream so familiar, it could be my own.
No.My heart crashes through my feet, but I do not dare look away from King Constane again. Not as he grins—hegrins—and a singledroplet of blood trickles from his mouth to his jaw. Not as he wipes it away freely, my control over him slipping. No, no,no. My chest tightens to the point of pain, and my mind screams the refusal, unable to comprehend what is happening because mysisters—
I stumble backward, horrified.
It can’t be true. It can’t be real.
They can’t bedead.
“Impossible,” I hiss, and even to my own ears, I sound half wild. Trapped.
When Constane laughs again in reply, I spin around to find Argonia in the crowd, to spot her red hair and ocean-blue eyes and the smirk that carves a dimple in her cheek, but she is—she is on the floor.Whyis she on the floor? Pressure burns behind my eyes as blood pours from her abdomen. Her eyes gaze up, wide and unseeing, at the starless night.
“Impossible!” The word tears from my throat on a cry. I’m not singing any longer. My lungs feel as if they’re caving in, as if that hole in her abdomen is mine.
“No,” an unfamiliar male voice says calmly, carelessly. “Not for a warlock.”
He appears seconds before his weapon. White wings as tall and wide as the largest doorway splay behind him, tipped in molten gold, as his strange, ethereal gold-silver gaze fixes on mine. He does not seem to have been controlled by our songs. His hands are awash in red. The blood of my sisters. My heart shatters.
