Far away, thunder booms.
As I leave the castle, walking down the hill to the sea, people stream back and forth, calling between each other, rallying, readying. Children are carried past me to the castle, elders are helped up the hill, or pushed on carts. I focus on what I can control, what I alone can do. I want to guide every elder, carry each and every child. But there is only one of me, only one storm bringer, one girl with a siren lurking inside her. Now that the armada is on the horizon, it’s as though a veil has been removed, and I can sense every vessel in the sea. The siren map – stitched into my veins, my mind – awakens. I see them all. Every cursed ship here to destroy us. And when I get to the quay, pressing my hand to Kai’s shoulder, hugging Agnes one final time, I expel a breath, wrenching myself away from these people I love – my home, my heart – and dive off the end of the quay into the waiting tide.
At once, my blood ignites in a blaze of fire and the sky darkens overhead, as though it has ignited too. I look up as clouds bloom, bruising the skin of the sky in shades of charcoal, and the rain slaps the surface of the sea. Soaring through the underwater world, like an inverted sky, I see the hulls of ships and other vessels, still far off, but closing in, all too rapidly. This is a fight for our lives.
It’s time to call on everything my mother left waiting for me in my blood. The rolling fields of raging clouds, the echoes of past storms in their wake. The crackleof lightning, the fire in the sky. And the thread that connects me to all that fierce wild.
I reach out with my senses bound to the ocean, allowing my mind to rush and leap through the eddying currents, far away to where my siren sisters reside. That side of me, the side that is all siren, grasps the knot of their minds. And pulls. As one, I feel them respond to my beckoning call, knowing what this is, what it means. The answering cry is sharp and hungry, all claws and teeth and thoughts of bleeding hearts. But they are coming. The sirens have answered my call. They are ready to fight my enemies and to feed.
There is little need to wonder why I did not sense this armada gathering. The ruling council have enlisted a coven to their cause, witches that, even now, might be setting traps for me and my kind. I swim towards those shadowy shapes, sitting on the lip of the waves, counting the battleships, the cannons, the weaponry. It’s not until I turn back for the shore, ready to deliver the information I’ve gleaned from the sea to Eli and Caden, that I sense something else in the deep, a dark, looming presence. A creature I have not encountered before. I can sense its ancient hunger eclipsing my siren sisters’ own hunger by far. And I know this battle is not only meant for the land. It’s also meant for beneath the waves.
Like an arrow, I streak round the hulls, pressing myself into the barnacle-clad wood. My heart picks up, even as I try to calm its panicked beat. The rulingcouncil has lured more than one sea monster today to our isles. Then I hear my siren sisters.
Mira, daughter of Lowenva.
We sense kraken and morgawr and something else…
There are eyes in the sea.
Terrifying, ancient, ravenous…
A monster, ready to be unleashed, I realise, listening to them. I swim to Ennor, back to the shore, and sense the first of the sirens darting fast and true to swim alongside me. We emerge on the shoreline at the same moment, just as Lowri’s form shimmers and becomes flesh beside us.
Gallena the siren leader nods to me and Lowri, then turns, assessing the armada and the sea beneath. ‘You humans and your own witch magic are no match for this.’
‘We have to be.Ihave to be,’ says Lowri, and swallows. ‘Too many will die. There will be no one left to stand against the ruling council.’
Gallena murmurs to the other sirens, all arriving now, and they turn to the skies. I look as well and locate what they have sensed. Wyvern. A whole horde, hovering as a pack, just beyond the armada. Awaiting the signal to hunt. Perhaps a coven aboard one of the ships down there is controlling them too.
‘I cannot be in the seaandthe sky. If I bring too great a storm, if I lose control …’
‘You could kill us all,’ Gallena finishes. ‘History repeated.’
My breath stills in my chest. My mother, Lowenva, was the last storm bringer. She brought a storm and couldn’t control it, killing her sisters, taking too many lives. I inhale sharply and shake my head. ‘No, Gallena. History will not repeat. Not today.’ I look to Lowri, aware of the burden on her. Our only witch. ‘Have you heard from Brielle? Can Tanith survive?’
She grimaces. ‘I haven’t heard from Brielle since she left for the Spines with Inesh and Dreska. And we do not know if Tanith will remember anything, even who she is loyal to, if she takes her drake form. I cannot be sure I can haul her back, help her remember. Her attention may be scattered. She may panic and bolt, or worse …’
Lowri doesn’t finish her sentence, she doesn’t need to. A disorientated, panicked drake without a sense of who they are, or who they have been, is a volatile resource at best. At worst, a death sentence for all of us. I rub a hand down my face, calculating, assessing. Without a way to stop the wyvern, the people on Ennor are sitting targets. They’ll be hunted for sport, picked off one by one before the ships even reach our shore.
‘Lowri, stay on Ennor and bolster the wards,’ I say. ‘Speak to Tanith … and tell her I’m sorry. If she will fight for us, then we need her now, more than ever, but she will have to be sure that in her drake form she will not turn on a friend.’
Lowri nods and I think of Joby. I think of how this will break his heart, if she resumes her drake form andshe cannot remember him. ‘You fight in the sea, Mira. I will defend Ennor on land. And Tanith … Tanith will defend the skies.’
‘And find Eli for me. Tell him …’ I begin, taking a breath. ‘Tell him I will meet him in the stars.’
Then I nod to my siren sisters, and we dive beneath the waves.
the monsters lured from thedeep are awaiting us. My siren sisters are all claws and sharp teeth, almost translucent, designed for the hunt. For the kill. But my nails aren’t sharp, my bones and blood are human, and the weapons I rely on are my blade and my wits. A storm cannot reach us down here under the layers of the ocean. A storm bringer cannot upend the sea. But in the siren sight I inherited from my mother, I sense the ancient forms of the enemy. Kraken. Morgawr. And dwarfing them both … I gasp. It can’t be …
Leviathan.
As I gape at the ancient, sprawling form, I remember the moment this tapestry of the ocean was bound into me by Coven Septern. And what I had to sacrifice for my siren sight to awaken. My memories of my father, all knowledge of his voice, his arms round me when I was a child, his soul … gone. All I know is that once Ihada father. And now, faced with this monstrosity, as thesiren side of me overwhelms my human side, I realise that the sacrifice I made may save us all.
My siren sisters shrink away, a ripple of thoughts flowing through my mind from theirs.
Our enemy…
… thought it was dead.
