Slowly, I rested his crown upon my own head.
He scowled. Then the expression on his face slackened as he realized I knew precisely what his strongest claim to me was.
“Take that off.” The words were clipped, frigid.
“It’s where it soon belongs, isn’t it?” I hated the feel of it, the way it pressed down and cut in. “Am I not your heir?” The vitriolic look on his face moved through me like a slow poison. “I disgust you, don’t I?”
“Disgust.” Nemea was so still. “The Sirens disgust me, yes.” He shook his head. “But you never have. She never did either.”
She.My mother.
He must have seen the questions springing through my mind, the longing that shadowed my face, because he said, “Would you like me to tell you of her?”
Nerves tingled beneath my skin. He pulled fear from me as easily as he had blood from my palm. He adjusted himself against the mast like his body ached, and the shoddily tied rope across his middle slipped lower. I saw the glint of something silver at his hip. A dagger. I set my teeth and moved my other hand to the sword’s grip. But Nemea only sat there, uneasily still, waiting for my answer.
As much as I was tempted, the story of Nemea and my mother was not one I needed. I needed to know of Eusia. Of the empress, and the princess, and the tangled web that I was stuck in the middle of. But I drew in a shaky breath and nodded.
He made a thoughtful sound and focused on something in the middle distance, seemingly slipping into the past. “You remember the stories of the years that I was missing at sea?” His voice was strange. It went soft and lank, rolling between us like an eerie morning haze. “I was with Ligea for most of them. The stories boast that I set out to conquer, but I was never fool enough to think that I, the lone mortal king of Leucosia, would ever amount to much in a realm where Gods exist. If I wanted power, I had to make it.” Hishaunted gaze locked quickly with mine. “Isn’t that right, Imogen? Isn’t that what I always told you?”
I didn’t answer him.
He pursed his lips at my silence before he continued. “I took a small fleet to seek out the Mage Seers. They had succeeded in making their own power, after all, so why couldn’t I? I’d thought magic could give me what I lacked. I was foolish in my youth, though. I had no knowledge of its cost. When I saw the Mage Seers, what the magic did to them…” He shook his head, lip curling. “That was not a price I was willing to pay.
“I remember the Mage who told me to go north. She could hardly speak. She lay in a ball on the floor of her tower like a dried-up insect. She was the one who told me there was a way to gain power without paying for it. She told me how I could serve Eusia.”
Fury ignited in me. The sword’s grip ached against the knot of scars on my palm. Proof of thecost.I lifted the blade and strode forward so the tip hovered before him. “Ipaid, Nemea.”
Whatever hold he’d had on himself snapped. His cheeks burned red. His gray eyes stretched with rage. “Let mespeak.” The words hissed through his clamped teeth. “I paid. I paid, dearly. The fucking Mage lied.”
The tip of the sword fell to the deck with a dullclunk.I staggered a few steps back, startled by the depth of his emotion. He looked anguished. Tormented.
He spoke then like he was giving a confession. Quickly, eager to be rid of the words he’d held in for too long. “Eusia was one of Obelia’s saints. Centuries before, she’d washed up onto one of their beaches. She was old—old as the Gods. She’d been gutted, her insides missing when they found her. But she wasn’t dead. She could speak and move, and they worshipped her for it. For an offering, Eusia would grant her faithful a miracle. So I went.The empress, Nivala, was… she was a force. She was as hungry for power as I was. She welcomed me, a young Leucosian king, with open arms, eager to learn what sort of power I possessed. I never told her I was mortal. She lavished me with food and wine, took me to her bed, and I stayed in Obelia for months, preparing for my first sacrifice and blessing from Eusia.
“I remember the day that she finally got it out of me—that I was powerless, just like her—she laughed in my face. But she took me to their temple anyway and I made my offering to the little sunken pool inside it. I poured my blood into its water and said the prayer. I asked Eusia… I asked her to end the Sirens that had decimated my fleet. They’d cost me men, and money. My pride. They brought nothing but ruin, and I was determined to see them pay for it.”
A chill took me. The far-off cannon fire, the ship’s creaks, faded under the grip that Nemea’s story held me in.
“When Eusia’s head broke the surface of that pool, I screamed. She was so small. The size of a child. No hair. Flesh had grown over her eyes and down her cheeks, but she could see me—I knew she could see me. Her voice sounded strangled, but she had been eager to speak of her sister with me. Of Ligea. She spoke of how Ligea had been given everything and remained golden and hale and unmatched after so many centuries. And she had become a monster trying to best her. Our wants aligned. So I told her I’d help her.”
“Eusia is in Obelia?” I asked quickly.
Nemea shook his head. “She asked me to take her home. So she could perform the spell needed to end Ligea.”
“What did you say?” My entire body had filled with a terrible, crackling cold. A dread so deep that it ached. “She asked you to take herhome?”
His eyes lit like I’d revealed a weakness. “You’re looking for her.”
“I am blood-bound to her,” I yelled. “Of course I’m Godsdamned looking for her.”
His thin lips tipped. “You’re very like her. Like Ligea,” he mused, through his annoyance. “It was absurd of me to think Captain Ianto would have been enough to keep you holed up in my fort indefinitely.” He shook his head. “You and her both—so damned stubborn, so arrogant, that you’ll see yourselves killed rather than fall in line.”
That struck me. Theodore had said something nearly identical. That Nemea might truly know me, my flaws and my strengths, turned my stomach. “Finish your story,” I said, voice thick.
He glared, made me wait. “I moved Eusia from Obelia. It was an undertaking. Making sure she had all that she needed for the journey. Before she left, the empress requested a final miracle. A large one. She made a final sacrifice—”
“Her husband,” I said, breathless. The realization cleaved me in two. “And the Nels. You didn’t kill them just for jewels. You killed them to feed Eusia while she was journeying on your ship, didn’t you?”
Nemea jerked. His eyes flared with confusion. “How do you know that?”
