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I exhale forcefully, emptying my lungs. Holding my bag over my head, I thrust upward with as much force as I can manage and cram myself into the tight entrance. My body doesn’t glide through easily. The rough edges of the stone scratch down my abdomen, but I wriggle through, pushing past the biting scrape of pain to free my fin.
The goblin shark’s long snout protrudes from the wall behind me, and it gnashes its teeth, rearing back before it slams against the solid structure again. I hear the beasts pounding against the stone and take off without checking to see if they’ve rerouted back through the temple after the sound disappears.
Swimming through throngs of dark kelp, I head closer to the surface, waiting for my brain to come up with a plan. I know the hiding places tucked around the outskirts of the sailor’s island, so I’ll stick to the coast of Crossbill Haven until I think of something.
I will. I will.
A serpent’s head is resting on a reef up ahead. My stomach knocks into my chest as its massive maw opens wide, threatening to swallow me whole.
“It’s dead,” Zephyr says, and I realize I’m back in the spot where this disaster of a night started. There’s a gaping slash where Zephyr partially severed the beast’s neck. Its jaws are only moving with the current.
My muscles start quaking, and I eddy into a dark cave to think. How has everything gone to shit so quickly?
“Cordelia, you look exhausted.” A singsong voice trills from the back of the cave. “How long do you think you can keep swimming?”
Two amber orbs bob like lamplights around spikes of stalactite, joining together as a pair of mermaids swim down from the ceiling.
No. Not mermaids—sirens.
That’s what Cosette’s minions call themselves, reclaiming the name humans once used for the Undine, even though they serve their mistress and not the Moon Goddess.
They’re not like me, born a mermaid in the sea. They were women before the sea witch’s magic twisted them into monsters devoted to collecting the souls needed to keep her young and beautiful.
The scales of their fins extend up their necks and cover their faces, forming a sheet of green split by grins filled with sharp teeth. Each one has a single incandescent eye fixed on me.
“Might as well give up before you get yourself hurt,” says the siren on the right. “The sharks are coming to chase you back home to your papa. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
The other siren’s grin widens. “Unless...”
My eyes bounce between them. I’ve known them too long to believe their presence is some miraculous coincidence. “What are you two playing at?”
“Nothing. We only want to make sure you know your options, princess,” they say at the same time, and the one to my right swirls a glass bottle in her hand, its green liquid contents shining through her black claws. “The sharks can’t catch you if you become a human.”
“Just go,” Zephyr whispers. “Don’t even listen to what they’re saying.”
Normally I wouldn’t. I’d swim until my arms gave out under different circumstances. I’d risk my father passing me off to some stranger like a prized possession for the slightest chance of making it back down to my altar.
But Zephyr will never get to feel the sky on their wings again if I’m taken.
I hesitate, and Zephyr’s voice returns. “Keep swimming. You only need to outlast the sharks until moonrise tomorrow.”
My quivering fin tells me I won’t make it. “What does the sea witch want in return?”
“Your Ocean Voice,” the sirens croon in unison.
“No, no, no.”
I touch my throat. My Ocean Voice isn’t treasured amongst my family, but it’s still a part of me. “Would it be permanent?”
“Yes, but if you can bind your sailor’s heart to yours through marriage, you won’t need it. You can always speak the common language.”
I suppose that’s true. There’s no need to compel men to follow me down to the sea if I’m living as a human.
“Don’t let them into your head. We don’t need their help.”
“The sand is slipping in the hourglass,” the siren holding the potion says. “The sharks are on their way.”
It’s not a trick. I can sense their fins thrashing past the cave.
