To Kill a Kingdom(37)

“Have you come bearing gifts for mummy dearest?” the Sea Queen asked.

I nodded and reached into the netting tied around my waist. “I did what you asked.” I cradled the young prince’s heart, lifting it above my head to present it to her like the trophy she wanted. “My twelfth.”

The Sea Queen stroked my hair, her smooth tentacle slinking from my scalp and along my spine. I tried not to blink.

“Indeed,” the Sea Queen said. Her voice was soft and slow, like the sound of the dawn breeze. “But it seems you didn’t quite listen.”

“He’s dead,” I told her, thinking that was surely the most important thing. “I killed him and I took his heart.” I held it a little higher, pushing it toward her chest so she could feel the stillness of the prince’s heart against the coldness of her own.

“Oh, Lira.” She cupped my chin in her hand, sliding the talon of her thumb over my cheek. “But I didn’t tell you to cry.”

I wasn’t sure if she meant when I killed the prince, or not to do it now, in her grasp, with our royal bloodline watching. But my lips shook with the same fear my hands had, and when the first drop fell from my red eye, my mother breathed a heavy lament. She let the tear run onto her thumb and then shook it from her skin like it was acid.

“I did what you asked,” I said again.

“I asked you to make a human suffer,” the Sea Queen said. “To take its still-beating heart and rip it out.” A tentacle slid over my shoulder and around my tiny neck. “I asked you to be a siren.”

When she threw me to the ground, I remember feeling relieved. Knowing that if she was going to kill me, she would have crushed me under her grasp. I could take a beating. I could be humiliated and bloodied. If taking a few hits would quell my mother’s temper, then it wouldn’t be so bad. I would have gotten off easy. But I was a fool to think that my mother would choose to punish only me. What good was it to scold her daughter when she could shape her instead?

“Kahlia,” my mother said. “Would you do me a favor?”

“Sister.” My aunt swam forward, her face suddenly wretched and pained. “Please don’t.”

“Now, now, Crestell,” my mother said. “You shouldn’t interrupt your queen.”

“She’s my daughter.”

I remember hating the way Crestell’s shoulders hunched forward as she spoke. Like she was already preparing for a blow.

“Hush now,” my mother cooed. “Let us not fight in front of the children.”

She turned to me and stretched out her arm toward my cousin. It was like she was presenting Kahlia, the same way I had done with the Kalokaírin heart. I didn’t move.

“Kill her,” the Sea Queen said.

“Mother—”

“Take her heart while she still screams, like you should have done with the human prince.”

Kahlia whimpered, too scared to move or even cry. She glanced over at her mother, then back to me, blinking a dozen times over. Her head shook violently from side to side.

It was like looking into a mirror. Seeing the horror on Kahlia’s face was like seeing a rendition of myself, every drop of terror I felt reflected in her eyes.

“I can’t,” I said. Then, louder: “Don’t make me.”

I backed away, shaking my head so adamantly that my mother’s snarl became a blur.

“You stupid child,” she said. “I am offering you redemption. Do you know what will happen if you refuse?”

“I don’t need to be redeemed!” I yelled. “I did what you asked!”

The Sea Queen squeezed her trident, and all the poise that remained vanished from her face. Her eyes grew to shadows, blacker and blacker, until I could only see the darkness in them. The ocean groaned.

“This humanity that has infected you must be quelled,” she said. “Don’t you see, Lira? Humans are a plague who murdered our goddess and seek to destroy us. Any siren who shows sympathy toward them – who mimics their love and their sorrow – must be cleansed.”

I frowned. “Cleansed?”

The Sea Queen pushed Kahlia to the seabed, and I winced when her palms slammed against the sand.

“Sirens do not feel affection or regret,” my mother seethed. “We don’t know empathy for our enemies. Any siren who feels such things can never be queen. All she will ever be is defective. And a defective siren can’t be allowed to live.”

“Defective,” I repeated.

“Kill her,” my mother said. “And we’ll speak no more of it.”

She said it like it was the only way I could ever make up for my sins against my kind. If Kahlia died, then I’d be a true siren worthy of my mother’s trident. I wouldn’t be impure. The emotions I was having were a sickness and she was offering me a cure. A way out. A chance to rid me of the humanity she claimed had infected me.

Kahlia just needed to die first.

I moved closer to my cousin, clasping my hands behind my back so the Sea Queen couldn’t see how much they were shaking. I wondered if she could smell blood from the crescents I had stamped into my palms.

Kahlia cried as I approached, great howls of terror spilling from her tiny lips. I wasn’t sure what I planned to do as I got closer to her, but I knew I didn’t want to kill her. Take her hand and swim, I thought. Get as far away from the Sea Queen as we can. But I knew I wouldn’t do that, either, because my mother’s eyes were the ocean and she would see us wherever we hid. If I took Kahlia, we’d both be killed for treason. And so my choices were this: to take my cousin’s heart. Or to take her hand and let us die together.