by Hazel Grace
Throwing the bag into the small dinghy, I push it deeper into the ocean, stepping inside to row in the direction of my ship. I can feel Davina’s gaze on me, the silent goodbye that both of us want to voice, but our pride keeps us from doing so.
I’ll never see her again.
Never will I experience such beauty and strength. Going back home to face Edda is something that my brain isn’t looking forward to, and I hate myself for it. We weren’t betrothed to be married yet, but Isolde was right, my father has been pressing it. Stating that I need to protect our bloodline and produce many heirs to secure our lands and legacy.
And he isn’t wrong.
With power comes sacrifice, doing things we don’t want to do and making decisions that will never flee our minds.
Mine will always be the red Siren on the island.
The way that I can’t touch her or bring her back with me. How I’ll never know how it’d be to lay next to her or hear her say my real name.
Why does that matter?
I’m a prisoner of hers that she mercifully let free, something that I can’t say that I have much of. If the tables were turned, I’d never let her go, regardless of what she said or the truths she spilled. Time would work against me, her beauty and allurement would sink into my soul, and it would seal her fate all on its own.
The small boat fights against the waves, rocking fiercely up and down. Reaching behind me, I grab the gold cuff, making sure it’s still with me. I fear that it’ll go overboard with each jolt of the unforgiving sea.
After what seems like forever, I see my ship sitting patiently for my arrival. It’s eerie in a way that there are no loud sounds of the crew sauntering over the waves. They’re probably all too drunk and sleeping off their spirits since there is nothing else better to do than wait for me to come back.
Arriving at the side of the ship, I use the old rope to tie myself to it. Tossing the bag of things Davina packed me over my shoulder and the gold cuff still in my hand, I climb the side, careful not to slip and fall with the limited use of my hands. The closer I get, the more I hear male voices overhead.
After today, I fear that everything about me will change.
Geezus fuck, it shouldn’t. I was held against my damn will, chained to a floor, almost drowned, and had my ass practically kicked. There wasn’t anything that I should miss from that Zeus-forsaken island.
Except I did.
Glancing back, for the last time, the island is hidden by the mysterious veil that Davina and her sisters spoke about all the time. When I get into my cabin, I’m ripping up the map that holds the location of this place. She protected me, so I’m going to do the same. Even if it means never coming back on an impulse to see her and experience her green eyes peering up at me again.
I make it to the railing, heaving my satchel over the side and pulling myself up over it. We’d need to make a quick job with departing, as Davina said, so her sisters don’t get the opportunity at killing us all.
Pulling myself up to stand, I freeze in horror at the scene that awaits me. The air from my lungs is sucked away, leaving me breathless at the gore and blood. You’d think I’d be used to seeing it, after all the many battles I’ve participated in, this is a normal day for me. But after being in a paradise-like state for well over two weeks, I feel like that piece of me is hidden behind my psyche.
Puddles of blood cover the wood floorboards of the deck with my men scattered around, laying face down with their arms spread on either side. The ship sways back and forth in place, emitting the squeaks and eerie whines of the ship.
A soft moan pulls at my attention as the color of bright blue catches my periphery.
Brylee.
And when she’s there, Atarah isn’t far away. Scanning the area, I don’t see either of them, but I do see her.
Davina stands still to my right, marked with burn marks and blood over her stomach and arms. Her face is marred too like she just walked through fire to get here.
Because she’d have to, the sea burns her flesh, she told me.
Narrowed eyes pin me to my spot, angry and almost violent, but they’re not the stunning green that they always are—they’re red.
Blazing red, the color of her hair, appearing demonic and misguided with lies.
My lies.
How she finally found out the truth, I don’t know, but I do know that there would be no talking her into letting me go now.
“Blood,” I digress, trying to keep my voice calm and collected. “What are you doing here?” Her hands clench to her sides at my question. That I had the audacity to even ask or ponder on shit I already know about.
“I’m here to take what you stole from me,” she fumes softly.
My eyes fall all around her, surrounded by my men all battered up and bloody. And like a princess of death, she stands proudly in the middle of them.
Unafraid.
Unfazed.
But harmed. That’s the only thing that still rings out to me, that Davina is still human after this. It didn’t take me long to get to the ship, so the fact that she beat me here and paid a price for it, hits my gut.
Her crimson eyes fall on the gold cuff still gripped in my hand. “I trusted you.”
“I didn’t tell you to,” I deadpan. Her scrutiny jerks to my face, and then I see it—the hurt.
“No,” she replies slowly. “You didn’t.”
“I have to take this, Blood,” I reason. “My clan needs it.”
“For what?”
I shake my head. “I can’t tell you.”
Davina takes a step over a man’s dead body but keeps her gaze locked on me. Even with the burn marks, she’s still beautiful.
With the blood, she’s seductive.
And with her power, she’s dangerous.
“The cuff is mine,” she quips. “And it’ll stay with me.”
I counter her step with one of my own. “My people are at risk.”
“And so are mine.”
I quirk a brow. “How? This is an old piece of junk.”
Her nostrils flare when a loud cry breaks through the silent air. Looking to the left is Brylee, standing behind one of my crew members on his knees with his head in her hands.
“Give her the cuff,” she orders. “Now.”
“Blood,” I drone. “I wouldn’t have taken this if I didn’t need it.” I peer back at her. “But my people will die if I don’t take this home with me.”
“You must’ve not heard what I said the first time,” she seethes. “It’s mine.”
I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I silently promised myself to keep her safe, but I need to keep my own clan unharmed as well.
“Do I need to fight you for it?” she challenges. “Is that what it’s going to take?” She doesn’t wait for me to respond, not even think. Her hand is on my throat as she squeezes, cutting off my oxygen supply as she bores her eyes into me.
The woman that captivated me, she isn’t standing in front of me. It’s the Siren that men in my village spoke about—cunning, vile, and fatal.
The last one holds true because she stares at me like I’m her worst enemy and not the man she’s saved a handful of times.
And maybe I am.
I betrayed her trust, made her believe something that wasn’t true because I had things of my own I had to accomplish. Things may have changed, I may have grown to like her, but everything surrounding us remained the same.
“I was going to let you go,” she leers. “You didn’t deserve to die. I couldn’t watch what my father would’ve done to you, what my sisters whispered about because there is a piece of me that is my mother—kind and gentle. But that’s what got her killed. You see, she was trying to save a sailor from drowning during a storm—” she leans in closer to me. “—and do you know what they did?”
I already know, her face says it all. Her mother was murdered, and that’s why her sisters hate me and her father wants to feed me to some sea creature, I’m sure.
&n
bsp; “A spear,” she continues. “Right through the heart. And I found her there. What you’re holding is hers. The Queen of Merindah cuff, the only thing that holds any value to me. And you took it.”
“I didn’t know,” I tell her. “I was told that—”
“You should’ve asked,” she drones, looking uninterested in what I have to say. “But now it’s too late.”
I nod under the tightness of her hold. “Alright, Blood. Go ahead and do it. I understand why.”
She cocks her head to the side. “Do what, exactly?”
“Kill me.”
A slow pull at her lips appears. “Kill you?” She shakes her head. “I’m not going to kill you, Viking.” Then she shoves me over the rail, the blue sky becoming more distant as I fall backwards toward the sea.
And see black.
Never again.
Never again will I be sucked in by Dagen’s lies, or see the kindness that he tries to coax me with.
Everything was a lie.
His decency.
His words.
His give-a-shit-about-me approach.
I fought my eldest sisters over him. Left marks and tension between us. And I’m too proud to apologize for it now. I’m too embarrassed that I let a man come between my sisters and I.
A man that wasn’t even one of us.
I read about his kind, how incredibly cruel they are. How fearless, which I found foolish because it could lead them into dangerous predicaments. The brute force they could oppose on a people for their own personal gain.
The last was what I was most afraid of.
But since the quarter of his men that my sisters didn’t kill were here, that would leave no one to wait for him beside his father in whatever faraway land he’s in.
Isolde had the ship burned down while Rohana and Nesrine helped me get to shore as quickly as possible. My skin, red and blotchy, stings and tingles from the salt water—a reminder that I trusted the wrong person.
The men were held together, chained to the floor in a different room than Dagen. He would get to stay alone as to not come up with any additional planning to get free. Unless he wanted to swim home, there was no other way for him to leave the island.
A soft knock sounds on my bedroom door, and I call out for the person to enter. Looking into the mirror, I watch my sisters Brylee and Isolde enter quietly.
“We came to see how you were fairing,” Isolde greets, taking the lead inside. But my attention is on my other sibling, who’s wearing a red mark across her cheek from my hitting her.
Remorse batters me again, right into the pit of my stomach. I’m a fool for letting him into my world, for trusting him.
“I’m alright,” I lie, tucking my chin into my chest before turning around to face them.
“We’ll have your dinner brought to your room tonight,” Brylee professes, her blue eyes full of attrition.
I stand and slowly make my way to her. “Bry, I’m—” I reach for her face but pull my hand away. “I’m sorry.”
She gives me a weak smile. “Don’t be, it’s been awhile since we fought.”
“It was uncalled for.”
Isolde clutches my hand. “You didn’t know.”
“But I should’ve known,” I retort. “He’s a…” I trail off because memories of Mother flood me. Finding her floating there with her eyes open, her mouth agape from the shock of being pierced by a spear.
“Atarah is scared to come in here,” Brylee leads on, sitting on the edge of my bed. She wiggles her brows. “Who’s the brave one now?”
Isolde squeezes my hand before releasing it, plopping down on the bed next to her. “How many times did I have to convince you to come in here?”
Brylee runs her fingers through her cerulean blue hair. “You didn’t feel how hard she hit me.”
I open my mouth to apologize again, but Isolde beats me to it. “You deserved it.”
Both Brylee and my eyes widen.
“What?”
Brylee squeals. “For what?”
“For attempting to kill the man when Davina told you ‘no’.”
“It doesn’t—” I start, but I’m immediately cut off by Brylee.
“He’s trouble. Davina has too good of a heart to make any hard decisions.”
“I’m right here,” I chide, crossing my arms.
Isolde rolls her eyes. “So you and Atarah think you can just make everyone’s mind up that you don’t agree with and do it anyways. Like the time I wanted to let Nalolen court me, but you thought he was too scrawny, and Atarah believed he had a brain the size of a pebble.”
“He was an idiot,” Brylee counters. “We saved you a lot of—”
“You both can take your fight outside my room, I’m not in the mood.”
Isolde stands from my bed and adjusts her glasses. “Right, I’m sorry. Taysa is making up an ointment for your burns, she’ll be here tomorrow to deliver it.”
“And we can ask her about the veil as well,” Brylee adds. “We have a lot of questions.”
“That sounds great,” I force from my lips. “Thank you.” They both give me smiles, careful not to touch me as they give me an air hug. After they leave me, I get comfortable inside the silence of my own room.
I have plans for the Viking.
Ones that won’t stop pacing and tramping into my brain. It’s as though he flipped a switch inside me, fueling a rage and being that I never matured before.
He may want death by the time this is over—mercy, even. But it won’t be by my hands. There are worse ideas more than death that I have planned for the Blood Axe.
It’s probably one of the most helpless feelings in the world. The most sickening and forlorn experience that still hits my gut when I know the men it’s happening to. I’ve done it before, so the visual is something I can see.
Another loud shout of agony sounds through the walls, and it keeps the hairs on my arms on end. It twists my gut into knot after knot to the point where I don’t think it’ll ever untie itself.
“Davina!” I shout at the top of my lungs for the hundredth time. I know she’s out there somewhere. That she’s doing all of this as a show to weaken my defenses and fess up to more information.
Thing is, this time I don’t have any more. Her declaration of the cuff being her mother’s makes everything worse. It composes more questions, ones I don’t have the answers to because I was told something completely different.
Maybe my father was misinformed. And maybe he wasn’t. I’m having a hard time swallowing the idea that he’d send me on a suicide mission for something that truly wasn’t what he said it was. Davina confirmed that the cuff meant something, but it sounded more sentimental than anything. Another mystery to the many I have stacked on my plate right now.
Despite them, the real problem is that I have no ally here anymore. Davina is solely against me, her sisters have been there, and it’ll just fuel the fire of their resolution to kill me because I’m more than a threat now.
I’m a fucking thief.
The reality of it hits my pride. I did it for the good of my people, that’s what taking it meant. And while they still stood out there, opposing the Highlands, everything still remained the same.
I needed the cuff and off this island.
The door to the room where I was held the first time opens, and my heart races in double time to see Davina. Except it’s not her. It’s an older woman with unique features and a stout body. From her nose to her forehead, a hue of green covers her skin. She’s dressed in all black, a gown that covers most of her neck, down to the floor.
Her eyes crinkle at the sight of me, curious and a little alarmed. Standing from my seated position, I face her, ready for anything at this point because nothing is what it seems here.
“Are you Dagen the Blood Axe?” she asks me in a scratchy tone.
I give her a curt nod. “I am.”
Her dark eyes follow down the length of me. “But you’re just a boy.”
“I
’m not—”
“Don’t get upset.” She holds both of her hands up in defense. “You’re just not what I expected is all.”
I watch her walk deeper into the room, hands clasped together as if she’s pondering something. Besides King Triton, she’s the only other middle-aged adult I’ve seen here on the island.
And she irks me.
The air feels thicker in her midst, different. As though something else walked in with her that wasn’t human.
“You’re in a heap of trouble, son,” she conveys. “How did you pass the veil?”
A heavy sigh escapes my lips because I’m tired of being asked the same question. “I have no clue.”
“Did you feel anything the closer you got to the island?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“I’m sure you know by now that no one besides a Siren and myself can get passed the veil.”
“And what are you?” I prod.
She gives a weak lift of her shoulders. “They call me the sea witch because, just like the girls, I’m not understood so easily.”
“Then what would you call yourself?”
“I am a sea witch,” she alludes softly. “But I’m also a Selkie.”
I blink at her. “A what?” She chuckles, a light and easeful sound throughout the room as she bows her head into her chest.
“We’re an endangered species. A Selkie is a shapeshifter, who have been torn about through legends, just like Vikings. You’re known to be violent creatures. I’m known to be malevolent and cruel.”
I perk a brow. “Are you?”
“Only when it comes to the girls.” A small quirk of her lips tells me they mean something to her. “I’ve helped raise them since their mother was murdered, fought quite a bit with them too. I never had children of my own because when the Hunters came into existence, I never wanted to bring another being into danger.”
“If you have magical powers, why don’t you just annihilate them?” I challenge.
