Salt & the Sovereign: The Siren's Curse 2 (The Elemental Origins Series Book 8)
Page 23
“Her emergency plan kicked in, leaving you to live a whole new life, with no memory whatsoever of who you were or what had happened,” Emun finished for me. He fell back against the couch, sighing and shaking his head. “It was both brilliant and insane on her part.”
Antoni had begun to pace. “So, all those years that your population was dwindling, it was because Claudius had bidden his people to take the gemstones of every siren they came across?”
“That big cylinder full of gems that we found, it was a collection years in the making…” Targa said, wonderingly. “And they hid it in Okeanos.”
“I think so.” I was nodding. “Because it is now Atlantean territory and has been since that day.”
“Well that explains the crazy Atlantean in the bar,” said Emun. “It seems like Atlanteans were indoctrinated, and are still taking gems from sirens. But when we were in Okeanos, it was abandoned, used only as a hiding place for the gems they’d taken.”
“You don’t understand how large Okeanos is,” I explained, getting up to stretch my legs and add a few more logs to the fire. “You said there was rubble there, as though there had been a collapse, right?”
“Yes, and it looked like no one had been there in a very long time.” Antoni picked up the iron poker and prodded at the now crackling fire.
“It was just one cavern of thousands,” I said. “It doesn’t mean that the Atlanteans are not using those caves anymore. If they’re still stealing the gems from sirens, then they could still be adding to the stash.”
Emun was frowning. “But there was some kind of magical dome protecting the gems, and the cylinder was chock full to bursting. It looked more like they’d finished collecting all the aquamarines and then locked them up so no one could take them.”
“And we have them now,” Targa said. “Enough gems to free all of the remaining sirens in the world from their mating cycles.”
I looked at her, eyes shining. “And we have an elemental who can call them by name.”
Targa slowly got to her feet. She came to stand by me and stare into the fire, which had now also captured my gaze. I needed something to look at that allowed the idea blossoming in my mind to flesh itself out.
“Even if I call only Aris, or your friend Lusi,” she said, speaking to Antoni, “all they have to do is give me one more name, one more siren that they know. If every siren can remember even one, their mother or their daughter or a friend, then eventually…”
She raised her eyes to mine and we stood there, the firelight reflecting in our eyes and revealing that the same idea was growing in our minds.
I finished Targa’s sentence. “We can call them all.”
She nodded in agreement, her eyes taking on the glint of ambition. “Every. Siren. Alive.”
Epilogue
The sun was disappearing into the Baltic, sending a spectacular array of pinks, yellows, and purples across the horizon. Targa, myself, Antoni, and Emun were seated at a picnic bench in the park nearest the manor, eating the cheese and meat Sera had packed for us and talking about how we should go about giving gems out to sirens.
“It’ll take the sirens a long time to arrive,” Targa was saying, “I mean, God knows how close the nearest one is. They could be anywhere. It could take weeks, even months for them to get here.”
“And once they come, what do you plan to do with them? Just give them a gem and let them go on their merry way?” Antoni glanced at me from across the table, his expression wary. “Somehow, after all you’ve been through and all you’ve lost, I doubt you want your story to end that way.”
“What are you suggesting?” I asked. “Taking back Okeanos?”
Antoni and Targa both paled.
“That sounds like war,” Targa said, her voice cracked. She stared at me uncertainly.
“I haven’t gotten as far as thinking about recovering Okeanos,” I replied, and watched as Targa visibly relaxed. “To be honest, Jozef is my priority right now. Jozef, and freeing any sirens we can from the Dyás.”
“What if there are sirens who react the way Targa did when we give them the gem?” Antoni asked. “Clearly, the gem isn’t a solution for everyone.”
Targa, Emun, and Antoni had told me all the events that had taken place in the caverns they’d followed the submersible into. I had no explanation for why the gems were poisonous to her. Our only conclusion was that she was an elemental and therefore different from other sirens, more powerful. But why should that mean that the gem would harm her? Nike was powerful, too, and she was never without her gem. But Nike was a sorceress, not an elemental. It was a puzzle for everyone, but especially me because I had the longest history and the most experience with the gem. I’d never seen a siren react that way to the stone.
Emun, who’d been munching quietly, finally spoke. “You said that you were able to pinpoint the time in your history when the Mer did not wear gems, and the time when they did. Right?”
I frowned. “Roughly. It’s not like I have an exact date, or even an exact century, given that I had to fish through a bunch of very old memories to figure it out. It was some time after the fall of Atlantis, though, because while Sisinyxa didn’t wear any gem, the Sovereign following her did.”
“Curious,” Emun said thoughtfully. “It seems to me that if our next move is to call all the sirens to us so we can give them freedom from the curse in the form of some jewelry, that we’re ignoring the four-hundred-pound gorilla in the room.”
“What would that be?” Targa asked, snagging another piece of cheese.
“Why you need the gems in the first place.”
Emun’s question hung in the air over the picnic table.
He continued. “It’s a curse, right? A curse needs a creator, so who created it and why?”
Antoni frowned. “There were bits and pieces about some myth on the fragments those Winterthür guys made me interpret.”
“About an angry sea deity, right?” Targa prompted.
I straightened, my heart rate elevating. “They mentioned the curse in those fragments? Why didn’t you say so?”
Antoni looked sheepish. “There wasn’t a good time! First we thought maybe you died, then all of a sudden you’re back and you want Jozef, but I can’t find him, and then you’ve got this crazy story to tell. It didn’t seem important enough to interrupt you…”
I cut Antoni off in my eagerness. “Was there more on the tablet about the aquamarine?”
“It wasn’t always in small pieces,” Targa explained. “Antoni told me about it while you were resting. “It used to be one big piece, a cylinder.”
Antoni nodded. “A six-sided columnar.”
“When did it get broken up and who broke it?” Emun asked.
“I don’t know,” Antoni replied. “The tablet is locked. That’s why I took it to a hacker, to see if he could get into it.”
An electronic ringtone made all of us jump except for Emun. Antoni’s hand whipped to his pocket and he pulled out his cell phone.
“Is it Jozef?” My heart lurched with hope.
Antoni stared at the screen, frozen for a moment before shaking his head. He answered the phone in Polish. There was a rapid conversation during which Antoni didn’t take his eyes from mine. A moment later, he said goodbye and ended the call.
“That was the hacker,” he said. “The tablet’s been unlocked.”
The End (for now)
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Afterword
Thank you for making it this far! Here you are, dear reader. Book 2 of a trilogy which is technically novel number eight in a series. The fact that you’ve stuck with me this entire journey means more to me than you can possibly know.
And now the final book of The Siren’s Curse series is upon my desktop, ready for scribing. I’m very excited to be working on this story. It’s been a long time in the making, about 4 y
ears in development, and longer in my imagination.
Salt & the Sovereign took you back in time and revealed the history of the Mer and Sybellen and how she came to live two lives. Salt & the Sisters (yes, that’s what Book 3 will be titled) deals with both present events as well as the past, for we’ve got the origins of a curse to unearth. There’ll be more new characters (one in particular I’m dying to introduce you to, she actually has her own Wikipedia page, true story), and more revelations which are sure to blow your socks off.
If you’ve enjoyed Salt & the Sovereign, I’d be so grateful if you’d take a moment to write your review for it on Amazon. Reviews are one of the most important and helpful things a reader can do to support their favorite authors. Please, take a moment to do that now, with my thanks!
See you soon!
Abby
Also by A.L. Knorr
The Elemental Origins Series
Born of Water
Born of Fire
Born of Earth
Born of Æther
Born of Air
The Elementals
Mira’s Return Series
Returning
Falling
Surfacing
The Siren’s Curse Series
Salt & Stone
Salt & the Sovereign
Salt & the Sisters (2019)
Elemental Novellas
Pyro, A Fire Novella
Heat, A Fire Novella
The Kacy Chronicles
Descendant
Ascendant
Combatant
Transcendent