To Kill a Kingdom

by Alexandra Christo

  “Stop,” Crestell said.

  She swooped in front of Kahlia, creating a barrier between us. Her arms were spread wide in defense, fangs bared. For a moment I was sure she would attack, slicing her claws through me and putting an end to this madness once and for all.

  “Take me,” she said.

  I paled.

  Crestell grabbed my hand – it looked tiny in hers, but nowhere near as delicate – and pressed it to her chest. “Take it,” she said.

  My cousins gasped around us, their faces contorted in terror and grief. This was their choice: watch their mother die or see their sister killed. I stammered before my aunt, ready to scream and swim as far away as I could. But then Crestell shot a look to Kahlia, who trembled on the seabed. A worried, furtive glance, quick enough for my mother to miss. When her eyes returned to mine, they were filled with begging.

  “Take it, Lira,” Crestell said. She swallowed and raised her chin. “This is the way things must be.”

  “Yes,” my mother cooed from behind me. I didn’t have to turn to know there was a smile cutting across her face. “That would be quite the substitute.”

  She placed a hand on my shoulder, her nails scraping over my skin, clamping me into place before she lowered her lips to my ear and let a whisper form between us.

  “Lira,” my mother said so quiet that my fin curled. “Cure yourself and show me that you truly belong in the ocean.”

  Defective.

  “Any last words, sister?” the Sea Queen asked.

  Crestell closed her eyes, but I knew it wasn’t to keep from crying. It was to seal the fury in so that it didn’t burnish her irises. She wanted to die a loyal subject and keep her daughters safe from my mother’s revenge. From me.

  When Crestell opened her eyes again – one such a pure blue and the other a most miraculous shade of purple – she looked nowhere but at me.

  “Lira,” she said. Her voice rasped. “Become the queen we need you to be.”

  It wasn’t a promise I could make, because I wasn’t sure I was capable of being the kind of queen my mother’s kingdom needed. I had to be without emotion, spreading terror rather than feeling it, and as my breathing trembled, I just didn’t know if I had it in me.

  “Won’t you promise?” Crestell asked.

  I nodded, even though I thought it was a lie. And then I killed her.

  That was the day I became my mother’s daughter. And the moment it happened was the moment I became the most monstrous of us all. The yearning to please her spread through me like a shadow, fighting against every urge I knew she’d perceive as weakness. Every flash of regret and sympathy that would lead her to believe I was impure.

  Abnormal. Defective. And in a blink of an eye, the child I was became the creature I am.

  I forced myself to think only of which princes would please my mother most: the fearless Ágriosy, who tried for decades to find Diávolos under the misguided notion they could end our kind, or a prince of Mellontikós. Prophets and fortune-tellers who chose to keep themselves apart from the war, rarely daring to let a ship touch the water. I toyed with the thought of bringing them to my mother as further proof that I belonged by her side.

  Over time, I forgot what it was like to be weak. Now that I’m trapped here in a body that is not my own, I suddenly remember. I’ve gone from being my mother’s least favorite weapon to a creature who can’t even defend herself. A monster without fangs or claws.

  I run a hand over my bruised legs, paler than a shark’s underbelly.

  My feet arch inward as an awful cold snakes through me and small bumps begin to prickle over my new skin. I don’t understand what it means, and I don’t understand how I could have gone from darting through the ocean to stumbling among humans.

  I heave a frustrated breath, turning my caress to the skin on my ribs. No gills. No matter how deep I breathe, the skin doesn’t part and the air continues to fog in and out of my lips. My skin is still damp and the water no longer runs off it, seeping instead into every pore and bringing with it an unbearable cold. The kind of cold that sends more bumps along the surface of my skin, crawling from my legs to my frail arms.

  I can’t help but start to fear the water outside of this cage. If Elian were to throw me overboard, how long would it take for me to drown?

  The lanterns glow, faint enough to give my human eyes the time to adjust. Elian presses a key into the crystal cage, and a section of wall slides open. I ignore the instinct to rush him, remembering how easily he pinned me to the wall when I tried to attack Maeve. He’s stronger than I am now and more agile than I gave him credit for. In this body, force is not the way.

  Elian sets a plate down in front of me. It’s a thick broth the color of river water. Pale meat and sea grapes float curiously at the top, and the overwhelming smell of anise climbs through the air. My stomach aches in response.

  “Kye and I caught sea turtles,” he explains. “It stinks to high heaven, but damn if it tastes good.”

  “I’m being punished,” I say in a cold rendition of Midasan. “I want you to tell me why.”

  “You’re not being punished,” he tells me. “You’re being watched.”

  “Because I speak Psáriin?” I ask. “Is speaking a language a crime now?”

  “It’s banned in most kingdoms.”

  “We’re not in a kingdom.”

  “Wrong.” Elian leans against the door arch. “We’re in mine. The Saad is my kingdom. The entire ocean is.”

  I ignore the insult of a human trying to lay claim to what is mine and say, “I wasn’t given a list of laws when I boarded.”

  “Well, now you know.” He twists the key around on his finger. “Of course, I could arrange for a more comfortable sleeping arrangement if you’d just stop being so evasive.”

  “I’m not being evasive.”

  “Then tell me how you can speak Psáriin.” The curiosity in his voice betrays his lax movements. “Tell me what you know about the Crystal of Keto.”

  “You saved my life and now you’re trading comforts for information? It’s strange how fast kindness disappears.”

  “I’m fickle,” Elian says. “And I have to protect the Saad. I can’t just go trusting anyone who climbs aboard. They need a good enough story first.”

  I smirk at that.

  If a story is all I need, then that’s easy enough. The Second Eye of Keto is a legend in our waters, too. The Sea Queen hunted it for years when she began her reign. Where previous queens dismissed it as a lost cause from the outset, my mother was always too hungry for power. She rehashed the stories of the ritual to free the eye, over and over, in a bid to find some clue to its location. Tales that generations had ignored, my mother made sure to memorize. And her obsession meant that I knew them, too. She once told me that the eye was the key to ending all humans, as much as it was the humans’ key to ending all of us. I think of her charcoal bone trident and the beloved ruby that sits in the center, the true source of the Sea Queen’s magic. The eye is said to be its twin, stolen from my kind and hidden where no siren can follow.

  My mother knows everything about the eye, except for how to find it. And so, after many years, she gave up on the hunt. But her failure to succeed where her predecessors failed has always irked her.

  I pause, an idea sparking inside me.

  The eye is hidden where no siren can follow, but thanks to my mother, that no longer applies to me. If Elian can lead me there, then I can use the eye to make the Sea Queen’s greatest fear come true. If she truly thinks I’m unworthy of ruling, I’ll prove just the opposite by using the Second Eye of Keto to overthrow her. To destroy her, the way she tried to destroy me.

  I lick my lips.

  If Elian is truly hunting the eye, then he’s doing so on the faith of stories. And if a man can hunt them, then he can hear them. All I need is to convince the prince that I’m useful, and he might just let me above deck and away from the shackles of my cage. If I can get close enough, I won’t need my nails
to rip out his heart. I’ll do it with his own knife. Just as soon as he secures my place as the ruler of the ocean.

  “The Sea Queen stole my family,” I tell Elian, layering my voice in the same melancholy I’ve heard in the calls of sailors as they watched their rulers die. “We were on a fishing boat and I was the only one to survive. I’ve studied them ever since I was a child, learning everything possible from books and stories.” I bite down on my lip. “As for the language, I don’t pretend to be fluent, but I know enough. It was easy to pick up with one of them as my prisoner. My father managed to cripple it before he died, and that meant I was able to keep it captive.”

  Elian sighs, unimpressed. “If you’re going to lie,” he says, “do it better.”

  “It’s not a lie.” I pretend to be wounded by the accusation. “One of them was injured during the attack on my family. We’re from Polemistés.”

  At the mention of the warrior land, Elian takes a step forward. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small circular object. The same compass he palmed when we spoke above deck. A thin gold chain hangs delicately from the hilt, and when he flips it open, the ends chime together.

  “Do you really expect me to believe that you’re from Polemistés?” Elian asks.

  I try not to take offense at the question – right now I wouldn’t believe I was a warrior either – but I don’t argue my case. I don’t like the way Elian glances down at the compass, as though he’s relying on it to discern something. With every lie that crosses my thoughts, I can almost feel the object reaching out to crawl into the watery depths of my mind. Pluck out the lies like seaweed roots. It seems impossible, but I know how much humans like their trickery.

  “My family are hunters,” I say carefully. “Just like you. The Sea Queen wanted revenge because she felt she was wronged.”

  The space between us cloys with the compass’s phantom magic, and I conjure an image of Maeve’s face to prove to the strange object that this is not technically a lie.

  “I tortured one of her sirens to get what I needed,” I say.

  “What happened to the siren?”

  “Dead,” I tell him.

  Elian glances down at the compass and then frowns. “Did you kill it?”

  “Do you think I’m not capable?”

  He sighs at my evasive answer, but it’s difficult to miss the intrigue in his eyes as he toys with the possibility of believing me. “The siren,” he says. “Did she tell you about the crystal?”

  “She told me a lot of things. Make me an offer worth my while, and perhaps I’ll tell you, too.”

  “What kind of offer?”

  “A place on your ship and this hunt.”

  “You’re in no position to bargain,” Elian says.

  “My family has studied sirens for generations. I guarantee that I know more about them than you ever could hope to. And you’ve already seen that I can speak their tongue,” I say. “This isn’t a bargain, it’s a deal.”

  “I’m not in the business of striking deals with girls in cages.”

  I twist my lips into a cruel smile. “Then by all means, let me out.”

  Elian laughs, pulls a pistol out, and shakes his head once again.

  “You know,” he says, approaching the cell, “I think I might like you. Thing is” – he taps his gun against my prison – “there’s a difference between liking someone and trusting them.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never done either.”

  “When we get to Eidýllio,” Elian says, “we can drink to that.”

  The thought is enough to make me wince. Eidýllio is a land devoted to romance. They celebrate love as though it’s power, even though it has killed far more humans than I ever have. I would rather be surrounded by the blinding gold of Midas than be in a kingdom where emotion is currency.

  “You trust me enough to buy me a drink?”

  Elian pockets his pistol and heads back to the switch. “Who said I’d be the one buying?”

  “You promised that you would set me free!” I shout to his retreating figure.

  “I promised you more comfortable living arrangements.” Elian’s hand flickers over the switch. “I’ll get Kye to bring you a pillow.”

  I catch one last look at his angled smirk before the lantern dims and the last speck of light is pulled from the room.

  19

  Lira

  WHEN THE LIGHT BREAKS across the shore of Eidýllio, there’s a flash of pink that shatters the sky. The sun gleams against the horizon, encircled by a miraculous hue of diminished red, like melted coral. I’m pulled from the depths of my cage and into the light, where there’s an explosion of warmth and color, like nothing I have ever witnessed. There’s light in every corner of the earth, but in Eidýllio it seems closer to magic. The kind that’s crafted into Elian’s blade and my mother’s ashen trident. Dreams shaped into something more powerful than reality.

  Across the docks, the grass is the color of neon gobies. A meadow floating on the water. Stems of juniper sprout like fireworks, rain beads clinging to their tips in indestructible droplets. They are orbs of light guiding the way back to land.

  I realize that I’m warm. It’s a new sensation, far from the tickle of ice I loved as a siren and the sharp frost I felt in my human toes aboard the Saad. I’ve shed Elian’s damp shirt, which clung and dried against me like a second skin. Now I have a ragged white dress, pinched at the waist by a belt as thick as either of my legs, and large black boots that threaten to swallow my new feet whole.

  Madrid takes a step beside me. “Freedom’s in your grasp,” she says.

  I throw her a disparaging look. “Freedom?”

  “The cap planned to cut you loose once we arrived here, didn’t he?

  No burn, no breach.”

  I recognize the saying. It is a Kléftesis phrase from the kingdom of thieves – no harm, no problem – used by pirates who pillage passing ships and any land they dock on. If nobody is killed, the Kléftesis don’t believe a crime has been committed. Their pirates are true to their nature and pay no mind to noble missions and declarations of peace. They sail for gold and pleasure and the pain they cause when taking it. If Madrid is from Kléftes, then Elian chose his crew well. The worst of the worst to be his best.

  “How trusting you are of your prince,” I say.

  “He’s not my prince,” Madrid says. “He’s not any sort of prince on this ship.”

  “That I can believe,” I tell her. “He wasn’t even civil when I offered help.”

  “Let’s be straight,” Madrid says. “You’re only looking to help yourself.”

  “Is there anyone alive who isn’t?”

  “The captain.” Her voice holds a spark of admiration. “He wants to help the world.”

  I laugh. The prince wants to help a doomed world. As long as my mother’s alive, war is all we will ever know. The best thing Elian can do for his safety is kill me and anyone else he can’t afford to trust. Instead he kept me prisoner. Suspicious enough to lock me away, but not brutal enough to take my life. He showed mercy, and whether it’s weakness or strength, it’s jarring all the same.

  I watch Elian descending the ship, paying no mind to the shipwrecked girl he could easily abandon. He takes off in a run and jumps the last of the way, so that when his feet touch the tufts of grass, small droplets explode into the air like rainfall. He pulls his hat off and takes a sweeping bow at the land. Then he reaches up a tanned hand, ruffles the wisps of his raven hair, and slips the hat back onto his head in a flourish. He takes a moment, surveying the canvas, his hands hitched on his hips.

  I can hear the exhale of his breath even from high on the deck of the Saad. His joy is like a gust of unfamiliar wind sweeping up to us. The crew smiles as they watch him stare into an ocean of grass and juniper and, in the distance, a wall made of light. A castle peeks out from the city lines like a mirage.

  “He always does this,” Kolton Torik says.

  His presence casts a shadow beside m
e, but for all the foreboding Elian’s first mate could bring, he’s nothing of the dire pirate he could be. His face is gentle and relaxed, hands shoved into the pockets of frayed shorts. When he speaks, his voice is deep but soft, like the echo after an explosion.

  “Eidýllio is one of his favorites,” Torik explains.

  I find it hard to believe the prince is a romantic. He seems as though he might find the notion as ridiculous as I do. I would know in an instant that Midas isn’t his favorite kingdom; men don’t make homes if they have them already. But my guess would have been Ágrios, a nation of fearlessness. Or the warrior kingdom of Polemistés that I chose for my origin. Lands for soldiers on the precipice of war. Fighters and killers who see no use in pretending to be anything else.

  I would not have guessed that the infamous siren hunter had humanity in him.

  “It’s one of my favorites too,” Madrid says, inhaling the air. “They have streets of bakeries, with chocolate hearts oozing toffee on every corner. Even their cards smell sweet.”

  “Why is it his favorite?” I point to Elian.

  Kye arches an eyebrow. “Take a wild guess.”

  “What else do you need in life when you have love?” Madrid asks.

  Kye snorts. “Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?”

  Madrid swipes at him and when Kye sidesteps her blow, she narrows her eyes. “This is supposed to be the land of romance,” she tells him.

  “Romance is for royals,” Kye says just as Torik throws an empty bag in the middle of their makeshift circle.

  He has shed his shirt, and I see that his bare arms are covered in tattoo mosaics, not a single piece of skin spared from the patchwork quilt of color. On his shoulder a snake stares down. Yellow, teeth bared, hissing as his biceps flex.

  “And what’s the captain, then?” he asks.

  “A pirate.” Kye throws his sword into the bag. “And we all know why pirates come to Eidýllio.”

  Madrid shoots him a withering look.