Chapter 33
the sound of the warning bell echoes across the Isle of Ennor.
I freeze in the practice yard, scanning the faces around me as everyone else pauses.
Silence envelops us as the clang of the bell rings on, the only noise discernible in the eerie absence of sound as gaze meets gaze, as confusion widens into understanding …
then plummets into fear. Eli emerges from a pocket of shadow at my side, features grim, as Caden stalks over towards us.
‘It’s time,’ Eli says. ‘They’re here.’
My breath stutters. ‘How many?’ I ask urgently.
Eli’s gaze lands on me, full of flint and storms. ‘All of them. The entire armada.’
Caden swears under his breath, a momentary flash of terror gripping his features before he collects himself.
As I watch, he squares his shoulders, raises his chin and settles his features into calm strength.
Then he turns to the yard, surveying the women and girls who have kept returning every day, practising until the sun sits proudly in the sky.
‘Secure your young, your children and the elderly within the walls of the castle, then come to the armoury,’ he says.
‘Now is your moment. Now is the time to fight for your home, for your people. This is the moment you’ve all prepared for.
The ruling council’s forces have arrived. ’
A flurry of emotions pass over every face – sheer panic, terror, acceptance.
Then determination. A woman, older than most in this courtyard, brings her practice sword to her chest and bows her head.
In a wave, every person in the courtyard copies the gesture, a silent thanks for our training, for the hope Caden has sparked within all of us.
Then, quietly, everyone places their practice swords back on the rack before they leave, streaming out through the doorway to secure their families.
To prepare for what will come next. I place my own practice sword on the rack, fear and flame igniting in my chest. Eli’s words are like a blow.
All of them. All those warships … all sent here.
‘Joby and Merryam are readying the crews,’ Eli says to us, ‘but the ruling council have sent every warship Mira and I saw in Port Graine. They’ve sent them all, and it appears that a few merchant ships have joined them too.’
My heart beats faster, the clattering bell still ringing in my ears. ‘Well, haven’t they been busy …’
‘How many?’ Caden asks.
‘At least two hundred. The warships and commandeered merchant vessels mainly. Some appear to be Renshaw’s. The watch are manning many of them, and some of the ruling council’s personal guard. It suggests …’
‘They’re united against us. The Rexilium brothers have rallied the merchants …
They’ve come to secure their sea route,’ I say.
Blood beats hot through my veins as the numbers, the sheer size of their forces, sinks in.
There’s not a chance we can defeat them completely.
Not on our own, not with our crews and islanders, who are scarcely trained in combat.
And if I bring a storm, if I seek to sink them all, will I be able to turn it from the isles at the last moment?
Or will the people of Ennor suffer? I think of my mother, what she did …
no. I cannot think of that now. I take Eli’s hand.
‘I need to ask the sirens for help. You know that they will only see hearts, though, so if any of our own people should fall into the sea …’
Eli nods quickly. ‘I’ll warn Mer and Joby to spread the word among the crews and fisherfolk.’
‘I will begin assembling our people on land,’ Caden says, already moving to the doorway. ‘Eli?’
‘Yes?’
Caden hesitates, then strides to his cousin, clasping his arm. ‘Don’t die. I’d have no one to beat in the practice yard.’ He flashes us both a grin, masking his worry for Eli, for all of us, then disappears.
I take Eli’s hand and he dips his forehead to mine. ‘We haven’t had long enough.’
‘No,’ I agree, closing my eyes. ‘Not nearly long enough.’
‘Until the end, Mira?’
I tip back my head and kiss him, knowing what this kiss could mean. A goodbye. A final parting. When I draw back, his eyes are on mine. ‘I will love you until the end.’
He smiles. ‘I will love you too. Until I am nothing but pieces of starlight and sky.’
A single tear falls down my cheek as I whisper back. ‘And I will find you there, in that starlight. But not today,’ I add fiercely, gripping both his hands tightly in mine. ‘I have given up too much. I have lost too many. I cannot bear to lose anyone else I love, and I will not lose you now.’
Eli nods once, saying nothing, then releases my hands. ‘Go, seek the sirens. I love you.’
Then he’s gone and I’m left in the empty practice yard.
I shape my hands into fists and turn, stalking through the doorway.
Already, my senses are alight, seeking out the storms on the horizon, twining my will around cloud and sky.
If the ruling council are bringing war to our shores, then they will get their wish.
I will bring them a storm. I rush through the castle, push back the front doors and find the fickle sea, which only this morning was still and calm with slumber, now churning and watchful. Ready to roar.
I smile.
Far away, thunder booms.
As I leave the castle, walking down the hill to the sea, people stream back and forth, calling between each other, rallying, readying.
Children are carried past me to the castle, elders are helped up the hill, or pushed on carts.
I focus on what I can control, what I alone can do.
I want to guide every elder, carry each and every child.
But there is only one of me, only one storm bringer, one girl with a siren lurking inside her.
Now that the armada is on the horizon, it’s as though a veil has been removed, and I can sense every vessel in the sea.
The siren map – stitched into my veins, my mind – awakens.
I see them all. Every cursed ship here to destroy us.
And when I get to the quay, pressing my hand to Kai’s shoulder, hugging Agnes one final time, I expel a breath, wrenching myself away from these people I love – my home, my heart – and dive off the end of the quay into the waiting tide.
At once, my blood ignites in a blaze of fire and the sky darkens overhead, as though it has ignited too.
I look up as clouds bloom, bruising the skin of the sky in shades of charcoal, and the rain slaps the surface of the sea.
Soaring through the underwater world, like an inverted sky, I see the hulls of ships and other vessels, still far off, but closing in, all too rapidly. This is a fight for our lives.
It’s time to call on everything my mother left waiting for me in my blood. The rolling fields of raging clouds, the echoes of past storms in their wake. The crackle of lightning, the fire in the sky. And the thread that connects me to all that fierce wild.
I reach out with my senses bound to the ocean, allowing my mind to rush and leap through the eddying currents, far away to where my siren sisters reside.
That side of me, the side that is all siren, grasps the knot of their minds.
And pulls. As one, I feel them respond to my beckoning call, knowing what this is, what it means.
The answering cry is sharp and hungry, all claws and teeth and thoughts of bleeding hearts.
But they are coming. The sirens have answered my call.
They are ready to fight my enemies and to feed.
There is little need to wonder why I did not sense this armada gathering.
The ruling council have enlisted a coven to their cause, witches that, even now, might be setting traps for me and my kind.
I swim towards those shadowy shapes, sitting on the lip of the waves, counting the battleships, the cannons, the weaponry.
It’s not until I turn back for the shore, ready to deliver the information I’ve gleaned from the sea to Eli and Caden, that I sense something else in the deep, a dark, looming presence.
A creature I have not encountered before.
I can sense its ancient hunger eclipsing my siren sisters’ own hunger by far.
And I know this battle is not only meant for the land. It’s also meant for beneath the waves.
Like an arrow, I streak round the hulls, pressing myself into the barnacle-clad wood. My heart picks up, even as I try to calm its panicked beat. The ruling council has lured more than one sea monster today to our isles. Then I hear my siren sisters.
Mira, daughter of Lowenva.
We sense kraken and morgawr and something else …
There are eyes in the sea.
Terrifying, ancient, ravenous …
A monster, ready to be unleashed, I realise, listening to them. I swim to Ennor, back to the shore, and sense the first of the sirens darting fast and true to swim alongside me. We emerge on the shoreline at the same moment, just as Lowri’s form shimmers and becomes flesh beside us.
Gallena the siren leader nods to me and Lowri, then turns, assessing the armada and the sea beneath. ‘You humans and your own witch magic are no match for this.’
‘We have to be. I have to be,’ says Lowri, and swallows. ‘Too many will die. There will be no one left to stand against the ruling council.’
Gallena murmurs to the other sirens, all arriving now, and they turn to the skies.
I look as well and locate what they have sensed.
Wyvern. A whole horde, hovering as a pack, just beyond the armada.
Awaiting the signal to hunt. Perhaps a coven aboard one of the ships down there is controlling them too.
‘I cannot be in the sea and the sky. If I bring too great a storm, if I lose control …’
‘You could kill us all,’ Gallena finishes. ‘History repeated.’
My breath stills in my chest. My mother, Lowenva, was the last storm bringer.
She brought a storm and couldn’t control it, killing her sisters, taking too many lives.
I inhale sharply and shake my head. ‘No, Gallena. History will not repeat. Not today.’ I look to Lowri, aware of the burden on her.
Our only witch. ‘Have you heard from Brielle? Can Tanith survive?’
She grimaces. ‘I haven’t heard from Brielle since she left for the Spines with Inesh and Dreska.
And we do not know if Tanith will remember anything, even who she is loyal to, if she takes her drake form.
I cannot be sure I can haul her back, help her remember.
Her attention may be scattered. She may panic and bolt, or worse … ’
Lowri doesn’t finish her sentence, she doesn’t need to.
A disorientated, panicked drake without a sense of who they are, or who they have been, is a volatile resource at best. At worst, a death sentence for all of us.
I rub a hand down my face, calculating, assessing.
Without a way to stop the wyvern, the people on Ennor are sitting targets.
They’ll be hunted for sport, picked off one by one before the ships even reach our shore.
‘Lowri, stay on Ennor and bolster the wards,’ I say. ‘Speak to Tanith … and tell her I’m sorry. If she will fight for us, then we need her now, more than ever, but she will have to be sure that in her drake form she will not turn on a friend.’
Lowri nods and I think of Joby. I think of how this will break his heart, if she resumes her drake form and she cannot remember him. ‘You fight in the sea, Mira. I will defend Ennor on land. And Tanith … Tanith will defend the skies.’
‘And find Eli for me. Tell him …’ I begin, taking a breath. ‘Tell him I will meet him in the stars.’
Then I nod to my siren sisters, and we dive beneath the waves.