Chapter 41 Aria
Chapter Forty-One: Aria
Lyre rubs her belly absentmindedly as she stares at the ceiling from where she lays on my bed.
“So another trip to meet with the mortal king?” she asks, and my shoulders hike towards my ears.
I had made it back from my impromptu meeting with Navin just as my mother had summoned us.
Dyanna and I are to accompany her to the Mortal Kingdom once more.
“It appears so,” I say, returning my focus to the sea glass in front of me.
Dropping the last blue piece into its designated pile, I grab the large white stone that will serve as the canvas, its flat top smooth.
An image takes form in my mind, and without examining why my brain conjured that up, I lay the first glass piece down.
“And it’s just Dyanna and I joining her this time. ”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? Sade commands the Queen’s Legion, and with all the new recruits being added, it would be pure chaos for her to be gone even a few days.”
It is true enough. It took nearly two days to reach the Mortal Kingdom where the king waits, and that is with very little stopping.
“Mother has spent quite a bit of time in Dyanna’s library.”
I lay another piece of sea glass down, this one black. “Has she found whatever it is she is looking for?”
“It’s hard to say,” Lyre answers, turning to lay on her side. Her lavender braids have grown during her pregnancy, their ends now past her collarbones. “Though based on how Dyanna looks when I catch her at the end of the day, one would think the queen was torturing her the whole time.”
I snort, laying another black piece down.
“You know how Dyanna is with her books.” She works in the library that houses all of Lumen’s important literature, only accessible with permission from the queen, yet no one dares to enter even with said permission without first gaining Dyanna’s.
She can be as vicious with the protection of her books as our mother is with, well, everything else.
“I suppose that is true.” She chuckles before lapsing into silence. Scooting closer to the edge of the bed, Lyre watches as the bottom edge of my art piece begins to take shape. “How is the search for the seamount sirens going?”
“I found something that belonged to Nia when I was out covering the area Sade assigned to me,” I lie, tucking my braids behind my ear. “Though Sade believes that the location I found it in is either old or it was left there as a distraction.”
She drums her fingers along the bed. “You were gone for a long time yesterday.”
I drop a piece of sea glass as I clear my throat. “I was out looking for the sirens. Why, did someone ask for me?”
Lyre sits up, draping her fin over the bed. “Lore was looking for you.”
My fingers curl in towards my palms, and though slight relief rushes through me at having missed her, it carries a kernel of annoyance. Lore believes I am hers and hers alone, regardless of the fact that she hasn’t been mine in a very long time.
“I was able to distract her with a mission to Sade. Our sister owed me a favor, and I called it in then.”
My eyes flutter closed as I drop my chin to my chest. “I’m sorry. You didn’t have to do that. Lore is…” I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Lyre knows of our history, and in the beginning, Lore and I were not exactly secretive about our attraction to each other.
“Aria, you know that you can talk to me about anything, right?”
I nod, rolling black sea glass between my fingers. “I do.”
“Good. Because if we are truly going to do this together, we need to have complete faith that the other has our back.” Her hands frame the swell of her belly. “I will protect you, and I know you will do your best to protect us.”
“I will,” I vow, reaching to lay my hand gently on top of hers.
“I’m working hard to ensure I’m the strongest I can be when the time comes.
I won’t let you down.” Though I mean them, the words feel hollow.
I have no experience to back them up, not in the same way Lyre does.
She made the effort to protect me anytime she feasibly could. All I had done was cower.
But Lyre just smiles softly, dropping her gaze to where her babe rests safely. “I know you won’t. You’ve never seen yourself the way I have, Aria. It isn’t a burden to protect you. It’s an honor. One I don’t intend to stop.”
The throne room is filled with legionaries when I enter, Dyanna and Sade on the dais with our mother.
“Aria.” The sharp tone of her voice ushers silence in its wake, every gaze turning to land on me as I make my way up the center aisle.
I bend at the waist when I reach her dais, and she pounds her golden trident on the stone floor three times in response.
“Rise, Daughter,” she commands. I let my eyes slowly travel up to her waiting gaze.
“Have you found anything new in our hunt for those traitors?”
“Nothing new since the necklace, Your Majesty. But I will.”
She arches a dark brow, leaning forward on her throne as her onyx talons catch a ray of sunlight coming in from the surface.
“So sure, are you?” The females around me chuckle, and blood rushes to my cheeks as I hold my mother’s glare.
“You have made me question your loyalty to this queendom—to me and the crown that graces my head—far too many times in the past.”
Jaw and shoulders relaxed, lips flat, spine straight, and attitude vicious.
“Don’t abuse the leniency and grace I grant you now to the point that I begin to question that loyalty again.
” With a nod, I swim to join my sisters as our mother addresses the room.
“I have gathered you all here for something very important. As you know, I have been working diligently for you, my lovely subjects, to reclaim what should have always been ours from the Mortal Kingdom.” The legionaries cheer, beating their spears against the helmets of their shell armor.
“And now the time has come for me to enact the next part of my plan. Today, you will travel with me and my two daughters to visit the king of the Mortal Realm.”
The excitement in the air shifts as the eyes of the sirens ahead of me look from the queen to each other and back again.
I harbor the same confusion they do. To go to the surface was one thing, but in such a large group?
And in front of King Dolian and his guards?
What could my mother possibly need her legion for up there?
“I know there are questions, but the answers you seek are better seen. Gather whatever you will need for a multi-day trip and meet me here in half an hour.” She rises from her throne, looking down at her people as she projects her voice even louder.
“Soon, we make history!” The Queen’s Legion rushes out of the throne room, and my mother turns to face my sister.
“Sade, I will be borrowing a section of my legion today.”
Sade’s sunset eyes narrow just slightly before she dips her chin. “I can see that. May I ask why?”
“You may, but like I told them, the explanation is better seen than told. Once I can confirm that my theory is accurate, then I will bring along another group. You may come with me once most of my legion is… tested.”
My sister tilts her head, orange scales shimmering. “Tested with what?”
To that, our mother just smiles as she descends the dais before turning to look at me.
“Our scouts have relayed that a mortal ship carrying supplies to the Shifter Kingdom will be crossing over our waters during our journey. You will join them on their hunt.” She tips her trident forward, the jagged diamond spires scratching my skin as she presses it into my chest. “Do not disappoint me.” She gives Dyanna a look that beckons her to follow as she elegantly moves through the water to the exit, leaving Sade and I alone.
I don’t look at my sister, afraid that my feelings will be obvious on my face.
Gods, I haven’t been on a hunt since I had come back from the Northern Island, and I have never gone on one without Lyre.
Panic churns my stomach as it whirls through me.
My magic won’t work. I’ll be found out and, if I’m lucky, killed right away.
If I’m not… Queen Amari knows where to hurt me the most.
“You look like you are going to puke,” Sade drawls from my side, the striped helmet cradled in her arm indenting her dark skin.
Jaw and shoulders relaxed, lips flat—
“You don’t want to hunt,” she guesses.
I bite the inside of my cheek, folding my arms over my chest. Sade is not one I can trust enough to voice my fears to.
She’s never been outwardly cruel like Allegra, but she’s also never treated me as if I’m anyone of importance in her life.
Like the rest of the queendom outside of Lyre, I’m nothing but a nuisance to her.
A failure of the Malika line. Who are you willing to become?
I jerk at Myla’s voice in my head. At how easily it eviscerates the self-loathing and doubt.
Sade looks at me expectantly, a single brow lifted.
“It is no secret that hunts are not my favorite,” I finally answer.
She snorts, lifting her helmet and positioning it over her head. “Yes, well, being a siren often means enduring a lot of things we’d rather not.”
I blink, sure I heard her wrong.
Sade grips her trident, undulating her hips as she moves down the center aisle, pausing to look over her shoulder when she’s almost at the door.
“Hunts with the legionaries are messy because the females are more ravenous than others. It’s easy for things to get obscured in the madness.
Wouldn’t want you to end up skewered on one of their spears.
” Sade leaves, and I stare at the door for a long while after she is gone.
Did she just… help me? No. No, that is impossible. Improbable. When chatter from the gathering legionaries knocks me from my stupor, I move to join them outside the palace.
My mother waits at the front of the crowd, the cunning smile on her face making my skin crawl. “Sirens, let us go forth and make our ancestors proud. Let us right the wrongs brought on by men. Let us claim victory with our teeth.”
The legionaries take off, and I find my place next to Dyanna as we follow behind them on our way to the Mortal Kingdom, where only the gods and my mother know what is waiting for us.