Chapter Twenty-Three
ADRIAN
‘A siren will lull you into a sweet death,’ growled Pieter in between slurps of his stew, ‘but a mermaid will gift you a vicious one, make no mistake.’
Adrian was sitting on the deck of his beloved ship, the Starred Siren, attempting to eat the cod stew that Pieter had made. The rest of his crew acknowledged Pieter’s warning with murmurs of their own, always ready for a new tale from the wise old cook.
Pieter pointed a gnarled finger at the jagged scar that tore down his left cheek. ‘This here was from one such mermaid—all tooth and claw.’
‘I’m sure it was,’ the quartermaster Santi muttered beside him. Adrian elbowed him, and Santi shot him a sly grin, mercurial eyes shifting with humour.
Before the past week, Adrian had always chalked up Pieter’s claims as tall tales, but after what he’d witnessed in the Castorian pits mere days before, he was becoming much more superstitious.
‘And what if you look directly at one?’ he said. He already knew the answer—Pieter had told the tale many times before. It was a comfort of sorts, like reading the same fairy tale over and over again as a child, always knowing the ending, but hoping that perhaps, one time, it would change.
‘Well, captain, any sailor knows that to look upon a mermaid is to be cursed with bad luck for the rest of yer seafaring life. My cousin once saw one. He had no good sense, mind you; black sheep of the family, he was. Bold as anything. So he stared upon her, he did, and after she’d disappeared, the very next day, do you know what happened? ’
‘A shipwreck,’ the crew chimed in in unison. Adrian didn’t miss the flat tone of Santi’s answer to his left.
Pieter nodded. ‘A shipwreck. Storm conjured out of nowhere, the calm seas roilin’ as they dashed his ship on rocks that appeared in the middle of the ocean. Not a member survived save for the cook. Me.’
He nodded, tipping his bowl up. The rest of Adrian’s crew finished off their supper, though the usual jokes and teasing they gave one another were gone, a heavy mood settling upon the ship at their captain’s return and just what he had recounted to them earlier.
‘Any notion as to where we go next?’ Santi asked quietly as the men began to split into their different groups, some playing cards, the ones on cleaning duty collecting the bowls and cutlery to take to the galley.
Adrian shook his head, looking out at the Dioscuri Docks before him. There had been chaos at the harbour all day as they’d watched the great golden ball of fire soar through the sky, battling against the darkness and blessing them all with light once more. It all hardly mattered to Adrian.
‘I don’t know,’ he sighed. Castor had brought him nothing but pain. ‘This place was my only hope.’ He pushed his barely eaten food away. ‘Without a snakestone, how in the oceans am I going to cure my sister?’
It had started a few weeks prior, the malady.
All when the moon, as he now had heard it being called, had risen into the skies.
His youngest sister had been out pearl-hunting.
Adrian’s family owned a lucrative marine-jewel business, selling only the most precious and rare of ocean gems, and Annabel and his other sisters, as tideweavers, were exceptionally adept at diving to find them.
Adrian, however, had found he preferred a different path—one where he could simply steal jewels and treasures from other ships, and sell them in the markets and ports around Celestia for extortionate amounts.
Making him a pirate: not quite the occupation that would have made his ma and pa—Lord and Lady Mereille, to others—proud.
In fact, they’d shunned him at his familial home the moment they’d discovered the gemstones he was bringing home to them were, in fact, ill gotten.
That was until his sister had fallen poorly. Annabel had seen that orb in the sky, and in her panic had tried to get back to the safety of her boat. But not before she’d been swallowed whole by the ocean.
When it had spat her out, she had staggered back home.
His sister, his parents had recounted in their frantic letter to him, had whispered only three words while standing at their door sopping wet, her usual clear aquamarine eyes near black, before collapsing—‘So fear her.’ When she came to, she had turned entirely mute, and had been unable to move, bedridden ever since with some kind of fever that was growing worse with every passing day.
Adrian had set sail at once to Castor from where his boat had been moored off the Asterian coast, with the hopes that the kingdom of knowledge would grant the answers he so desperately sought.
He’d scoured the libraries for any sign of a sea malady, to no avail.
Then, he had looked for poisons and their antidotes, though none seemed to match the description his ma had given him in her updates—one that made Annabel’s veins blacken and rise and pulse in rhythm with the tide beneath her skin.
With no other option, he’d accepted that he would have to go to Altalune, the most powerful healing kingdom in Celestia. But healing came at a price, and not even all the treasure in his vault could afford to pay a healer whose currency wasn’t just simple coin.
That was until he’d heard about the snakestone. One of the rarest magickal objects in the world, it could buy the best healer Altalune had to offer.
And he had so very nearly had it in his palms, when he’d discovered how he could win one, but Elara Bellereve had fucked it all up.
He tried to be angry with the Asterian beauty who had ruined the only chance he’d had at saving his sister.
But he felt an inexplicable draw to her, a loyalty and understanding that she did not deserve—he had only met her twice, after all.
Though, she had spared his life, there in the pit.
He had seen nothing like the power that had risen within her. The shadows—
He took a swig of spiced rum, trying to push aside the horrific images of her twisting shadows, how they had struck the crowd dead. Santi shifted beside him, and he was thankful for his ability to know when Adrian wanted him to speak and when he wanted silence.
‘We need to get to Altalune,’ Adrian muttered, pushing all thoughts of the Starkiller from his mind. ‘But Helios first. I need to sell as much of our latest haul as I can for coin to take with us. Perhaps we can still scrape together the money we’ll need in the healing kingdom.’
Santi took the rum from him and took a sip. ‘We’ll save her, Adrian. We’ll travel the whole damned world if we have to.’
His steady lilac eyes twinkled at Adrian, iridescent hair shimmering as most Altalunians’ did, mirroring their magickal waters.
Adrian knew that although Santi was about as much of a flirt as he was, he harboured deep feelings for Annabel, though none that he’d ever spoken aloud to Adrian. Which was a shame; if anyone was to be his brother-in-law, Adrian wouldn’t mind if it was Santi.
‘Get some rest,’ he ordered his quartermaster. ‘I’ll set our course for Helios.’
Adrian stood and traversed the deck, passing the members of his night crew.
The soft glow of cigarettes burning in the night air, the murmur of their voices, the creak of the salted wood, were all a balm to his worries.
His entire crew had taken up arms with him on the day he’d found out his sister was ill and had vowed to take him wherever he needed to go.
He reached the helm of the Starred Siren and brushed a hand over the ship’s wheel.
Intricate symbols were carved into it—a beautiful relic that the eldest of his sisters, Lenore, had found on one of her dives.
The names of all seven sisters were carved into the wood, each in their handwriting; a way for them always to be with him, they said.
He brushed Annabel’s name as he uttered, ‘Helios,’ out loud.
The magickal wheel began to turn, and he felt the rudder clip the waves below as it adjusted itself for the new course.
The sails of his ship unfurled, revealing a map of constellations upon the billowing fabric.
They were a marvel of Castorian invention.
He’d bartered a lot of stolen treasure for them but, truly, he’d have paid double what he did.
The sails charted the course to his chosen destination by mirroring the stars above.
Below the wheel, there was a bowl made of oyster shell, which glistened in the same gentle pastels that Santi’s hair shifted between.
Within it was seawater from right outside Adrian’s family manor, so that he could always find his way back home.
He fought the urge to ebbflow through it right then and there, and instead steered the boat out of port.
He left the helm when he was happy that the ship was taking over and leaned over the side to watch the waves cutting past. He could feel it in his bones—the salt, the depth, the softness of the sea.
Sometimes he liked to watch, just to see if he could spot something.
A dolphin, or octopus, or whale. Sometimes, even a mythas—even though most of his crew would ridicule him for it.
But as he looked into the water, his eyes saw nothing but darkness.
In fact, the ocean seemed much darker than usual, darker even than before the sky had lightened again.
A tendril of unease curled in his stomach, though he couldn’t explain why.
And then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of something.
He turned his head.
Nothing.
Sighing and rubbing his eyes, he went to turn and head to his quarters when he saw it again. He squinted, peering as far across the waves as he could.
‘Great Scorpius’s balls,’ he cursed. Either he was going mad, or a mermaid’s tail was dipping in and out of the surf, following his ship.